_Present Christian name._--Eng. Emmeline. ETHEL, ADELA, ADELINE, ADELAIDE. Ethel and Adela are different forms of the same word, _adal_, _athal_, _ethel_, signifying noble. But while Adela is a correctly formed feminine, Ethel can hardly be said to be so. Both as a man's name and as a woman's it had usually a vowel-ending, and though this was not invariably the case, yet a name appearing without it would be rather assumed to be a man's name. Adeline is a diminutive like Eveline and Caroline; it represents the old name Adalina, eighth century, and Adalina, about the twelfth century, in the _Liber Vitæ_, and comes probably through the French, the ending in _e_ preserving the feminine by lengthening the syllable. Adelaide is from _adal_, as above, and H.G. _haid_, corresponding with Saxon _hood_, as in manhood. Hence the name seems to contain the abstract sense of nobility. The name must have come to us through the Normans; indeed, a woman's name could hardly be so formed among the Anglo-Saxons, for, curiously enough, this ending was a feminine one among the High Germans, and a masculine one among the Saxons. Hence perhaps it is that we have as surnames such names as _Manhood_ and _Mahood_, the latter perhaps signifying boyhood, A.S. _mæg_, boy. EDITH. Edith is the only representative in women's names of A.S. _ead_, happiness, prosperity, from which we have so many men's names, as Edward, Edwin, Edmund, Edgar. It represents an A.S. Editha, a contraction of Eadgitha, and the question, which is not without a little difficulty, is, What is the origin of _githa_? Is it a phonetic variation of _gifa_ (A.S. _gifu_, gift), so common in Anglo-Saxon names of women, as in God-gifa (Godiva), Sungefa (Suneva), &c., or is it a separate word? I am disposed to come to the conclusion, upon the whole, that it is a separate word, and though the traces of it as such are not strong, yet there are some traces. There is a woman's name Githa in the _Liber Vitæ_, and this seems to be the same as an Old Norse woman's name Gyda in the _Landnamabôk_. There was also a Gytha, daughter of Swend, king of Denmark. Then there are two Old German names of women with the endings respectively _gid_ and (H.G.) _kid_. And the origin of all I should take to be found in O.N. _gydia_, goddess, the exalted conception of womanhood. EVELYN, EVELINA, EVELINE.