Walter

name

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.

1. A male given name from the Germanic languages.

   “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.”

   “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.”

2. A surname.

   “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.