Adelé

Historical scholarship

Passages quoted verbatim from public-domain reference works. They reflect the scholarship of their time, not current consensus, and may use obsolete spellings.

• 1884From the archives

  Adèle— “noble cheer”

  Germans do, however, seem to have used the word without another syllable, for Adilo, or Odilo, was an old name, and Ado and Addo are still current in Friesland, no doubt, the same as the Ade of the Cambrian registers. Adela and Adèle, too, occur very early; indeed, there is reason to think that just as in England the son was the Ætheling, in Frankland the daughter was the Adalheit, or the Adelchen. This word _heit_ is translated as the root of the present German _heiter_,…

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  Germans do, however, seem to have used the word without another syllable, for Adilo, or Odilo, was an old name, and Ado and Addo are still current in Friesland, no doubt, the same as the Ade of the Cambrian registers. Adela and Adèle, too, occur very early; indeed, there is reason to think that just as in England the son was the Ætheling, in Frankland the daughter was the Adalheit, or the Adelchen. This word _heit_ is translated as the root of the present German _heiter_, cheerful, and thus would mean noble cheer; but I suspect it is rather _heid_, condition, answering to the _hood_ or _head_ at the end of our abstract nouns, _e. g._ hardihood, and that the princess royal of each little Frankish duchy or county was thus the ‘Nobleness’ thereof.

  Yonge, History of Christian Names (1884), Part VI, Chapter VI (Descriptive Names), Section I (Nobility) · Public domain (Project Gutenberg)