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What a hoot! Thanks for that ... but it would have put one militantly atheist Jewish cardiologist of my acquaintance into his grave if he wasn't there already, poor old boy. (His grandson was born shortly after his death, and his daughter, who doesn't mind tradition as long as there isn't any religion mixed in, would have given his name to the new baby if only it hadn't had the Men's Toiletries connotation, so she turned it into Vel as a mn ... rather hesitant in Latin! And her son hasn't forgiven her ... of course he'd wanted to be named after Granddad!)

Yes, that's my impression too, heavily based on Fiddler on the Roof! But then we run into the gender issue: all those -l ending names seem to be feminine, whereas my friend's father was by definition and inclination quite the reverse. Come to that, even Tolkien put in that cute bit about how "real" Hobbit male names tend to end in -a but he changed it for English readers to avoid confusion.

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So that would make Velvel the diminutive of the male name Velva, right? Makes sense ... but isn't in the Database, oddly enough. Maybe one day.

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