About Ada
Could ADA not be a short for ADELAIDE? In ancient Greece there was an exact name, ADA, she was the daughter of EkAtomnos of Karia.
("Thesaurus of Greek Names", Ares Diamantes, 17.800 names).The LGPN ("Lexicon of the Greek Personal Names", over 28.000 names, www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk), mentions 15 different people with the name ADA in the ancient Greek onomatology.
vote up1vote down

Replies

LGPN is an incredible project, too bad it is not delving into etymology. Another name that is quite ambiguous in its origin is Adonis. Many sources (including this site) attribute it to the Semitic "Adonai" (meaning lord). Accorging to another approach (with which I am more keen to agree) Adonis is derived from the verb "ado" (Üäù) meaning to "sing". This is also the root of the word ode.
vote up1vote down
The good think is that LGPN has actually published their work in five volumes of about 500 pages each, and am sure there are all the details, like etymology etc.
Adonis indeed comes from the verb 'ado'.
vote up1vote down
Look up Ada It is short for Adelaide*************************************************
Fields are spoiled by weeds;
people, by delusion.
My &'s are
Chiara,Griffin,Melor,Zara,Iris,Dane
My #'s are Alastar,Lachlan,Carys,Finola,Gareth,Deidre
My !'s are
Grigore,Faina,Oleg,Kyril,Raisa
vote up1vote down
That's what I mean, why a short for Adelaide and not actually from the ancient Greek ADA which is exactly the same and it's a fact that it was in use a few hundreds of years before Adelaide by the ancient Greeks and the Romans? Could the information on the site be wrong?
vote up1vote down
You have to look as well at the context in which the name was given. I do not doubt that the name existed in Greece, but I do doubt that the parents in the US who gave this name in the early 20th century (when it was most popular) knew or cared about that--they most likely saw it as a short form of Adelaide. Names come from multiple sources.(Would you claim that Naomi isn't a Japanese name because it was used millennia ago in Israel?)

This message was edited 10/13/2005, 5:41 AM

vote up1vote down
It was first used in the Bible. Course it could be different in Japan :)Would you think that the name "Nana" would be like 'Banana' instead of 'apple'?
vote up1vote down
Well if you pronounce it nay-O-mee, you're right!English Naomi is etymologically different to Japanese Naomi.Not only that they are also pronounced differently.English Naomi: nay-O-mee
Japanese Naomi: na-oh-mi (as in 'na' at the end of banana, 'oh' as in of and 'mi' as in me but 'ee' is cut short).But don't take your lack of knowledge to heart. In Japan they thought I had to be part Japanese because Naomi IS Japanese.

Image hosted by Photobucket.comMy 45 PPs - names in profile

This message was edited 10/15/2005, 12:33 AM

vote up1vote down
Up to a point I understand that this might be counter-intuitive. If a name is Hebrew, how can it be Japanese?But if you think about it: In what kind of funny world would a name be "reserved" for all times by the first people that comes up with it? E.g. in the following way: Around the year 1000 AD the Japanese ask the world "We would like to coin a Japanese name called Naomi. Is this ok?" and then the Hebrew-speaking folks object and say "No, you can't, we have the exclusive rights to this name since 1000 BC"...Anyway, of course there is a Japanese name Naomi, in a certain way even around a dozen such names because there are several kanji combinations in use for writing the Japanese Naomi, each with a different meaning.The most frequent writing that I could find is:
直美
with the following two kanji:
直 straightaway; honesty; frankness; fix; repair
http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=76f4
美 beauty; beautiful
http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=7f8eAnd the Japanese themselves seem to know quite well that the Hebrew Naomi and their Naomi are two different things because they don't use kanji to write the name of Naomi Campbell, but katakana:
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ナオミ・キャンベル;
Rene     www.AboutNames.ch
vote up1vote down
Look it up. It is.g
vote up1vote down
Agree . . .AY-da may well have been a set of syllables used as a name in Ancient Greece, but that doesn't mean that when parents in late Victorian English-speaking countries developed a passion for a name using those same syllables it necessarily came from the same source. A common Germanic-origin name is a far more likely origin for an English name than is an obscure Ancient Greek name.
ChrisellAll we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. - J.R.R. Tolkien.
vote up1vote down
Agree but...Certainly yes, but its also a fact that many Greek names, together with the Greek alphabet and language, have "travelled" because of the Romans all over Europe since the ancient times.
And of'course the formation of Greek names is far away more complicated than "a set of syllabes", as it can be in other languages...! (See the "Lexicon of the Greek Personal Names" by the British Academy, www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk )PS Who said Ayda anyway?
vote up1vote down
Yes, I agree that Greek names travelled all over Europe, but the names that travelled were by and large those well-known from mythology or history. I studied Greek Mythology for one year and Greek Archaeology/Art and Architecture for onr year, and I never heard of an Ada, so it seems she was an obscure character whose name might not have the same travelling power as, say, Cassandra or Alexander.I didn't mean quite what you thought with the "set of syllables" thing - all names are sets of syllables, whether those syllables have independent meanings or not. What I meant was that the two syllables 'ay' and 'da' are found in most languages, so it's not surprising that the combination of the two as a feminine name is found in more than one language.I didn't say anything about Ayda - AY-da is the phonetic transcription of the pronunciation of Ada.
vote up1vote down
Thanks for the reply.I hope you understand that I don't mean that any name that sounds like a Greek name, it has actually came from Greek. I would be at least silly if I do that! All I want to do is think and search and ask people's opinion about different options on the etymology. Thats why I started my first post as: "Could ADA not be a short for ADELAIDE?" and not as: "ADA is a short for ADELAIDE"!Anyway, thats what is all about, find the truth through dialogue, sensible thinking and research, isnt it? :0)
vote up1vote down
I agree that both meanings should be placed in.
vote up1vote down