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Help[Facts] Re: The use of Evelyn before Pierrepont
in reply to a message by Retrospectre
In the UK, Leslie Dunkling wrote the Guinness Book of Names: definitely designed to be read by people who don't need to know the difficult details. Scholarly but scanty. Anyway, in the chapter First Name Origins: The central stock of girls' names, he lists "Evelyn: historical; Old German; of uncertain meaning." Unfortunately, that's all: no suggestion of how and when an Old German name became English.
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C.M. Yonge said it was from the French word for hazelnut tree in 1863, and that the surname had a different etymology from Eveline, but I don't think that's true due to the age of the French word being too young (if I remember correctly). Perhaps that's why Leslie Dunkling wrote "uncertain etymology".
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