Ian

¹

[ ee-uhn, ee-ahn, ahy-uhn ]

noun

1. a male given name, Scottish form of John.

-ian

²

1. a suffix with the same meaning and properties as -an, though -ian is now the more productive of the two suffixes in recent coinages, especially when the base noun ends in a consonant: Orwellian; Washingtonian .

-ian

suffix

1. a variant of -an

   Johnsonian

   Etonian

Word History and Origins

Origin of Ian¹

Extracted from Latin loanwords in which -ānus (adjective suffix) is joined to stems ending in i; -an

Word History and Origins

Origin of Ian¹

from Latin -iānus

Example Sentences

Some of Ian Hughes’s earliest memories are of playing in the dust and digging holes while his mom and her colleagues searched for fossils in South Australia.

From Science Magazine

"Like many modern-day animal groups, ecdysozoans were prevalent in the Cambrian fossil record and we can see evidence of all three subgroups right at the beginning of this period, about 540 million years ago," said Ian Hughes, a graduate student in marine biology at Harvard University and the paper's first author.

From Science Daily

Speaking to BBC Radio Foyle’s North West Today programme on Monday, farmer Ian Buchannan said he believes changes to inheritance tax will be “the final straw that has broken the camel’s back” for many farmers.

From BBC

Ian Langley, 54, was attacked while he walked his puppy in Shiney Row, near Sunderland, on 3 October last year.

From BBC

Her long-term partner, Ian, was on his way.

From Los Angeles Times