Margaret

plural Margarets

1. countableuncountableA female given name from Ancient Greek.

   Margaret shall now be queen, and rule the king; But I will rule both her, the king, and realm.

   1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene v]

   5 more examples

   Margaret, Marguerite - the pearl! the daisy! Oh name of romance and of minstrelsy, which brings the days of chivalry to mind, and the worship of flowers and ladies fair!

   1830, Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village: Cottage Names

   Fair as a summer dream was Margaret,— / Such dream as in a poet's soul might start, / Musing of old loves while the moon doth set: […]

   1844, James Russell Lowell, “A Legend of Brittany. Part First.”, in Poems, Cambridge, Mass.: John Owen, →OCLC, stanza I, page 3

   Amongst us English, the name is a greater favourite than with any other nation: but we have played upon it, and abused it oftener too. In no language does Margaret sound sweeter or homelier than in ours: not so Mag, Maggie, Meg, Madge, Moggie, Peg, Peggy, and abominable Piggy, of which abridgements only the two first are defensible.

   1868, Bentley's Miscellany, London, page 417

   The 800-word work (on a paper slightly bigger than a postcard) is one of 13 works submitted by a group of authors that includes Doris Lessing, Tom Stoppard, Margaret Atwood and Nick Hornby, The Associated Press reported. Ms. Rowling used both sides of her card to handwrite the prequel to her seven-book Potter series.

   2008 May 30, Felicia R. Lee, “Harry Potter Prequel for Charity”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 19 Aug 2023

   The girls from our year were mainly named some version of Shawn. There was Shawna, Dawna, Shawnee, Dawnali, Shalana, and just plain Dawn and Shawn. There was also a girl named Margaret, named after her grandmother, who worked at the post office. I ended up talking with Margaret.

   2012, Louise Erdrich, The Round House, Corsair, published 2013, →ISBN, page 292

2. countableuncountableA river in southwestern Western Australia, presumed named for a cousin of John Garrett Bussell, founder of Busselton. See Margaret River.
3. countableuncountableA river in Kimberley region, Western Australia, named for its European discoverer's sister-in-law. See Margaret River.
4. countableuncountableastronomyA moon of Uranus, named for a character in Much Ado About Nothing.First known use discovered 2003

   The odd one out is Margaret, which travels in a "normal" prograde direction, though it has the most eccentric orbit of all the Uranian satellites.

   2012, Peter Bond, Exploring the Solar System, page 297

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   Astronomers discovered nine small moons lying outside the orbit of Oberon (Francisco, Caliban, Stephano, Trinculo, Sycorax, Margaret, Prospero, Setebos, and Ferdinand) between 1997 and 2003.

   2009, Richard Schmude, Jr., Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto and How to Observe Them, page 58

   […]moons known to be moving in a prograde or direct orbit is Margaret, orbiting Uranus at an average distance of nearly nine million miles (14,845,000 km) in an orbit that currently exceeds all other Solar System moons in terms of eccentricity (0.7979).[…]Margaret takes about 4.6 Earth years to complete a single orbit of the planet.

   2013, David A. J. Seargent, Weird Worlds: Bizarre Bodies of the Solar System and Beyond, page 225