Olivia
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Root
-rivha
to be greasy, to be smeared or slippery with fat or oil
Olivia descends from Shona rivha, to be slick with oil
- Confidence
- 54/100
- Root language
- Shona
- Descent begins
- OliviaEnglish
The consensus position
Mainstream comparative linguistics holds Olivia to be a medieval Latin feminine name built on Latin oliva "olive", fixed in English by Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, with oliva itself borrowed from Greek elaia, a Pre-Greek Aegean substrate word of unidentified origin. No connection to Bantu is proposed in that literature.
The working behind this.
The full descent — 7 links from the attested form down to the root — the segment-by-segment correspondences, the phonological breakdown and the case for the derivation are behind an account.
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