Proper noun

1. . Borrowed in the 17th century from the form of Carolina, feminine derivative of , the equivalent of Charles, which came from Karl.

Related terms

Quotations

• 1830 Mary Russell Mitford: Our Village: Fourth Series: Cottage Names:

  - - - gentle Sophias milk your cows, and if you ask a pretty smiling girl at a cottage door to tell you her name, the rosy lips lisp out Caroline. A great number of children, amongst the lower classes, are Carolines. That does not, however, wholly proceed from the love of the appellation; though I believe that a queen Margery or a queen Sarah would have had fewer namesakes.

• 1999 Andrew Pyper: Lost Girls: Chapter Forty-Four:

  I used to love saying her name. Caroline, with the "i" always long, because to make it short left it sounding like crinoline, a sweat-stained, mothballed Sunday hat pulled from an attic trunk. But Caroline with the "i" long created a sound roughly equivalent to the idea of a girl. The echo of a song in its three syllables, an age-old lyric not yet faded from memory.