Gayle

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A feminine first name of English origin ; a small village in the Wensleydale area of North Yorkshire in northern England
2. A woman's given name of English origin ; a hamlet in the Yorkshire Dales region of northern England
3. A female personal name used in English-speaking countries ; a small settlement in North Yorkshire in the north of England

Etymology: Gayle is a female first name whose surname origin is far older than its use as a given name. It comes from the English surname Gayle, which is a locational name for someone who lived by a gale, a term that in northern England and Scotland could mean a windy place or a stretch of open land. In Old Norse, "geil" meant a ravine or narrow valley, and the word passed into northern English dialects in that sense. The first name grew out of the surname, and its popularity is largely a twentieth-century phenomenon in the English-speaking world. Parents adopted surnames as given names throughout the Victorian and modern periods, and Gayle followed that pattern, rising in use in the United States in the mid-twentieth century.