Valerie (given name)
Encyclopedia
Valerie is almost always a feminine given name in English, derived directly from the French Valérie (only female 's name) and ultimately from the Latin Valeria
. Valerie is also used as a nickname for Valeria. Both are often shortened to Val.
Valéry or Valery
is a masculine given name in parts of Europe (particularly in France and Russia), as well as a common surname in Francophone
countries. Another, much rarer, French masculine form can be Valėre.
Both feminine and masculine forms have derivatives in many European languages, and are especially common in Russian and other Eastern European languages. However the masculine form is not always a cognate of the feminine: it can have a distinct etymology.
origins. The Latin clan name, Valerius, is masculine and denotes strength, health or boldness. Valeria is simply the feminine form of this. Both masculine and feminine given names are derived via French into other languages.
In Catholic Europe, given names always related the individual to a saint, so the popularity of a name often reflected the importance of the cult of a saint. There were several important saints who bore the name and were widely venerated in the Middle Ages, as well as more locally in recent times. St Valerie of Limoges (French Sainte Valérie de Limoges) probably exercised the greatest influence in spreading the name. Her cult was practised on the very important Way of St James and, as a cephalophore
, she became a favourite subject for the early modern ceramics industry.
The majority of the variant spellings are of recent, mainly 20th century, origin, with fashions often following the forms adopted in popular songs.
origin and signifies “foreign power”. A notable example is Walric, abbot of Leuconay
. Both “Saint-ValEry” [valri] and “Saint-ValÉry” [valeri] are common elements in French place-names, often used optionally for the same place. The second form is a modern misspelling for ‘Saint-Valery’, that is to say St Walric.
Valeria
Valeria or Valéria is a female given name dating back to the Latin verb valere. The male version is Valerius, Valerio or Valery. Valeria is also connected to the same root with the name, "Valentine," and "Valerian," or "Valeriana officinalis," the herb...
. Valerie is also used as a nickname for Valeria. Both are often shortened to Val.
Valéry or Valery
Valery
The French name Valery [valri] is a given name or surname of Germanic origin Walaric , that has often been confused in modern time with the latin name Valerius, that explains the variant spelling Valéry [valeri]...
is a masculine given name in parts of Europe (particularly in France and Russia), as well as a common surname in Francophone
Francophone
The adjective francophone means French-speaking, typically as primary language, whether referring to individuals, groups, or places. Often, the word is used as a noun to describe a natively French-speaking person....
countries. Another, much rarer, French masculine form can be Valėre.
Both feminine and masculine forms have derivatives in many European languages, and are especially common in Russian and other Eastern European languages. However the masculine form is not always a cognate of the feminine: it can have a distinct etymology.
Variant forms
- AlbanianAlbanian languageAlbanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...
: Valeria - BulgarianBulgarian languageBulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
: Valeria - CatalanCatalan languageCatalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
: Valèria - CzechCzech languageCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
: Valérie - DanishDanish languageDanish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
: Valerie - DutchDutch languageDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
: Valerie, Valerié - EnglishEnglish languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
: Valerie, Valerié - FinnishFinnish languageFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
: Valeria - FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
: Valérie (female), Valéry (male) - GalicianGalician languageGalician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
: Valeria - GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: Valerie, Valerié - HungarianHungarian languageHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
: Valéria - ItalianItalian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
: Valeria - LatvianLatvian languageLatvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...
: Valērija - NorwegianNorwegian languageNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
: Valerie - PolishPolish languagePolish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
: Waleria - PortuguesePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
: Valéria (female), Valério (male) - RomanianRomanian languageRomanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
: Valeria - SlovakSlovak languageSlovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
: Valéria - Slovene : Valerija
- SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
: Valeria - SwedishSwedish languageSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
: Valeria, Valerie - RussianRussian languageRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
: Valeriya (female), Valery (male)
Romance
The name is generally of RomanceRomance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
origins. The Latin clan name, Valerius, is masculine and denotes strength, health or boldness. Valeria is simply the feminine form of this. Both masculine and feminine given names are derived via French into other languages.
In Catholic Europe, given names always related the individual to a saint, so the popularity of a name often reflected the importance of the cult of a saint. There were several important saints who bore the name and were widely venerated in the Middle Ages, as well as more locally in recent times. St Valerie of Limoges (French Sainte Valérie de Limoges) probably exercised the greatest influence in spreading the name. Her cult was practised on the very important Way of St James and, as a cephalophore
Cephalophore
A cephalophore is a saint who is generally depicted carrying his or her own head; in art, this was usually meant to signify that the subject in question had been martyred by beheading....
, she became a favourite subject for the early modern ceramics industry.
The majority of the variant spellings are of recent, mainly 20th century, origin, with fashions often following the forms adopted in popular songs.
Germanic
The modern masculine given name Valéry is ambiguous. While generally a cognate of Valérie, it can also be development of, or synonym for, the name Walaric(us) (English Walric), which is of GermanicGermanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
origin and signifies “foreign power”. A notable example is Walric, abbot of Leuconay
Walric, abbot of Leuconay
Saint Walric was the founder of the abbey of Leuconay on the Somme River ....
. Both “Saint-ValEry” [valri] and “Saint-ValÉry” [valeri] are common elements in French place-names, often used optionally for the same place. The second form is a modern misspelling for ‘Saint-Valery’, that is to say St Walric.
Religion
- Valerie of LimogesValerie of LimogesSt Valerie of Limoges is a legendary Christian martyr and cephalophore, associated with the Roman period, whose cult was very important in Limousin, France, in the medieval period...
, according to legend, an associate of St Martial, a cephalophoricCephalophoreA cephalophore is a saint who is generally depicted carrying his or her own head; in art, this was usually meant to signify that the subject in question had been martyred by beheading....
martyr and an important subject of LimogesLimogesLimoges |Limousin]] dialect of Occitan) is a city and commune, the capital of the Haute-Vienne department and the administrative capital of the Limousin région in west-central France....
porcelainPorcelainPorcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between and...
. - Valeria of MilanValeria of MilanSaint Valeria of Milan , or Saint Valérie, according to Christian tradition, was the wife of Vitalis of Milan, and the mother of Saint Gervase and Saint Protase, although other traditions make her a virgin martyr rather than a wife and mother.She was martyred for burying Christian martyrs, and then...
, often known as St Valerie, venerated in Thibodaux, Louisiana - Valeria, a Christian saint martyred with AnesiusAnesiusAnesius is one of several Christian martyrs in Africa commemorated as saints on March 31. The Martyrologium Romanum mentions Anesius, Theodulus, and Cornelia. All mentioned saints were canonized pre-congregation...
Fictional characters
- Valerie (game character), a character in Breath of Fire II
- Valerie, a character in the animated series Frisky Dingo
- Valerie Frizzle, character from "The Magic School Bus"
- Valerie Brown (also known as "Valerie Smith"), a character in the Josie and the PussycatsJosie and the PussycatsJosie and the Pussycats are a fictional rock band created by Dan DeCarlo.They have been featured in a number of different media since the 1960s:...
franchise - Valerie 'Val' Bassett, a minor character on the TV show Will & Grace
- Valerie Gray, a ghost hunter in the cartoon series Danny Phantom
- Valerie 'Val' Tyler, a character from the TV series What I Like About You
List of people with the given name Valérie
- Valérie NadaudValérie NadaudValérie Lévêque-Nadaud is a retired female race walker from France.-Achievements:-References:*...
(born 1968), a French race walker - Valérie KapriskyValérie KapriskyValérie Kaprisky is a French actress.She was born Valerie Chérès in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. Kaprisky is her mother's maiden name....
(born 1962), a French actress - Valérie QuennessenValerie QuennessenValérie Quennessen was a French film actress.Quennessen was born in Paris and dedicated much of her childhood to pursuing her dream of becoming an acrobat. She quickly reached a level of competence and received an award for her expertise at the age of ten...
(1957–1989), a French film actress
See also
- Valerie (disambiguation)
- ValeryValeryThe French name Valery [valri] is a given name or surname of Germanic origin Walaric , that has often been confused in modern time with the latin name Valerius, that explains the variant spelling Valéry [valeri]...
- Val (disambiguation)
- Valeria (disambiguation)