Today Dolly Parton left us. She was, etymologically and in many other ways, a gift from God. But since my last word tasting already covered Dolly, today I’m going to pause in memory of her and look just briefly at another name associated with her: the eponym of one of her most famous songs, Jolene.
This name Jolene is, as you probably know, a sort of portmanteau word, made of the start of one name and the end of another, sort of like how chocoholic is made from chocolate and alcoholic. And if you have the usual familiarity with the American South, you’ll know that Jo is stereotypically common in a lot of women’s names thereabouts – both as a second part, as in Bobby Jo (not to be confused with Bobby Joe, which is a man’s name) and Suzie Jo, and as a first part, especially in Jolene. It’s taken from names such as Joan and Joanne and Josephine. It has that nice voiced apical affricate “J” so well suited to starting names, for men and women both.
OK, so where does the Jo in those names come from? Well, Joan and Joanne are feminized forms of John and Johann and so on, which come by way of Latin and Greek from Hebrew Yohanan (probably from an original form meaning ‘God is gracious’); Josephine is a feminized form of Joseph, which comes via Latin and Greek from Hebrew Yosef (‘God shall add’). So, yeah, that Yo in both cases is from ‘God’. And so, therefore, is Jo.
And how about the -lene? There are many names with the suffix -ine or -ene, pretty much all of which are from adjectival forms (indicating association or derivation) but also are used to indicate femininity, but the -lene in particular has specific sources. One of them is Marlene, the most famous bearer of which was Marlene Dietrich, who was christened Marie Magdalene – so Marlene is a telescoping of Marie Magdalene, and no less a portmanteau than Jolene. Another source, then, is Magdalene, and another is Helene, both of which are names of famously attractive women (the one a sort of Jolene type who repented of her husband-stealing ways and became a follower of Jesus, the other a woman whose husband launched a war to get her back because writing a song was clearly not his métier).
The -ene in Magdalene signifies derivation: it means that she was from the village of Magdala, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee (Magdala refers in Hebrew to a tower). Helene is a very old Greek name, highly reminiscent of Hellene, which means ‘Greek person’, but not related to it; instead, Helene – and of course Helen and Helena and, for that matter, Elaine and several other names – probably traces to a name for a solar deity, from a Proto-Indo-European meaning ‘shine, smoulder, burn’. In short, the implication of -lene could – for those who like to play games with etymology – be said to be ‘towering hotty, but derivative’.
So, if you wanted, you could say Jolene is etymologically something like ‘divine but not unique smokin’ hot husband-stealer’. But, again, Dolly is ‘gift from God’. And we know who won in the end.
Sesquiotica 