Spanish, diminutive of Venecia "Venice" (see Venice). Supposedly the name was given by Spanish sailors in 1499 when they saw a native village built on piles on Lake Maracaibo. Related: Venezuelan.

fem. proper name, also a poetic name of the Moon, from Latin Cynthia dea "the Cynthian goddess," epithet of Artemis/Diana, who is said to have been born on Mt. Cynthus (Greek Kynthos) on the isle of Delos.

1776, of or resembling the writings of English thinker Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), whose works on political philosophy have a reputation for their bleak outlook on the world. The surname is from Hob. The earlier adjective was Hobbian (1680s).

land on the northeast coast of the Black Sea, named for its people. Related: Abkhasian.

organized as a U.S. territory 1838; admitted as a state 1846, named for the river, ultimately from the name of the native people, of the Chiwere branch of the Siouan family; said to be from Dakota ayuxba "sleepy ones," or from an Algonquian language (Bright cites Miami/Illinois /aayohoowia/). On a French map of 1673 it appears as Ouaouiatonon. John Quincy Adams, in his diary entries on the House of Representatives debate on the territorial bill in 1838, writes it Ioway. Related: Iowan.

seminal rock and pop group formed in Liverpool, England; named as such 1960 (after a succession of other names), supposedly by then-bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, from beetles (on model of Buddy Holly's band The Crickets) with a pun on the musical sense of beat. Their global popularity dates to 1963.

a people of the Iroquois confederacy, 1680s, named for its principal settlement, from Onondaga onontake, literally "on the hill."

pertaining to the works or ideas of French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (1596-1650), 1650s, from Cartesius, the Latinized form of his surname (regarded as Des Cartes) + -ian. In addition to his philosophy (based on the fundamental principle cogito, ergo sum), he developed a system of coordinates for determining the positions of points on a plane.

as an annual ecological awareness event on April 22, from 1970; the idea for it and the name date from 1969.

Old English Pentecosten "Christian festival on seventh Sunday after Easter," from Late Latin pentecoste, from Greek pentekostē (hēmera) "fiftieth (day)," fem. of pentekostos, from pentekonta "fifty," from pente "five" (from PIE root *penkwe- "five"). The Hellenic name for the Old Testament Feast of Weeks, a Jewish harvest festival observed on 50th day of the Omer (see Leviticus xxiii.16).