Norman

Norman comes from two Germanic roots, nord for north and mann for man. Put together they mean northman, a man from the north. The first people described that way were Norse seafarers who pushed down the coasts of Europe. One band settled the region that took their name, Normandy, and in 1066 their descendants crossed to England under William the Conqueror. The name went with them.

In English it grew common enough to reach every kind of life. Norman Foster, the architect born in Manchester in 1935, designed glass towers on several continents. Norman Mailer wrote long, argumentative books in New York. The meaning stayed plain. A man from the north, however far south he later lived.

On a Polish class register the name reads as a visitor, rare among the Piotrs and Jakubs. It keeps no diminutive of its own and no cross-gender pair. What it keeps is the old sense, człowiek z północy, the same northman that the Germanic word first named.