Amyas
English
Etymology
From Old French Amis, a given name and nickname, from Latin amīcus (“friend”). Later interpreted as a masculine form of Amy.
Proper noun
Amyas
- (literary, rare) A male given name from Latin.
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 59:
- The morrow next about the wanted howre, / The Dwarfe cald at the doore of Amyas, / To come forthwith unto his Ladies bowre.
- 1855 Charles Kingsley, Westward Ho!, Macmillan and Co. (1871), page 17:
- Because there was fellow-feeling of old in merry England, in county and in town; and these are Devon men, and men of Bideford, whose names are Amyas Leigh of Burrough, John Staveley, Michael Heard, and Jonas Marshall of Bideford, and Thomas Braund of Clovelly: and they, the first of all English mariners, have sailed round the world with Francis Drake, and are come hither to give God thanks.
- 1942 Agatha Christie, Five Little Pigs, HarperCollins (1994), →ISBN, page 39:
- She was an admirer of Kingsley. That's why she called her son Amyas. His father scoffed at the name - but he gave in.
Usage notes
The word is rare outside fiction today.