DOUGLAS SAMSON

Transferred use of the surname borne by one of the most powerful families in Scotland, the earls of Douglas and of Angus, also notorious in earlier times as Border reivers. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was used as a girl's name in northern England. It is now exclusively a boys' name, used throughout the English‐speaking world.

Scottish, English, Welsh, French, German, Dutch, Hungarian (Sámson), and Jewish: from the Biblical name Samson (Hebrew Shimshon, a diminutive of shemesh ‘sun’). Among Christians it was sometimes chosen as a personal name or nickname with reference to the great strength of the Biblical hero (Judges 13–16). In Wales another association was with the 6th-century Welsh bishop Samson, who traveled to Brittany, where he died and was greatly venerated. His name, which is probably an altered form of an unknown Celtic original, was popularized in England by Breton followers of William the Conqueror, and to some extent independently from Wales.