View Message

Callina?
In one of my favourite novels, Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz, there's a character who is called Lygia, 'though her given name is Callina. I was wondering what's the meaning and origin of the name Callina. It's said in the book that the girl got the name Lygia because she was originally a lygian (?)(I'm not sure what they are called in Wnglish), but, despite a persistent research, I don't know anything about a people called the lygians so I can't say anything about Callina's ethnic backround. Can anyone help me? :)
vote up1vote down

Replies

A form of Greek kallos "beauty" (see Calla) or Greek (kalos) "beautiful" (see Calanthe), mayhap?EDIT: Apparently, the message boards can't show Greek script yet (or I just don't know how to display them).
Miranda
"Come... you must eat my child." — From a badficProud adopter of 15 punctuation marks; see my profile for their names.

This message was edited 6/27/2005, 1:33 PM

vote up1vote down
All I found is this: Lygians = Lugians, east Germanic tribe in Poland from the 3rd cent. on. It's main people were the Vandals.
(from: Der Große Brockhaus 1935).
Callina I've never heard of. google gives quite a few hits, some of them point to Poland, so maybe this is a hint.
vote up1vote down
Makes sense. The author is Polish. Then again, the Polish hits maybe just references to the book... Thanks! ^_^
vote up1vote down
It's NOT a Polish name though.
vote up1vote down