| www.behindthename.com Gender: Feminine Usage: English, French, German, Jewish, Biblical Pronounced: SER-a [key] |
| Means "lady" or "princess" in Hebrew. This was the name of the wife of Abraham in the Old Testament. She became the mother of Isaac at the age of 90. Her name was originally Sarai, but God changed it (see Genesis 17:15). |
This is, of course, what I expected to find. My name has been the same for thousands of years, and has been on the top 20 list for 200 or so. The year I was born there was a bumper crop of Sarahs. I used to hate my name for this common reason. Lately, I like it. If I hear it, it means I am in the company of adults. At home, I am Momma. That's okay, too, but it is nice to be Sarah once and a while.
Something interesing about my name I learned on this site is that although I am correct in thinking it does not change much from language to language, it does significantly in Hawaiian: Kala; and Irish : Morag; and the Hebrew name Tzietel is derived from Sarah.
www.bowwow.com.au
This is a site for pet names. As I predicted, my pet's name was not on their list. My Newfoundland dog is named Madame Pamplemousse, which means "Mrs. Grapefruit." We call her Mousse for short. She got her name the usual way -- no one was paying attention. I had made a list of French names for the dog before we adopted her from the Humane Society, and my husband thought them all "too girly." He asked what my favorite French word was. It was Pamplemousse. He liked the idea of a giant hary dog having a giant hairy name, and she was grapefruit before I could further explain. I should point out, however, that the dog does understand French commands, and English only if we are holding meat. The neighbors laugh at me as I walk this beast, scolding "allez-y" when I want her to heel properly.
I enjoyed this site for a few reasons: one, many of the names were cute, especially the pair names: Mufasa and Sarabi, Napoleon and Josephine, Fred & Wilma. But I was amused by the fact that I know children by many of these names -- most of whom are in one family: Baine, Quillon, Griffin, and D'artagnan. This was a decision we agonized over when picking names for our daughter... next time I am consulting this site to make sure the one I want has not been usurped by a pooch!
www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/routesofenglish/games
I did pretty well on the "Where Does This Word Come From" game; I was only wrong about 30% of the time. Being a history major helped, as I remembered things like the first time English speakers encountered potatoes or tobacco was in the West Indies. And Harry Flashman helped with cushy and pajamas. But the crossword? I am not the greatest shakes at them anyway, and I only got a miserable three words before I had to give up. These new words to the language were made up of parts of old ones, in many cases, making me think modern English has a bit of an agglutinative nature... I know the new adjectives people are inventing all the time are both that and incorrectly inflective.
I could see using this site in my classroom someday, as I think etymology is a lost art in today's spelling and vocabulary-for-the-sake-of-the ACT's world. Etymology is what saved me on the ACT's -- I will have to look into the WKCE's and see if it would help there, too. I am guessing it would. And since history is being pushed out of many budgets and timetables by NCLB, sprinkling a bit of it in English class would be great.
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