JADE JACKSON

From the name of the precious stone, a word that reached English from Spanish (piedra de) ijada, which literally means ‘(stone of the) bowels’. It was so called because it was believed to have the magical power of providing protection against disorders of the intestines. The vogue for this word as a given name developed later than that for other gemstone names, possibly because it sounds the same as the vocabulary word denoting a broken-down old horse or a nagging woman. It came to notice in the early 1970s when the daughter of the English rock star Mick Jagger was so named, peaking in popularity through the 1990s. In 2002 the name became famous as that of Jade Goody, a remarkably cheerful but ill-informed contestant on Channel 4's reality TV show Big Brother.

English, Scottish, and northern Irish: patronymic from Jack 1. As an American surname this has absorbed other patronymics beginning with J- in various European languages.