Rowena

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A feminine first name of Anglo-Saxon origin, borne by women and famously used by Walter Scott for a character in Ivanhoe
2. A woman's personal name of English origin, meaning fair friend in its Old English roots and popular in the nineteenth century
3. A female forename of Old English derivation, also known through the heroine of Scott's novel Ivanhoe

Etymology: Rowena is a name rather than a word that grew up in ordinary speech, and its story begins with a chronicler. In the 12th century, Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his Latin "Historia regum Britanniae," a history of the kings of Britain full of invented material, and in it he made Rowena the daughter of the Saxon leader Hengist and the wife of the British king Vortigern. The name appears nowhere before that work, and attempts to link it to some Old English or Brittonic original have no real evidence behind them. For centuries it remained a figure of the chronicles. Then, in 1819, Walter Scott gave it a new life in his novel "Ivanhoe," where Lady Rowena is a Saxon heiress and a central character. Readers took to the name, and it was revived as a given name, which is how most people now meet it. Some places also bear the name because of the novel.