Middle Name - Lamar
This middle name - "Lamar" was passed on to me by my father as it was his middle name and I have since passed it on to my first born son and he likewise with his firstborn son...It's kind of a Tradition now but I haven't a clue where it comes from...I'm Irish/Scottish/English/Welsh by heritage...Give me a clue????Thanks.... Garry Lamar McDonall
vote up1vote down

Replies

It's a German name meaning 'land'
vote up1vote down
This is interesting. Being German myself, I wonder what kind of word could be the background of the name. I can't think of any contemporary vocabulary word "Lamar" or anything similar, and even my Grimms Wörterbuch and my Old High German dictionary don't help. Maybe you can, Menke …Andy ;—)
vote up1vote down
no, i can't either, i already checked my dictionary, and at first i thought it was a mistake, but so many sites say it's an Old German name meaning 'land', that i assume it must be right.But...i've checked the site of the Meertens Instituut about Dutch firstnames and i've looked at Lammert, which is a variant of Lambert and i found that this name consists of land- and -bert , meaning 'shining (of the) land'. Well, this makes sense now that i come to think of it. I recently looked up a surname for someone (the name Sambad). And i found out then that Samberg is a variant of Sandberg and that Sambach is a variant of Sandbach. Apparently, the -nd- placed before a b can change in -m- . Thus, Lamar was originally Landar or Landmar. This would mean that the meaning of the name is incomplete and should be 'famous land', because the rootform -mar (as in Dietmar) means 'famous'. Or maybe Landar is just a variant of Land and the suffix -ar is maybe meaningless. Does this make more sense?
vote up1vote down
Thank you, Menke! This makes sense!n
vote up1vote down
an extra note...according to the Meertens Instituut site the firstnames Lam and Lande are pet forms of names that start with lam- or land- , such as Lambrecht and Landbert, et cetera.I guess Lamar was such a pet form as well.
vote up1vote down