Baldwin

Racial Origin – English
Source – A given name

If you’re given to poetic flights of fancy you may find much symbolism in the fact that it is the family name of Baldwin which the locomotive has made famous from one end of the world to the other, provided, of course, you know what the name of Baldwin means.

It means “swift conqueror.”

It was, of course, in the first place, a given name. It was of Teutonic origin, and was brought into England by the Norman conquerors, who were Teutonic in blood and who, for the most part, retained their Teutonic nomenclature even after they had adopted their own language, the Celtic-influenced Latin spoken by the natives of Northern France in the days when they first settled in Normandy; which was, roughly, the same period in which the Saxons of England at the time when the Normans arrived there.

“Bald-win,” is a simple combination of ancient Teutonic words which are to be traced in so many of our given names today. “Bald” meant “swift” or “speedy” and “win” meant conqueror.  Our own modern word “winner” and the verb “to win” come from the same root.