German Girl Names

The Germanic naming system that stands behind this section is worth understanding, because it explains a great deal of European naming beyond Germany.

Old Germanic names were dithematic — built from two elements chosen from a stock of perhaps a few hundred, combined more or less freely. Adal- is noble, hild- is battle, -gard is enclosure or protection, -linde is soft or a shield of lime wood, -trud is strength. Adelheid, which became Adelaide and then Alice, is noble plus kind. Hildegard is battle plus protection.

Elements were often shared within a family, so that siblings' names alliterated or repeated a component — a system that encoded lineage in the name itself.

These names spread across the whole of Europe with the Germanic migrations, and a great many names now thought of as French, Italian, Spanish or English are Germanic underneath. Louise, Emma, Matilda, Rosalind and Geraldine all belong here.

What strikes most modern readers is how martial the vocabulary is, including for daughters. Whether those names were understood as descriptions, as wishes, or simply as inherited convention is not something the surviving record settles.