Term of the day: personality: individual collection of mental, physical, social, and emotional characteristics.
Thoughts:
I don’t believe there are any names that automatically make me think of personality traits. Even people, who’ve managed to become public personalities, know that the meaning of a name may be contrary to the personality of person using it.
Let’s consider a largely popular Disney villain who’s been given a bit of a character or personality make-over recently. Maleficent isn’t the kind of name that often causes concern over its meaning. While the name has an obvious connection to a word like malevolent, it has a meaning of its own. Maleficent means “able to cause mischief” or “capable of evil”. This name sums up this character’s personality quite well, but recent renditions of the character give her a bit more “heart” and “compassion”.
Now let’s consider Aurora, Maleficent’s object of disgust. Her name literally means “goddess of the dawn”, but that doesn’t really give any clear clues about the nature of her personality. The goddess of the dawn could be like a ray of sunshine brightening the world everywhere she goes or she could be a bold bright light that makes everything else cower in darkness…Who knows?
Name of the day: Iris.
Breakdown and meaning:
Iris is one of those special names, like Maleficent, that has a meaning of its own, but it is also the name used for something specific. It’s a name and a, kind of, personality all in one.
- Iris is part of the eye. It is the portion that gives our eyes their color and controls the size of the pupil.
- Iris is a flower. The petals are described as showy and the leaves as sword-like.
- Iris is a rainbow or a projection of all light waves.
- Iris is an old messenger of the Greek gods referred to as “the goddess of rainbows”.
In my Eternal Curse Series, a very special male character will make an appearance in the second book donning this name. If I told you any more, I would ruin it. Needless to say, I think he’s one the most complex characters I’ve created.
Well, that’s it for Day 22. See you tomorrow.
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Go back to the beginning to see all the posts in this series.
Outside of my own personal search throughout the years, basic meanings and definitions of the terms used here can be found at the following websites:http://www.meaning-of-names.com/, Google search http://en.wikipedia.org/, and http://dictionary.reference.com/.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords
