DORIS JONES

From the classical Greek ethnic name meaning ‘Dorian woman’. The Dorians were one of the tribes of Greece; their name was traditionally derived from an ancestor, Dōros (son of Hellen, who gave his name to the Hellenes, i.e. the Greek people as a whole), but it is more likely that Dōros (whose name could be from dōron ‘gift’) was invented to account for a tribal name of obscure origin. In Greek mythology, Doris was a minor goddess of the sea, the consort of Nereus and the mother of his daughters, the Nereids or sea-nymphs, who numbered fifty (in some versions, more). The name was especially popular from about 1880 to about 1930, and was borne by the American film star Doris Day (b. 1924 as Doris Kappelhoff), among others.

English and Welsh: patronymic from the Middle English personal name Jon(e) (see John). The surname is especially common in Wales and southern central England. In North America this name has absorbed various cognate and like-sounding surnames from other languages. (For forms, see Hanks and Hodges 1988).