Alan

See also: alan, ałan, alaŋ, a lán, and alán

English

Etymology 1

Celtic name borne by early Breton saints, of disputed origin and meaning; brought to England by Normans. As an early Irish name, perhaps connected with ail, ‘noble’. It may have been the name of a Celtic deity, the brother of Bran, Welsh Alawn, Celtic Alun, ‘harmony’. Compare French Alain.

Alternative forms

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈæ.lən/
  • Rhymes: -ælən

Proper noun

Alan (plural Alans)

  1. A male given name.
    • 1951 translation by Nevill Coghill of: 13?? Geoffrey Chaucer: Canterbury Tales: The Reeve's Tale:
      He grabbed at Alan by his Adam's apple,
      And Alan grabbed him back in furious grapple
      And clenched his fist and bashed him on the nose.
    • 1910 P. G. Wodehouse, The Man Upstairs, and Other Stories, BiblioBazaar, LLC 2008, →ISBN, page 24:
      I could pose as an artist all right; so I took the studio. Also the name of Alan Beverley. My own is Bill Bates. I had often wondered what it would feel like to be called by some name like Alan Beverley or Cyril Trevelyan.
Derived terms
Translations

Etymology 2

From Latin Alānī, from Ancient Greek Ἀλανοί (Alanoí).

Noun

Alan (plural Alans or Alani)

  1. (historical) A member of a group of Sarmatian tribes, nomadic pastoralists of the 1st millennium AD who spoke an Eastern Iranian language derived from Scytho-Sarmatian and which in turn evolved into modern Ossetian.
Translations

Anagrams

Czech

Proper noun

Alan m

  1. A male given name., cognate to Alan.

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from English Alan.

Pronunciation

  • (Brazil) IPA(key): /ˈa.lɐ̃/, /a.ˈlɐ̃/

Proper noun

Alan m

  1. A male given name, equivalent to English Alan.

Slovak

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈaɫan/

Proper noun

Alan m (genitive Alana, nominative plural Alanovia) declension pattern chlap

  1. A male given name..

Declension

Further reading

  • Alan in Slovak dictionaries at korpus.sk

Turkish

Proper noun

Alan

  1. A male given name.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.