Vivian (given name)

Vivian is a given name, originally a Latin name of the Roman Empire period, masculine Vivianus and feminine Viviana, which survived into modern use because it is the name of two early Christian female martyrs as well as of a male saint and bishop.

History and variants

The Latin name Vivianus is recorded from the 1st century. It is ultimately related to the adjective vivus "alive", but it is formed from the compound form vivi- and the adjectival -ānus suffix used to form cognomina.

The latinate given name Vivianus was of limited popularity in the medieval period in reference to Saint Vivianus, a 5th-century bishop of Saintes; the feminine name was that of Saint Viviana (Bibiana), a 4th-century martyr whose veneration in Rome is ascertained for the 5th century.

The name was brought to England with the Norman invasion, and is occasionally recorded in England in the 12th and 13th centuries. The masculine given name appears with greater frequency in the early modern period. The spelling Vivian was historically used only as a masculine name, but in the 19th century was also given to girls and was a unisex name until the early part of the 20th century; since the mid 20th century, it has been almost exclusively given as a feminine name in the United States. Use of Vivian as a feminine name in the US peaked in popularity in 1920 at rank 64, but declined in the second half of the 20th century, falling below rank 500 in the 1980s. Its popularity has again picked up somewhat since the 1990s, as of 2012 having attained rank 140.

Vivienne (photographer)

Florence Vivienne Mellish (1889-1982), known simply as Vivienne, was a photographer and singer.

She was married to the artist Ernest Entwistle, and took up photography in 1934, in order to assist him and their photographer son, Antony Beauchamp. Another son, Clive Entwistle, was an architect and civil engineer.

Her autobiography, They Came to My Studio: Famous People of Our Time was published in 1956.

She appeared as a "castaway" on the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs on 22 July 1963.

208 of her works are in the National Portrait Gallery, as is one photograph of her, and works by Beauchamp.

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References