name origins

[alleigh76]

I'm not entirely sure this is the right spot for this, but it seemed to make the most sense.

Whenever I look on a name site (or name book) I always check my name to see how accurate it is, since I know it's Latin and means (goddess of) dawn. But many times they have it listed as Greek. I know the two shared deities, but they renamed them; the Greek goddess of dawn is Eos.
Plus, Aurora neither looks nor sounds Greek. The opening 'au' is strongly Latin, and it's a common name (in various forms) in many Romantic nations, such as Spain and France.
Furthermore, I would think it would be easier to ascertain the origin of a mythological name than it would for many other names, considering how much we know about mythology.
So why do so many sites/books, including ones that are generally reliable, have Aurora listed as Greek?

[ckevans]

The short answer is that they are probably all copying from the same incorrect source.

A great many people who write baby name books or who put up baby name websites are people who really haven't been researching names very long and are still basically amateurs in doing research in this field. Most of them probably have no knowledge at all the 'au' is "strongly Latin" and that Aurora doesn't "look or sound Greek."

When people first start out researching a field, they have little idea of which sources are really the reliable ones, and don't have enough knowledge to realize when a particular derivation really doesn't make sense. Unfortunately, you just have to get experience for a while before you get the sort of knowledge where you can differentiate between sources in this way. I still remember almost 30 years ago when I met an actual expert on names from Ireland and first learned that Megan was NOT an Irish name no matter how you spelled it. Until then I had assumed that all the baby name books published in the USA that said Megan was Irish knew what they were talking about. It was one of my first bits of education on how one can't assume a derivation is correct just because you see it in multiple places. Everyone may be naively copying the same incorrect information over and over.

[JessiesGirl]

a) they have a huge number in the title, b) they don't include root words, and c) they don't list references

I like that info :) very good to think about!

ditto again.. My name has 10 different origins and loads of different meanings lol..

[MelissaJane]

The internet really demonstrates this. I was looking up the name Denali the other day - a friend is about to have a baby and his girlfriend wants to use it - and I was wondering what the meaning was. Again and again, I saw "the great one" listed on baby name web sites. No other information, such as which Native American language the word derives from, etc. On the Denali State Park web site, I found the information that Denali is a Tanana word meaning "the high one," and is the aboriginal word for Mount McKinley. Tanana (also Tenaina) is an Athabaskan language.

If you just went with all those baby name sites, you'd get a mistaken impression of what the name really means; I suspect the meaning was reworded to make it more relevant/impressive as a human name, when it really doesn't mean "great" in the sense you might assume, but simply high or tall. I truly think a lot of those sites just steal one anothers' databases; they seem to repeat the same errors over and over.

[ClaudiaD]

I agree with Melissa. Copying mistaken etymologies has always been a problem for baby name books, but it seems to have become exponentially worse with the Internet. Unfortunately it's hard to persuade some people that what they read isn't correct. I recently had a long discussion with someone on another names site regarding a Japanese name. She insisted that "Teijo" must be a Japanese boys' name because it was listed on several name websites, always with the same meaning. I even did a web search on Japanese-language sites and failed to come up with a single occurrence of Teijo. That entire character string was nonexistent, but she still wasn't convinced.

[KNY]

As an aside, Denali as a name is really cool - I love the sound of it and the nature association!

[Jennifer]

True, that is why we depend on Drs. Cane and Evans to help us with our research on names!

Before we had the experts go through our database, we had bad information on the site, too. And LOTS of other sites popped up with our BAD DATA!

Luckily we have since gone through and corrected our data. There are still some anomalies here and there, but for the most part, our database is accurate.

Another thing we do is seed "made up" names in our database to see if other sites rip us off.
CHAKALUKA, for example is a ridiculous name we added to the database to see if other sites steal our information. If you look it up in Google, you'll see who the offending sites are!

[Sobes]

The Chakaluka thing is crazy. I hadn't realized how many baby names websites are out there (especially ones that don't do their research.)

I will totally have to remind my kids about that when we study how to research on the internet.

[KNY]

Jennifer, that's so funny!

Please don't add my name to the database then, I don't want it popping up all over the internet and getting more popular ;)