Crazy names, crazy people!

[David H]

I am struggling to discover the country of origin of the names of the actress Romola Garai and the singer Katie Melua. Romola grew up in the far east, though clearly not her parent's origin, and I have no idea of Melua's origin at all.

[kempie]

Katie Melua was born in Georgia (former USSR) in 1984 growing up in the capital Tbilisi and later the seaside town of Batumi, also living for a while in Moscow at age 3 or 4. The family left Georgia when Katie was 8 and moved to Belfast due to her father's profession as a heart surgeon.

[kempie]

Garai is a bit more interesting. A quick Google threw up the name as being possibly Egyptian, Hungarian, Yiddish, South East Asian, Southern African or Latin, to name a few and current owners of the name are living in Spain and Italy. Romola is the feminine of Romulus (Latin) which, all together, tends to point to Italian heritage.

[Octavius]

According to the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) she was born on 6 Aug 1982 in Southwark, Sth London to her father who was a banker and her mother a journalist.  She was bought up in Hong Kong & Singapore and the family returned to Wiltshire when she was 8.

She is of Hungarian decent and her great grandfather is Bert Garai, founder of Keystone Press Agency in London in 1924.

[David H]

Thanks guys, I like to know name and word origins in general, and those two were beyond my own ability to even hazard a guess!