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ArchivesRe: Vanessa
in reply to a message by MJ
Who says, Vanessa has no meaning? At least for Swift it had a lot of meaning as it represented the name of a lady he was very fond of at a time. I don't believe he thought much about the meaning of Esther as "star" or about the biblical character. He just put the two parts together and created a new name. The combination itself is not meaningful at all beyond the fact that it is taken from parts of the names of a real person.
The same applies to a lot of composite names, especially of Germanic origin. Take HEDWIG which translates "fight-fight". It was a fashion of the time to combine elements from the father's side and from the mother's - no matter whether they went along with each other. So it makes sense to tell the meaning of each of the elements but not of the whole name. Or in modern times there is HANS-JÜRGEN and KARL-HEINZ in Germany as given names, but they don't really mean anything except Hans means "God has granted" and Jürgen means "framer".
In the case of VANESSA it is obvious that the combination is arbitrary. But of course you can say that there is a "star" shining through Vanessa. But I don't think many people naming their daughter Vanessa see that.
Andy ;—)
The same applies to a lot of composite names, especially of Germanic origin. Take HEDWIG which translates "fight-fight". It was a fashion of the time to combine elements from the father's side and from the mother's - no matter whether they went along with each other. So it makes sense to tell the meaning of each of the elements but not of the whole name. Or in modern times there is HANS-JÜRGEN and KARL-HEINZ in Germany as given names, but they don't really mean anything except Hans means "God has granted" and Jürgen means "framer".
In the case of VANESSA it is obvious that the combination is arbitrary. But of course you can say that there is a "star" shining through Vanessa. But I don't think many people naming their daughter Vanessa see that.
Andy ;—)
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