"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 17/10/17 (Cedric, Fiona, Jessica, Kim, Pamela, Vanessa)

I'm going to look to first names that have come from literature cos very often we know about words that were coined by various authora and dramatists. Shakespeare, we know, was a prolific coiner or at least populariser of new words but we're less, perhaps, familial with the first names, the baby names, if you like, that come from our authors. So this is... I have to credit the Oxford Dictionaries Blog, which I love. Free site you can just go and browse. Wonderful origins like this. The first one is Cedric. Not so much used nowdays, but Sir Walter Scott invented that for a character in Ivanhoe, his 1820 novel, and he apparently based it on Cedric, and he was an Anglo-Saxon king form the sixth century, so he had to look a very long way back. Fiona was invented by the Scottish poet, James Macleod. It's thought to be an English version, if you like, of the Gaelis worf meaning white or fair haired. That's quite nice. Jessica. We have to thank Shakespeare for the popularity of this one. He calls Shylock's daughter in The Merchant of Venice Jessica, possibly modelled after Iscah in the Bible, which means to behold, which is quite nice as well. Kim. This male name, and it was a male name at the time, was popularised by Rudyard Kipling in his novel, of course, Kim. And he took this as a shortening of his character's name which was Kimball. Kimberly has a completely different origin - that comes from a palace name in Norfolk. But we have Rudyard Kipling to thank for man being called Kim. Pamela was from Philip Sidney. He invented that for a 16th-century work - Arcadia. And finally, I like this one, cos it's very romantic - Vanessa. It's a poetic invention. It'a very clever as well because it was penned by Jonathan Swift who wrote an autobiographical poem, Cadenus and Vanessa, and it was about his relationship with Esther Vanhomrigh and he created the name, so it was slightly coded by taking the Van of her last name and combining with Essa, a pet form of Esther. So he was a very first person to coin the word Vanessa, which I think is quite lovely.