Enid (given name)

Enid

Julia Margaret Cameron, "Enid", 1874: portrait of the legendary figure as depicted in Tennyson
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 (/ˈnɪd/ 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

Male

Fictional characters

References

  1. "Enid." Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper. Retrieved 1 January 2013. <Etymonline.com http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Enid>.
  2. 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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