What's In A Name: Abigail, Alvin

Abigail-This female name goes back to transliterated Hebrew "Avhigayl/Avhigayil," seemingly taken to mean "father's joy" or "father's rejoicing." It is derived from "av," meaning "father" and "gil," meaning "joy." Biblically speaking, Abigail was one of the wives of King David. behindthename.com says that Abigail became popular in English after the Reformation and that the name was a popular one with the Puritans. 

 

Alvin-This male name is the revived version of Old English "Ælfwine" (literally "elf-friend") and "Ealdwine" (literally "old friend"). The "-wine" ending is from an Old Germanic form that is synoymous with "friend," a word also from Germanic. German has modern "Alwin," patterned after Old High German "Adalwin," meaning "noble friend," with its Old English relative having been "Æthelwine" (later spelled "Ethelwine"). The thing to remember is, many of the Old English names declined in usage after the Norman Invasion of England, and these old names were not always passed on in updated versions thereafter. Later however, some names were revived in modified forms, but these were not always direct descendants. The feminine forms are "Alvina" and "Elvina."  

 

If you are old enough to remember the late 1950s, you'll certainly remember the popular Christmas-themed song from that time, "The Chipmunk Song," a fun song performed by a group of cartoon chipmunks named, Simon, Theodore and Alvin, or perhaps it would be better to put it, "ALVIN!!!" The song was performed and recorded by its creator, Ross Bagdasarian (his stage name was Dave Seville), who was of Armenian heritage, and he sang all of the parts of the three chipmunk characters, then he adjusted the tape speed to achieve the squeaky sounding voices he wanted for the chipmunks. The most notable part of the recording was when Dave would yell out "ALVIN," to get a response from the chipmunk, who would finally answer, "OKAY!" The song was a huge hit, hitting #1 on the American pop music charts. 

 

I consulted the following in preparation of this article: 1) behindthename.com

2) "A World of Baby Names," by Teresa Norman, published by Perigee/Penguin Group, New York, 2003

 

WORD HISTORY:

Serge-This word for a heavy woolen and silk or linen cloth mixture came to English in the late 1300s from French "serge" (dialect "sarge?"), which was from Latin "sarica," with the cloth meaning, and this was from Latin "serica," meaning "silk garments," which was from transliterated Greek "sērĭkḗ" (the feminine form of "serikós"), meaning "silken, of or from silk." Greek took the first part from "Seres," the name of a people from China from whom they got silk, although the Greeks may have first encountered the word "Seres" by contact with the Mongols. (Note: There "seems" to be no connection between the word "serge" and the name "Serge," which is a form of "Sergius.")