DORIS MILLER

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 Scottish: occupational name for a miller. The standard modern vocabulary word represents the northern Middle English term, an agent derivative of mille ‘mill’, reinforced by Old Norse mylnari (see Milner). In southern, western, and central England Millward (literally, ‘mill keeper’) was the usual term. The American surname has absorbed many cognate surnames from other European languages, for example French Meunier, Dumoulin, Demoulins, and Moulin; German Mueller; Dutch Molenaar; Italian Molinaro; Spanish Molinero; Hungarian Molnár; Slavic Mlinar, etc.