Viviane
| Pronunciation |
/vɪviˈɛn/ viv-ee-EN /ˈvɪviən/ VIV-ee-ən |
|---|---|
| Gender | Unisex |
| Word/name | Latin |
| Region of origin | Western Christianity (Western Roman Empire) |
| Related names | Vivien, Viviane, Vivienne, Vivianne |
Vivian is a given name, and less often a surname, derived from a Latin name of the Roman Empire period, masculine Vivianus and feminine Viviana, which survived into modern use because it is the name of two early Christian female martyrs as well as of a male saint and bishop.
The Latin name Vivianus is recorded from the 1st century. It is ultimately related to the adjective vivus "alive", but it is formed from the compound form vivi- and the adjectival suffix used to form cognomina.
The latinate given name Vivianus was of limited popularity in the medieval period in reference to Saint Vivianus, a 5th-century bishop of Saintes; the feminine name was that of Saint Viviana (Bibiana), a 4th-century martyr whose veneration in Rome is ascertained for the 5th century.
In Arthurian legend, "Viviane" is one of the names of the Lady of the Lake.
The name was brought to England with the Norman invasion, and is occasionally recorded in England in the 12th and 13th centuries. The masculine given name appears with greater frequency in the early modern period. The spelling Vivian was historically used only as a masculine name, but in the 19th century was also given to girls and was a unisex name until the early part of the 20th century; since the mid 20th century, it has been almost exclusively given as a feminine name in the United States. Use of Vivian as a feminine name in the US peaked in popularity in 1920 at rank 64, but declined in the second half of the 20th century, falling below rank 500 in the 1980s. Its popularity has again picked up somewhat since the 1990s, as of 2012 having attained rank 140.
Variants of the feminine name include Viviana, Viviane, Vivienne. The French feminine spelling Vivienne in the United States has peaked sharply in recent years from below rank 1,000 (no statistical record) to rank 322 in the period 2009–2012. The Italian or Latin form Viviana has enjoyed some popularity since the 1990s, reaching rank 322 in 2000. The spelling Vivien is the French masculine form, but in English speaking countries it has long been used as a feminine form, due to its appearance as the name of the Arthurian Lady of the Lake in Tennyson's Idylls of the King of 1859. For the masculine name, the variant Vyvyan has sometimes been used, based on the Cornish surname itself derived from the given name. The intermediary form Vyvian is also occasionally found.
...
Wikipedia