View Message

[Facts] Aunt's First Name
For the longest time, I was under the impression that my great-aunt's name was Georgene Raelene. Well, I have just come across her mother's obituary and found out that her real name is Rienette Georgene. Does anyone know the meaning of Rienette?
vote up1vote down

Replies

The origin of the name Rienette is probably Danish. Could be a variation of the Danish name Renette. Rienette is a diminutive of Riena, which is a variation of Rina or Reina. Meaning in Latin: queenly, in Hindi: Queen. Of course Rina can also be a short form of all names that end with –rina, like: Marina, Catharina, Irina (Irene) etc.By the way: the name and spelling Rienette really exists.
vote up1vote down
I don't know anything about your family's history, but having done a lot of genealogical research, I've found all sorts of name-related oddities like this. Names have a way of getting re-spelled and misspelled by one's descendants over the years. Also, sometimes the person's parents misspelled the name to begin with, wanting to use a name they'd heard but not knowing how to spell it correctly. (For example, I'm thinking of a great-aunt of mine whose middle name was Suzieann, which likely represented an attempt by her parents to name her Suzanne or Susannah.)So it is possible that what your great-aunt's children and grandchildren heard as "Rienette" was originally a name such as Renate, Renata or Renita, or that her parents were going for one of those names and did the best they could at spelling it.
vote up1vote down
It be an alternate spelling/misspelling of Reinette(little queen). Madame de Pompadour was nicknamed this as a child.
vote up1vote down
I don't know for certain, but it seems likely that Rienette would be an elaboration of Reina or a feminization of Rien.In addition to what this site says, I've found that rien is French, meaning "nothing", but it seems unlikely that someone would knowingly select this as a name.Also, according to Think Baby Names, the boy's name Rien \rien\ is a variant of Marino (Latin) and Ryan (Gaelic), and the meaning of Rien is "of the sea; king".

This message was edited 2/3/2010, 4:33 PM

vote up1vote down