mayとは

意味・読み方・使い方

語源

From Middle English May, Mai, from Old French mai, from Latin māius (“Maia's month”), from Maia, a Roman earth goddess

発音

• enPR: mā, IPA^(key): /meɪ/
• 韻: -eɪ

固有名詞

May (複数形 Mays)

1. The fifth month of the Gregorian calendar, following April and preceding June.
   • Before 1789, "Bonny Barbara Allen," traditional ballad, collected in Francis James Child and George Lyman Kittridge (1886), The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, vol. II, part II, p. 277:

     All in the merry month of May, / When green leaves they was springing, / This young man on his death-bed lay, / For the love of Barbara Allen.

2. A female given name from English, pet name for Mary and Margaret, reinforced by the month and plant meaning.
   • 1856 E. D. E. N. Southworth, The Widow's Son, T. B. Peterson (1867), page 210:

     […] I will not send Owen's Lily May to the almshouse." "Lily―what?" demanded Mrs. Morley rather sharply, for she was half provoked with what she mentally called Amy's whim of keeping the outcast child when she might send it to the asylum. "Lily May," said Amy, smiling. "Her name is Mary, and we called her first Little Mary, and then Little May. But Owen calls her Lily May."

   • 1982 Ruth Rendell, The Fever Tree and Other Stories, Hutchinson, →ISBN, page 119:

     Their parents named them June and May because their birthdays occurred in those months. […] May was like the time of year in which she had been born, changeable, chilly and warm by turns, sullen yet able to know and show loveliness that couldn't last.

   • 2010 Margaret Forster, Isa & May, Chatto & Windus, →ISBN, page 5:

     It's an awkward name: Isamay, pronounced Is-a-may. Isa is my paternal grandmother's name (shortened from Isabel) and May my maternal grandmother's (it comes, somehow, from Margaret). The amalgamation is, as you see, strictly alphabetical. Life, I feel, would have been much easier if they had chosen Maybel.

3. A surname, from Middle English​.

使用する際の注意点

• May (または Mae) is often used in conjoined names (e.g., Lillie Mae, Katie Mae, Fannie Mae).

派生語

関連する語

• Cinco de Mayo

派生した語