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Walter

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
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Etymology

A Germanic name, from Middle English Walter, from Old Northern French Waltier, from Frankish *Waltheri (compare Old High German Waltheri, which see for more details), from Proto-West Germanic *Waldahari, from Proto-Germanic *Waldaharjaz, from *waldą (“ruler”) +‎ *harjaz (“army, host”).

Related to Old English Waldhere. Compare herald and Harold, in which these elements are reversed.

Pronunciation

Proper noun

Walter

  1. A male given name from the Germanic languages.
    • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:
      Whitmore. And so am I; my name is Walter Whitmore. / How now! why start'st thou? what! doth death affright?
      Suffolk. Thy name affrights me, in whose sound is death. / A cunning man did calculate my birth, / And told me that by Water I should die. / Yet let not this make thee be bloody-minded; / Thy name is - Gaultier, being rightly sounded.
    • 1991, Julian Barnes, Talking It Over, →ISBN, page 13:
      And with some appellations, the contrary applies. Like Walter, for instance. You can't be Walter in a pram. You can't be Walter until you're about seventy-five in my view.
    • 2003, Elinor Sisulu, Walter & Albertina Sisulu: In Our Lifetime, page 151:
      Walter complained about the assault and isolation of the volunteers. Two policemen immediately grabbed him and dragged him to the punishment cells.
    • 2023 June 9, John Mac Ghlionn, “The new Andrew Tate: Toxic ‘manosphere’ podcaster claims ‘all women are whores’”, in New York Post‎, archived from the original on 31 March 2025:
      On the podcast, Gaines and his co-host Walter Weekes (Fresh), regularly refer to women as “hoes” or 304s (304 on an upside-down calculator looks like the word “hoe”).
  2. A surname.
    • 2023 June 16, “The Guardian view on Trump and political violence: more than words”, in The Guardian‎, archived from the original on 1 August 2023:
      Prof Barbara Walter notes in her book How Civil Wars Start that two conditions are key: ethnic factionalism and anocracy – when a country is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic.
  3. An unincorporated community in Cullman County, Alabama, United States.
  4. A township in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, United States.

Derived terms

Translations

Anagrams

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German

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle High German Walther, from Old High German Waltheri. Cognate with English Walter.

Pronunciation

Proper noun

Walter m (proper noun, strong, genitive Walters or Walter)

  1. a male given name

Proper noun

Walter m or f (proper noun, surname, masculine genitive Walters or (with an article) Walter, feminine genitive Walter, plural Walters or Walter)

  1. a common surname originating as a patronymic
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Portuguese

Spanish

Swedish

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