Name Meaning for "Alexander"
Scottish, English, German, Dutch; also found in many other
cultures: from the personal name Alexander, classical Greek
Alexandros, which probably originally meant ‘repulser of men
(i.e. of the enemy)’, from alexein ‘to repel’ + andros,
genitive of aner ‘man’. Its popularity in the Middle Ages
was due mainly to the Macedonian conqueror, Alexander the Great
(356–323 bc)—or rather to the hero of the mythical
versions of his exploits that gained currency in the so-called
Alexander Romances. The name was also borne by various early Christian
saints, including a patriarch of Alexandria (adc.250–326), whose main achievement was condemning the Arian
heresy. The Gaelic form of the personal name is Alasdair, which
has given rise to a number of Scottish and Irish patronymic surnames,
for example McAllister. Alexander is a common forename
in Scotland, often representing an Anglicized form of the Gaelic
name. In North America the form
has absorbed many
cases of cognate names from other languages, for example Spanish
Alejandro, Italian
Alessandro, Greek
, Russian
, etc. (For forms, see
Hanks and Hodges 1988.) It has also been adopted as a Jewish name.
AB, WN
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