Etymology

ariel

A1R1I1E1L1

Today it means: A kind of mountain gazelle, native to Arabia. Full definition →

Biblical Hebrew אֲרִיאֵל
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The story

  1. Biblical Hebrew · borrowed fromאֲרִיאֵל
  2. English todayAriel

From Biblical Hebrew אֲרִיאֵל (ari'él, a compound of אֲרִי (arí, “lion”) + אֵל (él, “God”), literally “lion of God”). * (moon of Uranus): All of Uranus’s moons are named after characters created by William Shakespeare or Alexander Pope. The names of all four satellites of Uranus then known were suggested by John Herschel in 1852 at the request of William Lassell, though it is uncertain if Herschel devised the names, or if Lassell did so and then sought Herschel’s permission. Ariel is the name of the leading sylph in Pope’s The Rape of the Lock and also the spirit who serves Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.