Parnell

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A nineteenth-century Irish politician who led the campaign for home rule for Ireland in the British Parliament
2. The Irish nationalist leader of the late 1800s who championed self-government for Ireland within the United Kingdom
3. A nineteenth-century Anglo-Irish landowner turned nationalist MP who pushed for Irish home rule at Westminster

Etymology: Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891) was the Irish nationalist leader whose name gave the word its modern sense, but the surname itself began as a medieval given name for a daughter. It is a matronymic, a name built from a mother's name rather than a father's, derived from a medieval spoken form of "Petronella," the Latin-derived name meaning roughly "little rock" or "stone." Over time, the name passed down family lines as a surname, so that its bearers were identified by a name that had once recorded a woman's first name. The word's English meaning therefore rests on a single family. Parnell's name came to stand for the Irish Parliamentary Party and the campaign for Home Rule in the 1880s, and in that context the surname was the one people spoke and wrote. Because the name is a surname rather than a common noun with a stable sense, the word's current usage is almost entirely tied to that political figure.