Kimberly

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A female given name of English origin, traditionally associated with people from various English-speaking countries
2. A woman's name derived from an English place name, commonly used as a personal identifier in English-speaking cultures
3. A female personal name of English derivation, typically given to girls in English-speaking regions

Etymology: Kimberly is a variant spelling of Kimberley, the English place name that is also used as a personal name. The name is taken from Kimberley, a town in South Africa, which was named in 1873 after John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley, a British colonial secretary of the time. The town grew up around the diamond fields discovered there in the 1870s, which is why a place named for a politician came to be famous for a precious stone. The spelling with "y" is the form most common in American use as a given name, and it became popular as a first name in the twentieth century, well after the town gave its name to the surname-based place name. Because the name was adopted from a place rather than a person's ordinary name, it carries no older English meaning of its own.