Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 016

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 016

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/016

This is one of the Academy's earliest reports. We are not confident that these early reports are accurate. Please use it with caution.

Greetings,

We've amassed quite a lot of information. Here's what we've come up with:

First, "Bue" is a documentable name; it's in the Jormsvikinga Saga (which wasn't covered in our sources). So if you'd like to use "Bue" as a first name, you can do so safely. We also found a name "Bu'i" (this represents an accent on the "u") which is also documented.

"Bue Thorbjorn" is not a reasonable name because Old Norse doesn't use two first names; however "Bue Tho,rbjornson" would be quite reasonable. "o," is a letter which is normally represented as an o with a small curl underneath.

If you're interested in being "Thorbjorn of the Bow," we can document the forms "Thorbjo,rn Boga" or "Boga Thorbjo,rn."

We also wanted to make sure that you had an idea of the pronunciations of these names:

Bui .. will be pronounced sort of like Boo-ee (as in beet) ipa = [i]

Bue .. will be pronounced sort of like Boo-eh (as in went.) ipa = [e]

Bu'e .. will be pronounced sort of like Boo-eh (as in let.) ipa = [e:]

Regarding "Thorolfr Buestrog Birka":

"Thorolfr" is a documented Old Norse name. We don't think that "Buestrog" is historical for several reasons: first, "bow-stroke" doesn't fit with historical Norse naming patterns (there are no names such like "sword-stroke," "hammer-blow," or such). Even if it were, it doesn't appear to us that "Buestrog" would be an accurate way of describing the idea; according to our sources the Old Norse word for stroke is "strjuka" which means to "stroke" as in rub, as one would stroke a cat.

To indicate that you could use an Old Norse word such as skyti "marksman, shooter, archer", or o,rvo,nd/o,rvo,ndr "archer"

"Birka" is documented as a placename. In a personal name, it would be preceded by a preposition--either "af," which means "out of/from," or "at," which means "of."

If you would like a name which translates to "Thorolf, the bowman of Birka," you could go with "Thorolfr skyti af Birka.

In Service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of St. Gabriel


Greetings,

There's been a lot more discussion about your new name suggestion.

First, I must apologize for being unclear in the last letter. Throughout this letter, a vowel followed by a ' mark indicates an accented vowel.

Even though we sent you the pronunciation for "Búe," we don't have any evidence that it's a medieval given name. We can find Bue (1), Bui (2), and Búi (3), but haven't found "Búe." Because of variances in spelling, it's not unlikely that "Bue" was also used at some point, but we don't have a record of it. It's also important to note that according to our sources, none of these names means "bow." The word for Bow we have found is "Boga," with spelling variants including Boga, Boge, Boghe, Bugis, Bugha, and Bwga (4,5). We haven't found any examples of its being used as a given name.

We have also discovered that there are numerous other ways of constructing a name from a place-name. You could use any of the following forms to indicate "from Birka" (6):

to indicate that you come from the area near the town of Birka, you could use

We also found documentation for the surname "Bugha skot," meaning "bowshot," (7) if you're interested in going back to that older idea. You could use any of the spelling variants for "boga" that we listed above.

Solveig Throndarsdottir, Arval D'Espas Nord, Tangwstyl ferch Morgant Glasvryn, Hartmann Rogge, Lindorm Eriksson, Ivanor of Sighty Crag, and Evan da Collaureo have all assisted in researching this name.

In Service, Alan Fairfax Academy of St. Gabriel