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ArchivesRe: Dallin, and other "valley" names
in reply to a message by elbowin
true, a name like Dalgangr would be an epithet rather than a "name", like Longshanks, Bluetooth etc. As far as Germanic and even Celtic personal "names" I don't know any elements that mean valley. Several that mean hill, island or mountain, but not valley. They really went for fortifiable or holy places, and that was always up on the hills, not in the valleys. There are some that might be construed as "river" though, but that probably wasn't the intent.
This message was edited 3/15/2020, 7:22 AM
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There is Proto-Germanic *dalą or *dalaz meaning "valley, dale", the descendants of which you can see here:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/dal%C4%85#Descendants (in English)
There are some recently created names with its Icelandic descendant in Iceland, which you can see here:
https://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/DAL#Combinations (in English)
It appears that in older times, none of the descendants of Proto-Germanic *dalą or *dalaz were used in given names. At least, Altdeutsches Namenbuch by Ernst Förstemann (which contains nearly all West Germanic given names used in the medieval period) makes no mention of it. It does list the element DALA on page 399, but indicates that it should be related to the Anglo-Saxon adjective deall meaning "clarus, superbus" in Latin.
https://archive.org/details/altdeutschesnam00seelgoog/page/n213/mode/2up (in German)
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Did you already check meaning search on this site here? http://www.behindthename.com/names/meaning/valley
My own "valley" page has less: http://www.babynames.ch/Info/Word/woValley
My own "valley" page has less: http://www.babynames.ch/Info/Word/woValley
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