Random thing I found out: Despite what it looks like, Haydee is apparently Greek in origin. Χάιδω of all things? XP
You sent me down a glorious trip of knowledge.
So, Haydee is a name first used abroad by Lord Byron. It should not be confused with similar sounding names like Heidi or Aida. Its origin is contested but most sources agree it is a Greek name and I will prove soon that it should not be contested at all.
Most foreign sources speculate that it is some modification on αιδώς (aidós), the ancient Greek word for shame, and thus it means "modest" or "reverent". As usual, foreign sources get stuck in antiquity, as ever obsessed with it, being too hesitant to explore alternatives that seem more possible when examining things into their proper context.
Look now. Look what a massively interesting story you can get when you decide to stop seeking for all the answers in classicism (by "you", I mean them lol)
Lord Byron had travelled to Greece in 1809 and dwelled for two years in Greece and Albania. (Of course he also returned in 1823, during the Greek War of Independence and he died in 1824 from illness during the Siege of Missolonghi.)
During his time in Athens he became acquainted with families of French who had intermarried with Greeks. One such family was the Roque family, Phokion Roque de Carcassone, his Greek wife and their children. One of his children was Dudu Roque. Her name "Dudu" was likely a diminutive but according to the source I will list below, her real name must have been Greek and she was fluent in the Greek language, maybe not proficient in writing it though. The reason it is believed "Dudu" might be just a popular diminutive is that a cousin of hers, from the also Greek-French Makris family, was also called "Dudu". It is vaguely hinted that Byron might have had some feelings for Dudu Roque. In any case, in his personal notes he sounded irritated that an acquaintance named Andreas seemed to play around with Dudu Roque. (Fun fact: Byron also writes down her name in Greek literally like Δουδού, Thouthoú! Honestly, it sounds like a babytalk affectionate diminutive for a girl.)
Those wealthy families would often host some parties and there was probably an old folk Greek song Byron heard being played in one of those and liked it. The last interaction or correspondence Byron had in Athens was Dudu writing to him the lyrics of this song. Three days later he sailed back to England. Here's the song:
This is a transcription of Dudu's copy. We can see that she makes many spelling mistakes. Dudu's original copy of the song's lyrics is kept in the Rare Book Room of the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale.
I don't know whether foreign scholars were driven to evaluate the possibility of an origin from aidos because in this folk song the singer describes "Haidée" as "good and modest". The truth is that it is not even a very good translation, as a closer translation would be "worthy and prudent". Besides, the descriptory terms in this case are totally unrelated to the root of aidos. So I still tend to believe that those who propose the aidos / modest - reverent interpretation are simply those who try to trace everything back to classical antiquity.
It's irrelevant but I also dislike how the translation unceremoniously reads "the Gates of Death", when the original Greek folk song, mind you, a song likely dating to late 18th century or earlier, says "the Gates of Hades". Of course we know that Hades survived through Greek Orthodox Christian theology as a symbolism of death or the devil, but it's nice to point out its presence and perseverance during Ottoman occupied modern Greek folklore, whenever we get the chance.
Anyway, back to our topic, this was Byron's inspiration for a female character in one of his poems. Haydee was an important character in his poem Don Juan (1821), which Byron likely wrote as a pessimistic allegory for the Greek revolution (1821 - 1829). In Byron's story, Don Juan is stranded at a Greek island in Cyclades and is saved by a Greek pirate named Lambros. Don Juan meets and falls in love with the pirate's daughter, Haydee. She is beautiful, passionate, untamed, sensuous and she gets pregnant during their passionate affair. Their love story ends tragically when her father finds out about the illegitimate romance. He sells Don Juan as a slave to a galley ship and he imprisons Haydee. Heartbroken, she refuses to eat or drink and she dies shortly after, pregnant with Don Juan's child.
At this point, the origin of the name cannot be contested anymore, both because we know Byron had loved a Greek folk song about a Haidee a few years earlier and because we see that Byron gave some characters realistic Greek names of the time, like he did with the father, Lambros. I believe this makes it clear that the name comes from modern Greek folk name-giving rather than the ancient word for shame and modesty.
The only problem here is that in Dudu's copy, the name is written as Χαηδή, with an eta instead of an iota, but since we already established that Dudu made numerous spelling mistakes, I believe it was another amongst the several mistakes. Let alone that the presence of an eta could not explain an origin from aidos either.
Χαϊδή (Haidée) and Χάιδω (Háido) are of course variations of the same name, with the former likely being older and more sophisticated.
These names come from the medieval / modern Greek word χάδι or χάιδι (háidi) as it was in older times, which means "caress / stroke". Interestingly, the medieval χάιδι (háidi) most likely comes from the late ancient - early medieval word ηχάδιον (ihádion), which was a very soft song, a gentle lullaby full of affection. Whoever knows Greek will probably understand correctly that ηχάδιον is a sort of diminutive of the word ήχος ("ihos" or, in the typical transliteration of ancient words, "echos"), which of course means "sound".
So the soft touches and caresses at some point in the Middle Ages were heavily parallelized to sweet soft lullabies. "A touch soft like a lullaby." This turned into a name for women, progressively more and more popular, until it's fade-out by mid- 20th century, when it started being considered as too hillbilly.
The name thus means the "caressed", the "cuddly", something like that. It makes sense that Byron chose this name for his sensuous character who was crazy in love, rather than make up a name from ancient Greek that would be poorly derived from the word for shame and modesty.
Unintentionally this became a prime piece of proof for why we complain that the constant western obsession with Classical Greece and the scorn towards everything else, mutilates the Greek culture and its complexity, its history, its language and our identity. Look what a beautiful history is hidden behind a simple peasant name like Haydee and Haido...
After all that, I found the confirmation in my source's footnotes, not that I needed it, but maybe further proof for the non-Greek speaking readers.
Yet the false classicist assumption is favoured in most media.
A Greek song copied for Lord Byron, C. M. Dawson & A. E. Raubitschek, Yale University
