large province of eastern Canada, probably from Portuguese Lavrador, which is of uncertain origin. Among the theories advanced, W.F. Ganong identifies as "The generally accepted and altogether probable one" that "it was originally 'Terra Laboratoris,' land of the laborer because Cortereal brought fifty men thence to Europe, who were described as well fitted for slaves. This is sustained by all the evidence of old maps." Gasper Cortereal was a Portuguese navigator who explored the coast for the Portuguese crown in 1500 and brought home captives. He returned for more in 1501, but was never heard from again. But a Portuguese map of 1520 has the name Lavrador applied to Greenland, while the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland is called Bacalhaos, which is "codfish" in Basque.

[Labrador] is not used in Cartier's narratives, though it appears in the title of the 1598 edition of his first narrative. It is supposed to have been added by the translator. There are, at least, six theories as to the origin of this word. [W.F. Ganong, "The Cartography of the Gulf of St. Lawrence," 1887] 

One of them [Room] is that the sense of the name is "landholder" and is a reference to 15c. Portuguese explorer João Fernandes, called Llavrador, who was a landholder in the Azores and had sailed as far as Iceland and Greenland. John Cabot met Fernandes when he was in Spain and Portugal in the spring of 1498, recruiting sailors for an Atlantic voyage, and he advised Cabot that this was a good way to get to Asia. The breed of retriever dog so called from 1815. Related: Labradorian.

"pertaining to Sparta," 1709, from Latin Lacedaemonius, from Greek Lakedaimonios, from Lakedaimon, an ancient Greek name for Sparta as the capital of Lakonia (see laconic). From 1713 as a noun.

Paris-based high-end apparel company, founded 1933, named for company co-founder René Lacoste (1904-1996).

king of Ithaca, father of Odysseus, his name is Greek, literally "gatherer of the people," or "urging the men," from laos "people" (see lay (adj.)) + eirein "to fasten together" (see series (n.)) or eirein "to speak, say" (see verb).

in reference to a method of childbirth technique, 1957, named for French obstetrician Dr. Fernand Lamaze (1891-1957), who promoted his methods of "psycho-prophylaxis," a form of childbirth preparation he had studied in the Soviet Union, in the West in the early 1950s.

masc. proper name, from French, from German Lambert, from Old High German Lambreht, from lant "land" (see land (n.)) + beraht "bright" (from PIE root *bhereg- "to shine; bright, white."). Old English cognate was Landbeorht. The English popularity of the name 12c. and after probably is due to immigration from Flanders, where St. Lambert of Maestricht was highly venerated. Attested as a surname from mid-12c.

used metonymically for "Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury," 1859, from the archbishop's palace in Lambeth, a South London borough. The place name is Old English lambehyðe, "place where lambs are embarked or landed." In church history, the Lambeth Articles were doctrinal statements written in 1595 by Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift. The Lambeth Walk was a Cockney song and dance, popularized in Britain 1937 in the revue "Me and my Gal," named for a street in the borough.

1086, Loncastre, literally "Roman Fort on the River Lune," a Celtic river name probably meaning "healthy, pure." In English history, the Lancastrians or House of Lancaster in the War of the Roses were the branch of the Plantagenets descended from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Lancastrian (1650s) is the usual adjective with places of that name; Lancasterian (1807) was used of the teaching methods popularized early 19c. by educator Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838).

masc. proper name, Old French, a double-diminutive of Frankish Lanzo, itself a shortened pet-name (hypocoristic) of one of the many Germanic names in Land- (compare Old English Landbeorht "land-bright;" see Lambert).

language of the south of France in the Middle Ages, the language of the troubadours (Provençal is one of its principal branches), 1660s, from French langue d'oc "speech of the south of France," literally "the language of 'yes,' " from oc, the word used south of the Loire for "yes," which is from Latin hoc "this," which in Vulgar Latin came to mean "yes" (see oui). The name also was given to one of the provinces where it was spoken. Opposed to langue d'oïl, from the way of saying "yes" in the north of France, from Old French oïl (Modern French oui). The langue d'oïl developed into standard Modern French. Related: Languedocian.

Langue d'oc was truer to Latin than Old French or Castilian Spanish were, and had fewer Germanic words. Dante considered it a separate language, and it and the northern French were not always mutually intelligible. Jonathan Sumption's "The Albigensian Crusade" [Faber and Faber, 1978] refers to a court official at Albi "who in 1228 referred to a seal as bearing an inscription in 'French or some other foreign language.'" The French authorities began to repress langue d'oc in 16c.