The story
- Ancient Greek · derived fromὠφέλειᾰ“help, aid, succour”
- Italian · borrowed fromOfelia
- English todayOphelia
Borrowed from Italian Ofelia, coined by the poet Jacopo Sannazaro in his poem Arcadia (1504), probably from the Ancient Greek ὠφέλειᾰ (ōphéleiă, “help, aid, succour”). The name was used by William Shakespeare for the daugher of Polonius and ill-fated love interest of Hamlet. The moon (of Uranus) is named after this character. Doublet of anopheles
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.