Carmen

See also: carmen

English

Etymology

Spanish Carmen, cognate with English Carmel. Made famous outside Spain by the opera Carmen (1875) by Georges Bizet. The male name is from Italian Carmine.

Proper noun

Carmen

1. A female given name borrowed from Spanish in the nineteenth century.
   • 1914 Keith Clark, The Spell of Spain, The Page Company 1914, page 223:

     Not all of them looked "Spanish", but, no doubt, all of them were Spanish, even the blue-eyed, white, sylph-like creature, dressed in pale blue and white, who looked much more like a Murillo Madonna than like Carmen, but who danced like a Carmen, with a lithe, luring body entirely without stays[...]

   • 1988 Elmore Leonard, Killshot, Arbor House 1989, ISBN 1557100411, page 145:

     "But your Mom won," Carmen said, "and named you after a movie star. Moms get away with murder. Mine, you probably think, named me after the girl in the opera."

     "Tell you the truth," Wayne said, "I never thought about it."

     "She didn't. She named me after Guy Lombardo's brother, Carmen Lombardo, he sang with the band.

2. (dated, rare) A male given name.
3. A town in Oklahoma.
4. An unincorporated community in Idaho.

Anagrams

• -mancer, Camren

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French

Proper noun

Carmen f

1. A female given name of Spanish origin.

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German

Proper noun

Carmen

1. A female given name of Spanish origin.

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Spanish

Etymology

Shortened from María (del) Carmen, an epithet of the Virgin Mary at (Mount) Carmel, by folk etymology associated with Latin and Spanish carmen (“song, poem”).

Proper noun

Carmen f

1. A female given name, traditionally popular in Spain.
2. The letter C in the Spanish phonetic alphabet