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ArchivesRe: A question for Latin experts concerning FABIAN
in reply to a message by Andy
I'm afraid you've probably got the right dictionaries, but the wrong name book (on this occasion!). Fabis is wildly imaginative ... if it means anything, it means: With Beans! ... you couldn't get Fabius from it anyway, not without major surgery. Fabius was a name, there was a great general called Fabius and known as Fabius Maximus, and the Fabian version (Fabianus) is an adjective form of his name - it would have been used by his slaves, if he freed them, or possibly by people, soldiers who had served with him perhaps, who wanted to commemorate him - but there are lots of gaps in our knowledge of how the Roman naming system worked - especially for girls.
I suspect the author of your book was either ignorant and lazy (harsh words, but often well deserved) or honestly misled by some ignorant, idle predecessor. Or was too sentimental to consider tasty, honest, nourishing beans to be worthy items to be named after!
I suspect the author of your book was either ignorant and lazy (harsh words, but often well deserved) or honestly misled by some ignorant, idle predecessor. Or was too sentimental to consider tasty, honest, nourishing beans to be worthy items to be named after!
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Thank you, Anneza, for your "harsh words"! I think you are perfectly right. Unfortunately I don't own the book where I found this piece of information and I don't remember its title. But probably the author wouldn't be able to tell where he got the information from. This seems to be a common thing: one author copies information from another without checking it.
This happened in Germany over decades with the name SVENJA. Someone wrote: "female form of SVEN" and dozens of namebooks just copied this, until someone found out that SVENJA was not used as a given name in Scandinavia and that it had nothing to do with SVEN.
So I really appreciate this board because many people with many name books and dictionaries and even more imagination can check out the origins and meanings of names.
On the other hand I have traced bits of information that sounded very unlikely to me - and they turned out to be correct. That's why I put this question on the board.
Thanx for your help!
Andy ;—)
This happened in Germany over decades with the name SVENJA. Someone wrote: "female form of SVEN" and dozens of namebooks just copied this, until someone found out that SVENJA was not used as a given name in Scandinavia and that it had nothing to do with SVEN.
So I really appreciate this board because many people with many name books and dictionaries and even more imagination can check out the origins and meanings of names.
On the other hand I have traced bits of information that sounded very unlikely to me - and they turned out to be correct. That's why I put this question on the board.
Thanx for your help!
Andy ;—)
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