Amias

Meaning of Amias

Amias—pronounced uh-MY-uhs (/əˈmaɪəs/)—derives from Late Latin amatus, “beloved,” a participial form of amare, “to love,” and travelled into medieval England through Old French, where the variant spelling Amyas was common in ecclesiastical registers and civic rolls. The appellation carries faint echoes of Continental hagiography, yet in the Anglo-American literary imagination it is more readily associated with Amyas Leigh, the steadfast protagonist of Charles Kingsley’s 1855 historical novel Westward Ho!, and with several Tudor- and Stuart-era English gentlemen remembered in naval and parliamentary annals. Although long dormant in modern records, Amias has experienced a measured revival in the United States: appearing only five times in the year 2000, it rose gradually to 388 newborns in 2024, climbing from rank 890 to 573 over the same interval—a trajectory that suggests quiet but persistent appeal among parents seeking a name that is at once historically grounded, phonetically graceful, and thematically rich in the virtue of love.