OLIVER BONNER

From a French name, Olivier, recorded as the name of one of Charlemagne's paladins (retainers), the close companion in arms of Roland in the Chanson de Roland. Whereas Roland is headstrong and rash, Oliver is thoughtful and cautious. Ostensibly this name derives from Late Latin olivarius ‘olive tree’ (compare Olive), but Charlemagne's other paladins all bear solidly Germanic names, so it is more probably an altered form of a Germanic name, perhaps distantly connected with Old Norse Óleifr ‘ancestral relic’. It has remained in more or less continuous use since the medieval period, becoming ever more popular since the 1980s.

English, Scottish, and Irish: nickname from Middle English boner(e), bonour ‘gentle’, ‘courteous’, ‘handsome’ (Old French bonnaire, from the phrase de bon(ne) aire ‘of good bearing or appearance’, from which also comes modern English debonair).