Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun A female given name borrowed from Spanish in the nineteenth century.
  • proper noun dated A male given name, an Anglicization of the Italian Carmine. (Less common than the female name).

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Spanish Carmen, cognate with English Carmel. Made famous outside Spain by the opera Carmen (1875) by Georges Bizet.

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Examples

  • Now, everybody on the planet is doing it, including Planet Cake, from Australia, which makes what it calls the Carmen Electra Couture Cake.

    Let Me Eat Cake Leslie F. Miller 2009

  • Have you noticed that the name Carmen is usual reserved for Italian guys?

    Archive 2007-02-01 2007

  • Now, everybody on the planet is doing it, including Planet Cake, from Australia, which makes what it calls the Carmen Electra Couture Cake.

    Let Me Eat Cake Leslie F. Miller 2009

  • It was just a name Carmen's younger "God sister" came up with.

    The Seattle Times 2012

  • Carmen is working upon a Kuali project, which will be a brand new system for a University, partnering with school similar to Berkley, MIT to emanate open source program for all universities.

    Archive 2009-12-01 admin 2009

  • Beyer, please contact me or let him know, daughter: Carmen, is looking for him in New Braunfels, Tx. (830) 632-5387 Hope to hear from you soon dad.

    Heroes or Villains? 2010

  • Del Carmen is the best hospital I have ever seen euither in Mexico, the U.S. or Europe.

    Access to medical specialists at Lakeside 2009

  • Del Carmen is the best hospital I have ever seen euither in Mexico, the U.S. or Europe.

    Access to medical specialists at Lakeside 2009

  • Del Carmen is the best hospital I have ever seen euither in Mexico, the U.S. or Europe.

    Access to medical specialists at Lakeside 2009

  • Carmen is working upon a Kuali project, which will be a brand new system for a University, partnering with school similar to Berkley, MIT to emanate open source program for all universities.

    student development student staff meeting june 23rd 2009 admin 2009

Comments

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  • "One of the earliest works to specifically link bright clothing and race was Prosper Merimee's 1845 novella Carmen, which later became the basis for Georges Bizet's opera. Carmen's very name is nearly synonymous with the French word for the color that cochineal produces (carmine), and from the start it is clear that she is a Gypsy--which to most Europeans of the time meant that she belonged to a separate, darker, and lesser race. ('Their complexion is very swarthy,' Merimee explained in an afterword to the book. 'Hence the name of cale (blacks) which they so often call themselves. ... One can only compare their expression to that of a wild animal.') Wild, clever, and passionate, Carmen wears red--in scandalous fashion. ... Her mode of dress shocks Don Jose ... The short red skirt also made a tremendous impression on Merimee's readers, including Bizet, who insisted that the Carmen in his opera be clothed exactly as Merimee had described."

    Amy Butler Greenfield, A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 251.

    See also comments on colorless, snazzycolored, and mulatress.

    October 6, 2017