- album (n.)
- 1650s (albo) "souvenir book," from Latin album, which in classical times was the name of a blank tablet on which the Pontifex Maximus registered the principal events of the year, hence "a list of names." This Latin word was revived 16c. by German scholars, whose custom was to keep an album amicorum of colleagues' signatures; its meaning then expanded to "book with blank leaves meant to collect signatures and other souvenirs." Johnson  still defined it as "a book in which foreigners have long been accustomed to insert autographs of celebrated people."
Latin album is literally "white color, whiteness;" it is a noun use of the neuter of the adjective albus "white" (see alb). The English word in reference to bound photographic collections is recorded by 1859. Meaning "long-playing gramophone record" is by 1951, because the sleeves they came in resembled large albums.