THELMA RAMM

First used by the novelist Marie Corelli for the heroine of her novel Thelma (1887). She was supposed to be Norwegian, but it is not a traditional Scandinavian name. Greek thelēma (neuter) means ‘wish’ or ‘(act of) will’, and the name could perhaps be interpreted as a contracted form of this.

German and English: from Middle High German ram, Middle English ram(m) ‘ram’, ‘male sheep’, hence a nickname for a forceful or lusty individual (in the case of the English name, perhaps in part representing a continued use of an Old English byname). It may also occasionally have been a metonymic occupational name for a shepherd, or a habitational name for someone who lived at a house distinguished by the sign of a ram. The German term also denotes a pile-driver or battering ram, and the surname may have arisen as an occupational name for someone who operated either of these.