Comments (Meaning / History Only)

Along with Jillian, this name is also Latin and means ‘youthful.’.
The other day I was trawling quickly (with a specific, non-name, search in mind!) through a London periodical of 1760, and my eye fell on the cast list and a review of a play then being performed at one of the London theatres. Amid the fancy character names such as Clarinda was the name Gillian, a character defined in the cast list as "Gillian, a cook". I was so surprised to see Gillian there at all in the Georgian era, and then it struck me that, like Audrey, Gillian had come to be associated with rustic people or the servant class, until revived in the 20th century in Britain, when, although never "upper-class" it was virtually solidly "middle-class". The fact that Gillian was a 17th century version of Julian (then used for girls) as a version of Juliana betrays its "soft G" origins, the way Brits traditionally pronounce it.

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