In romance languages, are there examples of male names that derive from female names?

Question

In french, there are many female given names that are derived from male given names. Those names are often obtained by adding "ine", "ette", "e" or "a" at the end of the male name. Examples include

• Bérnard -> Bérnadette
• Claude -> Claudine, Claudette
• Charles -> Charline, Charlotte
• Paul -> Pauline, Paulette
• Gérald -> Géraldine
• Martin -> Martine
• Jean -> Jeanne
• Aléxandre -> Aléxandra
• Patrick -> Patricia

I might be mistaken in assuming that the male name came first for some of the above exampless. Consider also

• Sylvain -> Sylvie, Sylvaine, Sylvette.

Here, Sylvain is not the "ancestor" of the female counterparts but all descend from Silvanus who is a male name.

While it appears easy to find female names that derive from male names, I could not find any example of a male name that derived from a female name. In romance languages, are there examples of male given names that derive from female given names?

Answer 1

The first thing I thought of was names derived in antiquity from the names of ancient Greek goddesses.

For example, the French male name Hercule is ultimately from the name of the Greek goddess Hera (Ἥρα) (it's not just a masculinized form of the name, though, obviously).

The name Artemio seems to be used in Italian and Spanish; I believe it comes from the Latin form Artemius of the Greek male name Αρτέμιος, which seems to be based on the name of the goddess Artemis (Ἄρτεμις).

In a comment, A. M. Bittlingmayer pointed out that Demetrius is similarly derived from the name of the Greek goddess Demeter. Demetrio seems to be used as an Italian form of this name.

I can't think of any recent examples, or productive processes for deriving male names from female names.

Answer 2

In Italian there are a number of historically female names which are occasionally used as male names, e.g.

• Celeste, Amabile, Fiore, Diamante

In many Romance languages the female name Maria (or some variant thereof) has historically been used in male names, either standalone or as part of a compound name, though this practice has generally declined with time:

Language	Male name
Spanish	José María1
Portuguese	José Maria
Medieval French	Marie
French	Jean-Marie, Marie-Jean, Marie-Pierre etc
Italian	Antonio Maria (middle name) etc

The female names Guadalupe and Inés are also sometimes given as a second name to males in Spanish e.g. José Guadalupe, José Inés Palafox Núñez.

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^{1. Often abbreviated to José Mari, see: José María Romero Poyón, José María Martín Bejarano-Serrano, José Mari García, José Mari Bakero}

Answer 3

There are a few examples from Germanic names: Deolindo or Teolindo are derived from Deolinda/Teolinda (modern German cognate: Dietlind).

Answer 4

Derivation and inflection are different processes. Several proper nouns in Romance languages inflect for gender; in French, such inflection may be easily mistaken for a derivation, because the masculine gender usually takes a 0-desinence, while the feminine form takes an -e: Jean - Jeanne, Dominic - Dominique. But in other Romance languages, the difference is clearer: Paolo - Paola, Carlos - Carla, Alonzo - Alonza.

That said, there is a common trend (more intense in French than in the other languages) to derive feminine proper names from masculine ones, often as diminutives (Charles - Charlotte, Carlos - Carlota) or generic adjective-forming suffixes (Giuseppe - Giuseppina), or even random feminine-looking endings (Carlos - Carlene, probably by analogy with Marlene).

The reverse is much rarer. In Portuguese, I would point to "Mariano", which while etymologically related to Marianus (and consequently Marius), is usually interpreted as as "related or belonging to Maria" (and in several cases, such as emancipated slaves, orphans, or illegitimate boys, may have been actually intended as that). Another example could be several Brazilian Portuguese names ending in "ildo", which are etymologically related to germanic (and feminine) "Hilde": Hildo, Arildo, Brunildo, Leovigildo (sometimes already as fancy constructions such as Josenildo, Marildo, or Jacildo).

Answer 5

French Toussaint "All Saints' Day" is feminine, but as a personal name it is masculine.