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ArchivesRe: Ahh, Narelle . . .
in reply to a message by Chrisell
So, the earliest examples are from 1890 ... did anything happen in the life of Narellan round about then, to put it in the public eye? Perhaps it became a residential area, or a resident won cartloads of money and gave the neighbours a huge party? It seems from your Wikipedia reference that it's been around since about 1805, and then suddenly became attractive to namers nearly a century later. Odd ...
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I don't know if there could possibly be a link between Narellan and Narelle - it doesn't seem likely as I can't think of any other girls' name that came about in such a fashion.
Narellan has never been famous as far as I know - it's just a sleepy village on the edge of Sydney that's begun to be suburbanised in the last 10 years.
Narellan has never been famous as far as I know - it's just a sleepy village on the edge of Sydney that's begun to be suburbanised in the last 10 years.
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Well, we've got Emmarentia! Which is presumably named after some long-ago Emma Rens or Van Rensburg -- it's an old suburb of Johannesburg, just down the road from me, and it's caught on and become a standard name! I was at school with a girl named Rentia (her full name, and a putative short form), and there was an opera singer a few decades back who made it "Italian" and called herself Emma Renzi.
But if there isn't a link between Narellan and Narelle, then surely they must at least have, or have had, a common ancestor? Perhaps from some now extinct local language?
But if there isn't a link between Narellan and Narelle, then surely they must at least have, or have had, a common ancestor? Perhaps from some now extinct local language?
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"But if there isn't a link between Narellan and Narelle, then surely they must at least have, or have had, a common ancestor?"
Not necessarily. I don't know whether Narelle emerged in New South Wales, as we just don't have the data from other states. It's entirely possible that it emerged elsewhere and the similarity to Narellan is just a coincidence.
The local language isn't extinct so that can't be the problem.
Not necessarily. I don't know whether Narelle emerged in New South Wales, as we just don't have the data from other states. It's entirely possible that it emerged elsewhere and the similarity to Narellan is just a coincidence.
The local language isn't extinct so that can't be the problem.
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You say that Emmarentia was "presumably" named after such a woman, but is there real historical evidence for that? Emmarentia looks to me to be simply a respelling of Emerentia, the name of an early Christian martyr in Rome. This becomes Emerenzia in modern Italian, Emerencia in Spanish, and Emerence in French. Indeed, my Dutch name dictionary (Woordenboek van Voornamen by van der Schaar) gives Emmarentia as one of several spellings of this name that has been used in the Netherlands. So it seems likely to me that the town in South Africa was named after a woman whose full given name was Emmarentia, and that the idea that it's named after an "Emma Rens" is a folk etymology developed after Emmarentia had become unknown as a given name in the area.
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Oh, is *that* where Emerence comes from?
Thank you! A favourite book of mine as a kid had a character named Emerence, and I've never been able to work out the origin.
:-)
Thank you! A favourite book of mine as a kid had a character named Emerence, and I've never been able to work out the origin.
:-)
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I've only managed to check one place, so I don't guarantee anything; but it gives the founding lady, sure enough, as Miss Emmarentia Botha and the time as 1887. No further details on where Miss E got her name from, but it's often difficult to extrapolate Dutch names to South Africa because many Dutch people are Catholics and therefore quite likely to name their children after martyrs, but Afrikaner Protestants would most certainly hesitate! We have a small surname stock, and a small given name stock as well. I'll dig deeper as soon as I can.
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