Myth & LegendGreek → English
Doris
/ˈdɔːrɪs/proper noun
A woman's name, from the sea nymph of Greek myth and from the Dorian people.
The Greek roots
Δωρίς
Dōrís
Dorian woman
Literally: “woman of the Dorians”
Follow a root:Δωρίς1 word
The story of the word
In Hesiod, Doris is a daughter of Ocean who marries the old sea god Nereus and bears fifty daughters, the Nereids. The name belongs with the Dorians, the Greek-speaking group whose dialect and mountain district carry the same word; the tidy link to δῶρον, a gift, is folk etymology rather than descent. English took the name up in the nineteenth century and ran it hard for about eighty years.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
In a sentence
Doris next door still puts her bins out at six in the morning.
There were four Dorises in my grandmother's class photograph.