A small crop this month I'm afraid. It's the run up to the end of the academic year which always means a mountain of transition paperwork to constantly keep on top of for teachers like me. It's a hectic battle between trying to get everything finished off and completed for one year, while already making a start on the next.
But, there are always opportunities for name encounters, even if they are incidental, so here are the few I have had this month:
Leofwin
At the beginning of the month, my family and I went out for a Sunday pub lunch for my mum's birthday. At the bar was a flyer advertising the book Leofwin's Hundred by J.J. Overton. The author is a native Coventrian, and the book is set in ancient Warwickshire, which is why it was advertised in said pub.
As an unashamed name-nerd, it definitely made me happy to see a great Anglo-Saxon name like Leofwin in the title, but, if I'm honest, it was mostly the nerdy thrill that I automatically knew what Leofwin meant (leof "dear, beloved" + wine "friend"). As usual, my poor suffering family had to hear about its origins, too.
Raffey
I have recently come across a young British actress named Raffey Cassidy. I was curious to discover whether Raffey was her full name (or even her real name), and a quick search through birth records revealed the answer. Her full name (first and middle name) is Raffey Camomile. She is the youngest of five children, with a sister, Grace May, and three brothers: Finnigan Joe “Finney”, Mossie Milo and Ridley Fisk. Grace and Finney are also actors.
Raffey, itself, is a rare surname. It could be a variant of Roffey which means "habitation by rough enclosure" or a variation of the surnames derived from Ralph (and it's medieval for Raffe).
Aphra
This month, I've have also had a chance to watch Lucy Worsley's series on Restoration-era women: Harlots Housewives and Heroines. The third episode concentrates on notable women from the period. Including the novelist and playwright Aphra Behn -- also known as Astrea.
I've come across her before, but never took much time to find out much about her. But she was a remarkable woman, as Lucy points out herself in this clip:
The name Aphra itself is often connected to the phrase "in the house of Aphrah" in the Bible. However, Aphrah here means "dust" and isnt actually a given name at all. Earlier forms of the name Aphra include the medieval Effrye, Effery, Effray, Affray and Affery which suggest more strongly that Aphra developed as the 17th century spelling of these, the origins of which could be from a multitude of similar Old English names: Aelthryth, Aelfthryth, Aethelthryth, Aethelfrith and Alberada.
Zoilus
The ancient Greek name Zoilus has also atracted my notice this month. Zoilus is the Romanised form; the Greek is Zoilos, derived from the Greek ζωός (zoós) "life, alive, living."
It was not only borne by a Greek philosopher, but also an early Christian saint and two Indo-Greek kings who ruled the Punjab.
Larissa
This month, news outlets were reporting on Australian MP, Senator Larissa Waters, addressing Parliament while breastfeeding her baby. The baby in question, Alia Joy, is the first in the country to be breastfed in Australian parliament since parliamentary rules were changed last year to allow mothers to feed their children in the chamber.
It wasn't the baby's name (pretty though it is) that caught my eye, but her mother Larissa's. I'm not a stranger to the name -- I've written plenty of blog posts about it -- but everytime I hear it "in real life," I'm always struck by it and muse over why such a lovely name is still so rare when the likes of Melissa and Jessica are, or once were, common-place.