What's In A Name: Gustav, Hannah, Anna

"Gustav," is the more typical spelling for German (somewhat for English), but also spelled "Gustaf" in Swedish (somewhat in English), and "Gustavo" in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese (also somewhat in English, especially in the U.S. for Latino-Americans), and "Gustave" in French. The origin of this name is "generally thought to be" from Old Swedish for, "staff of the Geats or Goths;*" thus also perhaps, "leader of the Geats/Goths."** This is "presumed to come from a contracted form of "Gautr," the Norse word for the "Geats," or "Gutar," Norse for "Goths. The second part is from Old Norse "stafr," meaning, "staff," and yes, a relative of the English word.*** The further history of the name is also sketchy, but "presumably," the name was borrowed by Latin or a Latin-based language, from which it then spread to other Latin-based languages. Did the branches of the Goths; that is, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, spread the name into Latin speaking areas?

Hannah (also commonly spelled Hanna) goes back to Hebrew for "grace," and it was a Hebrew female given name ("Channah"), including for the mother of Samuel, of biblical fame. "Anna," "Ann" and "Anne" are all forms of  "Hannah." In English, the name became far more popular with the rise of Protestantism.

I consulted the following, so for more information on any of the names see, "A World Of Baby Names" by Teresa Norman, published by Perigee/Penguin Group, New York, 2003. Also, babynamespedia.

* The Geats were a Germanic tribe that lived in what is now southern Sweden. This tribe "may" have been a part of the far better known Goths.

** Polish has the name "Gostislav." Is this a form of the same name? Or is it a borrowed form from Swedish (the Swedes were involved in the eastern Baltic area in what became Poland. Or did the Swedes borrow the Polish name? Lots of questions, not many answers.  

*** Besides English "staff," other relatives include: German "Stab," Low German Saxon "Staff" (although some dialects have "Staav"), Dutch "staf," Norwegian, Swedish and Danish "stav," Icelandic "stafur." 

WORD HISTORY:
Rostrum-This word, distantly related to both "rat" and to "rodent," goes back to Indo European "redh," which had the notion of "scraping," and thus "gnawing."This gave Latin the verb "rodere," meaning, "to gnaw, to eat away at." This then gave Latin a noun form, "rostrum," which meant, "animal's snout and beak of a bird (the part of an animal or bird which gnaws)." As the prow (front part) of a ship or boat looked like a snout or beak, this gave the word the additional meaning of, "prow, front part, of a ship." In Ancient Rome, the platform set up for speakers to acclaim Roman sea victories had the front part of captured enemy ships decorating it; thus, the platform came to be called "rostrum." English borrowed the word from Latin in the first half of the 1500s.