When Eric Blair chose the name George Orwell, he distanced himself from the Blairs but covered himself in Englishness twice over. Saint George was England’s patron saint, and King George V was on the throne at the time. As a schoolboy, Orwell had been stuffed with enough Greek and Latin to know the name’s origin in words for earth and for work, so that it meant farmer, earthworker. Thus Virgil’s Georgics, his epic poem of agriculture. Orwell was an old English word that has, of course, a well in it, which is sometimes thought to also mean spring, and one translation is “spring by a pointed
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When Eric Blair chose the name George Orwell, he distanced himself from the Blairs but covered himself in Englishness twice over. Saint George was England’s patron saint, and King George V was on the throne at the time. As a schoolboy, Orwell had been stuffed with enough Greek and Latin to know the name’s origin in words for earth and for work, so that it meant farmer, earthworker. Thus Virgil’s Georgics, his epic poem of agriculture. Orwell was an old English word that has, of course, a well in it, which is sometimes thought to also mean spring, and one translation is “spring by a pointed hill.” Another source notes that oran or ora means a border, brink, edge or margin, and the meaning is “well beside the brink.” There are also Urwells and an old parish of Orwell in Scotland, whose name is said to be of Gaelic origin and meant “yew wood.” All the meanings make it a landscape feature. Orwell is said to have gotten it from the River Orwell in Suffolk, near his parents’ home. The name has the added ambivalent charm of sounding a bit like “or,” as in alternately, and “oh well,” as in resignation, a sigh, a shrug.
