Halifax

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A port city on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia in Canada ; a town in West Yorkshire in northern England ; a family name borne by various notable people
2. The capital of Canada's Nova Scotia province on the Atlantic coast ; a industrial town in the English county of West Yorkshire ; a surname or first name held by several well-known individuals
3. A major harbour city in Nova Scotia, Canada ; an English market town in West Yorkshire ; a name shared by a number of prominent people across history

Etymology: Halifax, in West Yorkshire, takes its name from an Old English compound, "halh-ġefeaxe", meaning "grassy corner" (from "halh", a nook or corner of land, and "ġefeaxe", meaning hair or tufted grass). The name later attracted a legend that it came from "hāliġ feax", or "holy hair": a murdered virgin's hair was said to have been hung on a tree nearby, and the spot became a place of pilgrimage. That story is a folk etymology, invented to explain a name whose original sense had been forgotten, and the "grassy corner" reading is the one the place-name evidence supports. The Canadian city carries the same name, but its origin is a deliberate act of naming rather than an ancient one. It is named after George Montagu-Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax (1716–1771), a British statesman, and the Yorkshire town's name was carried across the Atlantic with him as a tribute to his title. The Yorkshire parish is also named after the same earl, who was a noted figure in the eighteenth century, and the name was coined by the British-Dutch surveyor Samuel Holland, who applied it to the Nova Scotia settlement.