Hey gang! Hope you're all happy as pigs in chiffon! Can anyone tell me the origin of the name Arlo as aside from THE Arlo, I've not heard of anyone else with that name.

Not sure of the origins of the name but I think it means fortified hill or something like that. If I'm wrong someone will probably have the correct info. There is a dj at the classic rock station in Norfolk, VA 106.9 the Fox named Mike Arlo. I'd never heard it as a last name until him...

Well, I looked it up in my "The Best Baby Name Book, Over 13.001 Girls and Boys Names". The name Arlo was in there, it said: Spanish origin, meaning "the barberry" which, referring to my Webster's Dictionary, is some kind of bush with yellow flowers and oblong red berries.

Don't you be calling my favorite folksinger a Bush!

This is the worst news since my first wife told me what DYLAN meant

Well, at least a bush with yellow flowers and red oblonged berries. If the other Bush would put some yellow flowers in his hair and some red berries in his mouth he might get some of the arlo spirit and with the berries in his mouth speaking would be a bit more difficult..

Brigitte, nothing could possibly make speaking any more difficult for Bush than it already is! He is the first President who uses English as a second language; nobody's sure of what his first language is.

Someone defined Bush's lips as the place where words go to die!

There's a horse named Arlo, and Hippie Witch, I think she is, named her baby Arlo. That was a few years back. He's probably married by now?

May they rest in peace

The further search of the name Arlo got me 2 more versions, the one Cheryl had already found: fortified hill, Englisch origin, and the second : hill, german origin.

And Beverlys baby Arlo in England. The kids they grow up so fast...

My next door neighbors just had a child shortly after we moved in a year ago and they named him Arlo. I asked them if they were fans and to my surprise they said "no, we just like the name". I told them that I was going to be touring with Sarah Lee and Johnny (how coincidental). Sarah gave me a copy of "Moose Come Walking" to give to them. They loved it!

Thanks for the input guys. Seems the meaning of the name Arlo is pretty nature based, what with all those hills and bushes an stuff. I'll do a bit of research too and see if I can find any others.

Ok, this should be a reliable source, a quote from ADG himself. Here's the link to the whole interview.

http://newberkshire.com/arlo_guthrie/adg.php

This is just the portion of the interview relating to origin of Arlo's name:

"When my mom was growing up, there was a series of children's books, called "Arlo Books", about a little Swiss kid named 'Arlo'. They were in all the primary schools on the East coast, and she drew a picture for a class project of this kid. And my mom was one of these packrats who saved everything - every ticket stub of every place she had ever been to. She was incredibly organized.

"While she was pregnant with me, walking down the beach one day with my dad, she suddenly realized that the picture she had drawn of this kid 'Arlo', in the fifth or sixth grade, looked exactly like my father. He was wearing the same clothes, the same kind of striped shirt, walking on the same kind of beach. And so she went back and found this old picture, and sure enough, she had drawn my dad.

"So they decided that that was an auspicious sign, and that they were going to name me after the kid. But they didn't know if I would go for a name as awkward as that, so they gave me the middle name 'Davy'. So I was named after Davy Crockett. She figured he was a popular figure, sort of a rugged, mountain guy, and if I didn't like the name 'Arlo' - which, she wasn't sure what that was gonna do to me - that I could always call myself 'Davy'. So I was named 'Arlo Davy Guthrie.'