Message: "Any ideas?" - Behind the Name

Any ideas?

by Nornia (guest)

3/6/2017, 5:32 AM

So for the past 15 years I have been trying to find out the origin/meaning of my wife's name.

I've had a look today at ALL of the registry entries on Ancestry.com and there have only been 119 in all of the millions of entries around the world.

Indiana has had 18 between 1907-1940 Massachusetts had 17 between 1620-1988 and Kentucky had 12 between 1911-1999. England (where she is from) had 2 between 1916 and 2005... the other one being her late mother.

Nornia's mother thought it might have been Irish but there are zero Irish people with the name on the records!I do wonder whether the high number of Americans with the name could have been early descendants of the Irish emigrating to the country. I'm not big on American history so have no idea the areas where they may have settled.

Does anyone have any ideas?

thanks

Steve

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- elbowin

3/9/2017, 7:50 AM

My first thought is that it might be inspired by C.F.Lewis "The Chronicles of Narnia". I tried a Google book search on Nornia, but found mainly obvious OCR errors for Norma and no literary figures called Nornia. There is some mystery left around this particular name form.

--elbowin

- Anneza

3/6/2017, 7:16 AM

Based on a couple of glitches in my own family tree, I strongly suspect that, in some styles of handwriting and especially if the clerk was in a hurry, at least some of those Nornia folks were probably Norma.

I can't imagine that the Nordic Fates - the Norns - could be a factor.

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