Everyday LifeGreek → English
Evangeline
/ɪˈvændʒəliːn/proper noun
A female given name.
The Greek roots
εὖ
eû
well, good
ἄγγελος
ángelos
messenger
Literally: “bearer of good news”
The story of the word
In classical Greek an εὐαγγέλιον was not the good news but the reward you gave the runner who brought it. Christian writers moved the word to the message itself, and English translated it literally as god-spell, which wore down to gospel. Longfellow assembled Evangeline as a name for the heroine of his 1847 poem about the expulsion of the Acadians, and the poem put it into wide use.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1847
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
evangelistangelgospeleuphoriaeulogy
In a sentence
Her grandmother was an Evangeline, which the family shortened to Eva within a generation.