Enid (given name)
| Enid | |
|---|---|
|
| |
| Gender | Feminine |
| Origin | |
| Word/name | cognate with the Welsh word enaid meaning "soul, life" (earlier eneid, eneit) |
| Meaning | "purity" or "soul" |
| Other names | |
| Related names | Énide (French) |
Enid (/ˈiːnɪd/ EE-nid; Welsh pronunciation: [ˈɛnɨ̞d]) is a feminine given name, the origin of which is Middle Welsh eneit, meaning "purity", literally "soul" (from Proto-Celtic *ana-ti̯o-, compare Gaulish anatia "souls (?)" attested on the Larzac tablet, ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root *h₂enh₁- "to breathe, blow"; cf. the modern Welsh anadl, "breath" or "wind").[1] Enid was a character in Alfred Lord Tennyson's Arthurian epic Idylls of the King (1859) and its medieval Welsh source, the Mabinogi tale of Geraint and Enid; according to The Facts on File Dictionary of First Names (1983),
"Enid drifted into use after publication of [Tennyson's] poem, and did not become firmly established until the 1890s. At its most popular in Britain in the 1920s, then began to fade slowly. Always rare elsewhere. Helena Swan once remarked that it was the greatest possible compliment for a woman to be called ‘a second Enid’, since the original was the perfect example of spotless purity."[2]
People
Female
- Enid Bagnold (1889–1981), British author and playwright
- Enid Bakewell (born 1940), English cricketer
- Enid Bennett (1893–1969), Australian-born American silent film actress
- Enid Blyton (1897–1968), popular British children's writer
- Enid Campbell (1932–2010), Australian legal scholar and law professor
- Enid Charles (1894–1972), socialist, feminist and pioneering statistician
- Enid Derham (1882–1941), Australian poet and academic
- Enid Greene (born 1958), American politician
- Enid A. Haupt (1906–2005), American publisher and philanthropist
- Enid Kent, played Nurse Bigelow, a recurring character in the television series M*A*S*H
- Enid Bosworth Lorimer (1887-1982), Australian actress and director
- Enid Lyons (1897–1981), Australian politician and wife of Prime Minister Joseph Lyons
- Enid Markey (1894–1981), American actress
- Enid Johnson Macleod (1909-2001), Canadian anaesthetist, medical doctor and academic
- Enid MacRobbie (born 1931), Scottish plant scientist
- Enid Mumford (1924–2006), British professor largely known for her work on human factors and socio-technical systems
- Enid Nemy, reporter and columnist for The New York Times
- Enid Diana Rigg (born 1938), English actress
- Enid Starkie (1897–1970), Irish literary critic
- Enid Stamp Taylor (1904–1946), English actress
- Enid Yandell (1870–1934), American sculptor
Male
- Enid Tahirović (born 1972), Bosnian handball goalkeeper
Fictional characters
- Enid or "Enide" (an Old French variant of Enid), a heroine in Arthurian legends
- Enid, great-aunt of Neville Longbottom from J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series
- Enid, a character in The Walking Dead
- Enid Coleslaw, the lead character of the 1997 comic book Ghost World and its 2001 film adaptation
- Enid Nightshade, a character in The Worst Witch series of children's books
- Enid Hoopes, a feminist law student in the movie Legally Blonde (2001)
- Enid Rollins, a supporting character in the Sweet Valley High and Sweet Valley University series of books
References
- ↑ "Enid." Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper. Retrieved 1 January 2013. <Etymonline.com http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Enid>.
- ↑ Dunkling, Leslie; Gosling, William (1983), The Facts on File Dictionary of First Names, New York: Facts on File Publications, p. 85, ISBN 0-87196-274-8
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