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Harriet (name)
Encyclopedia
Harriet is a female name
. The name is an English
version of the French
Henriette, a female form of Henri. The male name Harry was formed in a similar way from Henry
. All these names are derived from Henrik
, which is ultimately derived from the Germanic
name Heimiric, derived from the word elements heim, or "home
" and ric, meaning "power, ruler." The male name Henry was first used in England
by Normans
.
The name was the 73rd most popular name for baby girls born in England
and Wales
in 2007. It last ranked in the top 1,000 most popular names for girls in the United States
in the 1960s.
Name
A name is a word or term used for identification. Names can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. A personal name identifies a specific unique and identifiable individual person, and may or may not include a middle name...
. The name is an English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
version of the French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
Henriette, a female form of Henri. The male name Harry was formed in a similar way from Henry
Henry (given name)
Henry is an English male given name and a surname, from the Old French Henry , derived itself from the Germanic name Haimric , which was derived from the word elements haim, meaning "home" and ric, meaning "power, ruler". Harry, its English short form, was considered the "spoken form" of Henry in...
. All these names are derived from Henrik
Henrik
Henrik is a male given name of Germanic origin, primarily used in Scandinavia, Estonia, Hungary and Slovenia. In Poland, the name is spelt Henryk but pronounced similarly. Equivalents in other languages are Henry , Heikki , Henryk , Hendrik , Heinrich , Enrico , Henri , Enrique and Henrique...
, which is ultimately derived from the Germanic
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
name Heimiric, derived from the word elements heim, or "home
Home
A home is a place of residence or refuge. When it refers to a building, it is usually a place in which an individual or a family can rest and store personal property. Most modern-day households contain sanitary facilities and a means of preparing food. Animals have their own homes as well, either...
" and ric, meaning "power, ruler." The male name Henry was first used in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
by Normans
Normans
The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...
.
The name was the 73rd most popular name for baby girls born in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
in 2007. It last ranked in the top 1,000 most popular names for girls in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in the 1960s.
Variants
- Drika (DutchDutch languageDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
) - Endika (BasqueBasque languageBasque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
) - Enrica (ItalianItalian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
) - Enriqueta (SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
) - Etta (EnglishEnglish languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
) - Etti (English)
- Ettie (English)
- Etty (English)
- Haliaka (HawaiianHawaiian languageThe Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
) - Halle (English)
- Hallie (English)
- Hariala (Hawaiian)
- Hariata (Hawaiian)
- Harrieta (English)
- Harriet (English)
- Harriett (English)
- Harrietta (English)
- Harriette (English)
- Harriot (English)
- Harriott (English)
- Hat (English)
- Hatsy (English)
- Hatt (English/ScottishScottish languageScottish language can refer to:* Scots language , a West Germanic language spoken in the Lowlands of Scotland and Ulster.* Scottish Gaelic , a Celtic language spoken in the Hebrides and parts of mainland Scotland...
) - Hatti (English)
- Hattie (English)
- Hatty (English)
- Heike (Dutch), (Frisian, GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
) - Heinrike (German)
- Heintje (Dutch)
- Hendrika (Dutch)
- Hendrikje (Dutch)
- Henka (PolishPolish languagePolish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
) - Henna (FinnishFinnish languageFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
) - Hennie (Dutch), (English)
- Henny (Dutch), (English)
- Henrieta (Polish)
- Henrietta (English)
- Henriette (DanishDanish languageDanish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, Dutch, FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German, NorwegianNorwegian languageNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
) - Henriikka (Finnish)
- Henrika (SwedishSwedish languageSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
) - Henrike (German), (Scandinavian)
- Henriqueta (PortuguesePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
) - Henryka (Polish)
- Hetta (English)
- Hetti (English)
- Hettie (English)
- Hetty (English)
- Jetje (Dutch)
- Riette (English)
- Rika (Dutch, Swedish)
- Rike (German)
- Rikka (Finnish)
- Yetta (English)
- Yettie (English)
- Harrie (English)
- Hari (English)
- Yetty (English)
As a given name
- Harriet AnderssonHarriet AnderssonHarriet Andersson is a Swedish actress, known outside Sweden for being part of one of director Ingmar Bergman's stock company....
, actress - Harriet ArbuthnotHarriet ArbuthnotHarriet Arbuthnot was an early 19th century English diarist, social observer and political hostess on behalf of the Tory party. During the 1820s she was the "closest woman friend" of the hero of Waterloo and British Prime Minister, the 1st Duke of Wellington...
(1793–1834), English diarist, social observer, and political hostess - Harriet BackerHarriet BackerHarriet Backer was a Norwegian painter who achieved recognition in her own time and was a pioneer among female artists both in the Nordic countries and in Europe generally...
, Norwegian painter - Harriet Beecher StoweHarriet Beecher StoweHarriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom...
, abolitionist and writer - Harriet BlandHarriet BlandHarriet Claiborne Bland was an American athlete who competed mainly in the 100 metres.She competed for the United States in the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin, Germany in the 4 x 100 metres where she won the gold medal with her team mates Annette Rogers, Betty Robinson and Helen Stephens who...
, Olympic gold medal-winning sprinter - Harriet BosseHarriet BosseHarriet Sofie Bosse was a Swedish–Norwegian actress. A celebrity in her own day, Bosse is today most commonly remembered as the third wife of August Strindberg, an influential playwright. Bosse began her career in a minor company run by her forceful older sister Alma Fahlstrøm in Kristiania...
, actress - Harriet Boyd-HawesHarriet Boyd-HawesHarriet Boyd Hawes was a pioneering American archaeologist, nurse and relief worker. She is best known as the first director of an archaeological excavation to discover and excavate a Minoan settlement and palace site on the Aegean island of Crete.Born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States,...
, American archaeologist - Harriet BrooksHarriet BrooksHarriet Brooks was the first Canadian woman nuclear physicist. She is most famous for her research on nuclear transmutations and radioactivity. Ernest Rutherford, who guided her graduate work, regarded her as being next to Marie Curie in the calibre of her aptitude.She was born in Exeter, Ontario...
, nuclear physicist - Harriet Chalmers AdamsHarriet Chalmers AdamsHarriet Chalmers Adams was an American explorer, writer and photographer. She travelled extensively in South America, Asia and the South Pacific in the early 20th century, and published accounts of her journeys in the National Geographic magazine...
, American writer, explorer and photographer - Harriet Elphinstone-DickHarriet Elphinstone-DickHarriet Elphinstone-Dick , also known as Harriet Rowell, was an early English and Australian swimming champion, pioneering physical fitness teacher and, possibly a lesbian....
, early English-Australian swimming champion - Harriet HarmanHarriet HarmanHarriet Ruth Harman QC is a British Labour Party politician, who is the Member of Parliament for Camberwell and Peckham, and was MP for the predecessorPeckham constituency from 1982 to 1997...
, UK politician and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party - Harriet HemingsSally HemingsSarah "Sally" Hemings was a mixed-race slave owned by President Thomas Jefferson through inheritance from his wife. She was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson by their father John Wayles...
, one of four mixed-race children born to Sally Hemings; their father is widely believed to have been the president Thomas JeffersonThomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia... - Harriet HowardHarriet HowardHarriet Howard, born Elizabeth Ann Haryett was a mistress and financial backer of Louis Napoleon, later Napoleon III of France.-London:...
, mistress of Napoleon III - Harriet LindemanHarriet LindemanHarriet Lindeman is a politician in the Åland Islands, an autonomous and unilingually Swedish territory of Finland.* Minister of Social Affairs and Environment 2005-2007* Second Deputy Speaker of the Lagting 2003-2005...
, politician - Harriet Ann JacobsHarriet Ann JacobsHarriet Ann Jacobs was an American writer, who escaped from slavery and became an abolitionist speaker and reformer...
, American abolitionist and writer - Harriet B. JonesHarriet B. JonesDr. Harriet B. Jones was the first woman to be licensed as a physician in West Virginia in 1885 and the first woman to be elected to its House of Delegates in 1924....
(1856 - 1943), the first woman to be licensed as a physician in West Virginia - Harriet Keopuolani, Hawaiian queen
- Harriet LaneHarriet LaneHarriet Rebecca Lane Johnston , niece of lifelong bachelor United States President James Buchanan, acted as First Lady of the United States from 1857 to 1861. She was one of the few women to hold the position of First Lady while not being married to the President.-Early life:Harriet Lane's family...
, niece of bachelor President James Buchanan and First Lady of the United States - Harriet LernerHarriet LernerHarriet Lerner, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and a contributor to feminist theory and therapy. From 1972 to 2001 she was a staff psychologist at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas and a faculty member and supervisor in the Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry...
, feminist and clinical psychologist - Harriet MartineauHarriet MartineauHarriet Martineau was an English social theorist and Whig writer, often cited as the first female sociologist....
, English writer, feminist philosopher, and political economist - Harriet MetcalfHarriet MetcalfHarriet Morris Metcalf is a six-time USA national/ Olympic team member in women's rowing, who won a Gold medal in rowing at the 1984 Summer Olympics for the Women's Eight.-Background:Metcalf received her B.A...
, Olympic gold medal-winning rower - Harriet MiersHarriet MiersHarriet Ellan Miers is an American lawyer and former White House Counsel. In 2005, she was nominated by President George W. Bush to be an Associate Justice of the U.S...
, lawyer and politician - Harriet NahaneeHarriet NahaneeHarriet Nahanee also known as Tseybayotl was an Indigenous rights activist, residential school alumnus, and environmental activist. She was born in British Columbia, Canada. She comes from the Pacheedaht who are part of the Nuu-chah-nulth, Indigenous peoples from the Vancouver Island...
, Canadian Aboriginal rights activist - Harriet Nahienaena, Hawaiian princess
- Harriet NelsonHarriet NelsonHarriet Nelson was an American singer and actress. Nelson is best known for her role on the long-running sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.-Early life and career:...
, American singer and actress best known for The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet - Harriet OwenHarriet OwenHarriet Owen is an English actress who provided the voice of Wendy's daughter Jane and young Wendy in the 2002 Disney animated film Return to Never Land...
, actress - Harriet QuimbyHarriet QuimbyHarriet Quimby was an early American aviator and a movie screenwriter. In 1911 she was awarded a U.S. pilot's certificate by the Aero Club of America, becoming the first woman to gain a pilot's license in the United States. In 1912 she became the first woman to fly across the English Channel...
, first American female pilot and first woman to fly across the English channel - Harriet Roberts, British dance pop singer
- Harriet Anne ScottHarriet Anne ScottHarriet Anne Scott, Lady Scott , was a British novelist.Scott, only daughter of Henry Shank of Castlerig and Glenniston, Fife, was born in Bombay in 1829. On 28 Nov. 1844 she married Sir James Sibbald David Scott , third baronet...
, English novelist - Harriet Shaw WeaverHarriet Shaw WeaverHarriet Shaw Weaver was a political activist and a magazine editor. She also became the patron of James Joyce....
, journalist and patron of James Joyce - Harriet SmithsonHarriet SmithsonHenrietta Constance Smithson was an Anglo-Irish actress, the first wife of Hector Berlioz, and the inspiration for his Symphonie Fantastique....
, Irish actress and first wife of Berlioz - Harriet Sohmers ZwerlingHarriet Sohmers ZwerlingHarriet Sohmers, later Zwerling , is an American writer and artist's model. She lived in Paris in the 1950s as part of the bohemian expatriate scene centered around James Baldwin, with whom she shared space in a magazine called New Story.She translated a novel by the Marquis de Sade for Maurice...
, Beat writer - Harriet Taylor MillHarriet Taylor MillHarriet Taylor Mill was a philosopher and women's rights advocate. Her second husband was John Stuart Mill, one of the pre-eminent thinkers of the 19th century...
(1807 – 1858), philosopher and women's rights advocate. - Harriet Taylor UptonHarriet Taylor UptonHarriet Taylor Upton was a suffragette, author, and the first woman to be vice chairman of the Republican National Committee.-Early history:...
, suffragette and author - Harriet TubmanHarriet TubmanHarriet Tubman Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; (1820 – 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. After escaping from slavery, into which she was born, she made thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves...
, abolitionist - Harriet WheelerHarriet WheelerHarriet Wheeler is the lead singer of the 1980s/1990s alternative rock band, The Sundays.-Early years:Wheeler grew up in Sonning Common, near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, the daughter of an architect and a teacher. She was enrolled as an English literature student at Bristol University when she...
, rock singer - Harriet E. WilsonHarriet E. WilsonHarriet E. Wilson is traditionally considered the first female African-American novelist as well as the first African American of any gender to publish a novel on the North American continent...
, the first female African-American novelist - Harriet F. Dinnis, Horse rider
Fictional
- Harriet JonesHarriet JonesHarriet Jones MP is a recurring fictional character played by Penelope Wilton in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. With the revival of Doctor Who in 2005, Jones was introduced in the two-part story "Aliens of London" and "World War Three" as an MP who aids the...
- Harriet SchulenburgHarriet SchulenburgHarriet Schulenburg is a fictional character in the British sitcom Green Wing, played by Olivia Colman.- History :Harriet works in the human resources department of East Hampton Hospital. She is married to Ian , and has four children, Oscar, Jamie , Robbie and Stuart...
- Harriet the SpyHarriet the SpyHarriet the Spy is a children's novel by Louise Fitzhugh published in 1964. It won the Sequoyah Book Award and the New York Times Outstanding Book Award in 1964.-Plot summary:...
- Harriet VaneHarriet VaneHarriet Deborah Vane, later Lady Peter Wimsey, is a fictional character in the works of British writer Dorothy L. Sayers ....
- Harriet HydeJulia Jekyll and Harriet HydeJulia Jekyll and Harriet Hyde was a British children's television series which aired on BBC One in the UK for 53 episodes between 1995 and 1998....
- Harriet Morton, protagonist of Eva Ibbotson's novel A Company of SwansA Company of SwansA Company of Swans is a historical romance novel published in 1985 by Eva Ibbotson. The book is dedicated to Patricia Veryan. Critically well received, the young adult novel is starting to be obliquely referred to in reviews, as reviewers attempt to compliment a new work by comparing it to another,...
Animals
- Harriet (tortoise), a Galápagos tortoise which had an estimated age of 175 years at the time of her death