Emerald

See also: emerald

English

Etymology

The Queensland town takes its name from the emerald and other precious stone deposits in the area and from the pastoral run Emerald Downs, a name chosen circa 1860 by pastoralist Peter Fitzallan MacDonald.[1][2] It is unclear if emeralds were found in or around Emerald.

The given name is a modern coinage from the name of the gemstone, representing a vernacular form of Esmeralda.[3]

Proper noun

Emerald

  1. A town in Queensland, Australia.
  2. The Rural Municipality of Emerald No. 277, a rural municipality in eastern Saskatchewan, Canada.
  3. (rare) A female given name from English.
    • 1954 Theodore Sturgeon, The Golden Helix, in Leo Marguelis:Three Times Infinity, Fawcett Publications 1958, page 109:
      The child, a girl, was albino like April, and had exactly April's deep red eyes. Sol and Libra named her Emerald, a green name and a ground-term rather than a sky-term, as if in open expression of the slow spell worked on them all by Viridis.
    • 1978, Mary Manning, The last chronicles of Ballyfungus, page 48:
      Mrs. Emerald Walsh was helping out at the presbytery.

References
  1. “Emerald – town in Central Highlands Region (entry 11598)”, in Queensland Place Names, Queensland Government, 2020 December 27 (last accessed).
  2. “Nomenclature of Queenland.—119”, in The Courier-Mail, number 769, Queensland, Australia, 1936 February 15, page 12.
  3. Patrick Hanks, Flavia Hodges, Kate Hardcastle, editor (2006) “Emerald”, in A Dictionary of First Names, second edition, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 90.
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