(male) New Testament name, borne by one of Christ's twelve apostles, referred to as ‘Thomas, called Didymus’ (John 11:16; 20:24). Didymos is the Greek word for ‘twin’, and the name is the Greek form of an Aramaic byname meaning ‘twin’. The given name has always been popular throughout Christendom, in part because St Thomas's doubts have made him seem a very human character.
Short form: Tom.
Pet form: Tommy.
Cognates: Irish: Tomás. Scottish Gaelic: Tòmas; Tàmhas. Welsh: Tomos. German, Dutch, Scandinavian: Thomas. French: Thomas. Spanish: Tomás. Portuguese: Tomás. Italian: Tommaso. Russian: Foma. Polish: Tomasz. Czech: Tomáš. Croatian: Toma. Slovenian: Tomaz. Finnish: Tuomo. Latvian: Toms. Lithuanian: Tomas.
English and French: nickname for a tall person, from Old English lang, long, Old French long ‘long’, ‘tall’ (equivalent to Latin longus).
Irish (Ulster (Armagh) and Munster): reduced Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Longáin (see Langan).
Chinese 龙: from the name of an official treasurer called Long, who lived during the reign of the model emperor Shun (2257–2205 BC). his descendants adopted this name as their surname. Additionally, a branch of the Liu clan (see Lau 1), descendants of Liu Lei, who supposedly had the ability to handle dragons, was granted the name Yu-Long (meaning roughly ‘resistor of dragons’) by the Xia emperor Kong Jia (1879–1849 BC). Some descendants later simplified Yu-Long to Long and adopted it as their surname.
Chinese 隆: there are two sources for this name. One was a place in the state of Lu in Shandong province during the Spring and Autumn period (722–481 BC). The other source is the Xiongnu nationality, a non-Han Chinese people.
Chinese 郎: variant of Lang.
Cambodian: unexplained.
