A male name. this is undoubtedly a French double diminutive in -el-ot of the name Lance from the common Old German Lanzo from the root landa ‘land’. Another diminutive of Lance was Lancelin. Lance, Lancelot, and Lancelin are found as christian names in England from the 13th C. The continued survival of Lancelot was due to the fame of the hero of romance, a character who does not appear in Welsh or other early sources but was apparently invented by Chrestien de Troyes. The names were often confused with Ancell and its diminutive Ancelot and Ancelin. Lancelot seems to have been most popular in the North of England.

Lance Assize Rolls 1218, Hundred Rolls 1273. Lancelyn Hundred Rolls 1273. Lancelot Privy Seal War rant 1380, Yorks Rec 1604. Launceletus Feudal Aids 1428. Launselot Lincs 1526. Lanslet St Anne’s Blackfriars 1641.

Occ. LANCILOT; anciently LAUNCELOT, with Launce as a diminutive. From Latin ancillus postulated from ancilla, ‘a servant-maid,’ via French ancel or ancelot, Lancelot represents l’ancelot, ‘the man or (more properly) boy servant’, the article and the noun soon becoming fused (cf. newt, from old ‘an ewt’); the Welsh supposed the name to be derived from lance. Ever since the medieval Arthurian cycle, coming to finest flower in Malory’s Morte d’ Arthur, Lancelot has been ‘regarded as the type of penitence for misdirected love and chivalrous prowess, and in consequence Lancelot, and its contraction Lance, have never been entirely out of use in England, though not universal’ (Yonge).

This name is sometimes rendered ‘servant;’ if so, the bearer was so called from carrying a lance or pike. The name seems to be a diminutive formed from the Latin lancea, a lance, javelin, a word which Varro thinks of Spanish origin.

Sclavonian (masculine) - Glory of power.

A Latin name, meaning: He who serves. (Italian) Little lance.