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I'm looking for where the name came from. I know that it's some bird and all that but I'm looking for the background.
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The American Heritage Dictionary quoth:
Middle English ibin, from Latin îbis, from Greek, from Egyptian hbj.
The Egyptian word hbj may have a more obscure meaning, but many words for objects ultimately have no other meaning other than "a word to describe something we need a word to describe"--in this case, "ibis".
EDIT: + bold, just for the heck of it.
Miranda
Proud adopter of 15 punctuation marks; see my profile for their names.
Middle English ibin, from Latin îbis, from Greek, from Egyptian hbj.
The Egyptian word hbj may have a more obscure meaning, but many words for objects ultimately have no other meaning other than "a word to describe something we need a word to describe"--in this case, "ibis".
EDIT: + bold, just for the heck of it.
Proud adopter of 15 punctuation marks; see my profile for their names.
This message was edited 2/18/2006, 2:09 PM
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I know most say it as eye-bis but the way I have heard the person with the name say it's more like ee-bis
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Is the person you know with this name a Hispanic-American? The pronunciation you describe who be close to the one in Spanish, and Ibis seems to be primarily a Hispanic name in the USA. I think it still comes from the name of the bird, however, whether it's Spanish or English. Alondra, the Spanish word for "lark", has been very popular as a girls' name in Latin America recently, and Iris is also really common in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, so it would be no surprise that Ibis would be taken up as a girls' name by Hispanic parents.
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