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30 entries found.

twin brother of Castor (q.v.), hence also the name of the beta star of Gemini (though slightly brighter than Castor), 1520s, from Latin, from Greek Polydeukēs, literally "very sweet," or "much sweet wine," from polys "much" (from PIE root *pele- (1) "to fill") + deukēs "sweet" (prom PIE *dleuk-; see glucose). The contraction of the name in Latin is perhaps via Etruscan [Klein].

Caitlin

fem. proper name, alternative spelling of Kathleen (itself a variant of Catherine); not much used in U.S., then suddenly popular from c. 1985.

Kimberly

fem. proper name, apparently from the place or surname Kimberley. Not much known in U.S. before 1946; a top-10 name for girls born there 1964-1977.

Polyphemus

name of a Cyclops ("Odyssey," IX), also used as the name for a one-eyed animal; the name is Greek, literally "many-voiced" or else "much-spoken-of" (see poly- + fame (n.)). Nativized as Polypheme.

Snowdon

mountain in Caernarvonshire, northern Wales, from English snow (n.) + Old English dun "hill, mountain" (see down (n.2); presumably translating a former Celtic name. The height is snow-covered much of the year.

Almoravides

Muslim Berber horde from the Sahara which founded a dynasty in Morocco (11c.) and conquered much of Spain and Portugal. The name is Spanish, from Arabic al-Murabitun, literally "the monks living in a fortified convent," from ribat "fortified convent."

Saratoga

place in New York state, early recorded as saraghtogo and apparently the name is from an Iroquoian language, but it is of unknown meaning. In reference to a kind of large trunk by 1858; so called because it was much used by ladies traveling to the summer resort of Saratoga.

Grub-street (n.)

1620s, "originally the name of a street in Moorfields in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems; whence any mean production is called grubstreet" [Johnson]. The place was renamed 1830 to Milton Street (after a local developer) then erased entirely 1970s by the Barbicon complex.

Belgium

c. 1600, "Low Germany and the Netherlands," from the Latin name of the territory occupied by the Belgæ, a Celtic or Celto-Germanic tribe that in Roman times occupied the area below the mouth of the Rhine, including modern Belgium and much of northeastern France. Adopted 1830 as the name of a new nation formed from the southern part of the former United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Salem

place mentioned in Genesis xiv.18, from Hebrew Shālēm, usually said to be another name for Jerusalem and to mean "peace" (compare Hebrew shalom, Arabic salaam). A typical meetinghouse name among Baptists and Methodists, so much so that by mid-19c. it (along with Bethel and Ebenezer) had come to be used in Britain generically to mean "non-conformist chapel."

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