Bloganuary writing prompt

Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.

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I never have thought about looking up my name for its meaning, and its origin, but today seems like a good reason to do just that.

Based off of the definition of the word Brad on Merriam-Webster, brad is (n.) “a thin nail of the same thickness throughout but tapering in width and having a slight projection at the top of one side instead of a head.” For the verb (transitive), it’s bradded and bradding, which is to fasten brads. Fascinating stuff!

The history of this word goes back to the thirteenth century Middle English as “broddr“, a spike, point, arrow. Two words that would link to broddr back in the thirteenth century were bristle and prod. The bristle (n.) is a stiff, coarse hair of a certain animal, where prod (v.) is to poke with a stick. You cand find more on these definitions in the link that I attached to broddr. Both are related to the word broddr from what I gathered as the bristle is the hair that would be at the end of the stick, and that would be used to prod whatever with. That is as much as I found when looking up the word and its origin. Probably could’ve searched a lot more into bristle and prodding, but then I’d have a book here written.

As the saying goes, “you learn something new every day”, well today ended up being about my name and its etymology. I wasn’t expecting much from looking it up. To be honest, I didn’t think there was a definition for my name, so I was quite surprised there. It was really interesting to see how far ago my name was originated and what it was used for. Even it was just a stick back then, then became a nail.

Hopefully you all find your name and its etymology interesting also!