ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1140 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1140 ************************************ 5 Aug 1998 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked about two names: , which you believe was taken from Welsh versions of the Arthur legends, and , which you believe is a Welsh or Irish name from the Cuchulainn tales. You also asked for a runic spelling for your name . Here is what we have found. Before we get started, we'd like to explain how the Academy prefers to work. We find that we have the most success when we communicate directly with a person trying to choose a name or arms, and when the question is placed in the context of the culture and period that interests him. Whenever the conversation is filtered through the third party, some mis-understanding is inevitable. Only the client himself knows what it most important to him in his name, his culture and period. We're happy to answer your questions about names and arms, and if some of your clients don't have e-mail themselves, then please don't hesitate to pass on their questions; but whenever possible, please put them directly in contact with us. is not a human name. It is simply a word meaning "boar" [2]. There is a wild boar in "Culhwch and Olwen", one of the tales of the Mabinogion, who is called . There are also two uses of in a long list of people associated with Arthur's court, but these examples cannot be taken as evidence that was considered a human name: There are many names on this list which are clearly allegorical or mythological, so it cannot be considered a reliable guide to human naming practices [3]. is the name of a supernatural character in a Welsh tradition loosely associated with the Arthurian cycle [4]. is a modern variant spelling that could not have existed in period Welsh, since it would have been pronounced quite differently. In many years of research, no one in the Society has found any evidence that any real person used the name or any of its variants. The name is popular in the Society because of its use in modern fantasy fiction and neo-paganism, and because it was so widely used, the SCA College of Arms decided that it would register it; but it is not a period name [1]. Medieval Welsh literature is a very poor source for Society names. We cannot stress this point too strongly! Most of the characters in the Mabinogion and other tales had names that were not used by real people in period. The vast majority are not registerable. Therefore, someone browsing the Mabinogion for a name is much more likely than not to hit on an unregisterable name never used by a real person in period. If your clients are interested in Welsh names, please feel free to give them copies of the articles on Welsh names that you will find on the web at: http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/celtic.html These articles were written specifically to help people choosing their Society names. If your persona was from the Viking Age, your name would probably have been written in runes. The runes is a writing system basically like the latin letters. Each sound in a word is written with one rune. The runic alphabet (or "futhark") had 16 runes, but the language had more sounds than that, so the same rune is often used to represent more than one sound. For example, one rune, conventionally called the "t-rune", is used both for the \t\ and \d\ sounds. (We still recommend that you use the Latin letter rather than when writing your name with latin letters). You can find illustrations of various forms of the futhark on the web: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/1568/futhark.html http://gonzo.hd.uib.no/Runefonter/Gullskoen-e.html The version you want is the "Viking age futhark", not the "medieval futhark" or the "germanic futhark". The first of the pages listed above has three versions of the Viking age futhark: the "normal" (or "Danish") futhark, the "short twig" (or "Swedish-Norwegian") futhark and the "stemless" (or Halsinge) futhark. You can use any of these variants. (The very simple stemless runes were probably the everyday writing system and the other two more formal or ornamental forms). For reference in the rest of this article, please use this version: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/1568/futark_n.gif You'll see that each rune is labelled with a letter; that's its name. Let's start easy! The \h\, \u\, \k\, \l\, \f\, \s\, and \n\ sounds in your name are written with the h-, u-, k-, l-, f-, s-, and n-runes. The \s\ sound was written with the s-rune, but runes were never doubled in runic writing, so the in the latin spelling of your name is written with only one s-rune. The \v\, \e\ and \d\ sounds were most often written with the u-, i-, and t-runes, respectively. During the later Viking Age, after the year 1000 or so, a "dot" was sometimes made in the "stem" of the u- and i-runes to indicate that they represented the \v\ and \e\ sounds. The Scandinavian languages of the Viking age had two distinct sounds, each with its own rune, that we'd refer to as \r\ sounds today. Your name has the sound that was written with the 16th rune often referred to as the R-rune (with a capital ) as opposed to the 5th rune, called the r-rune (with a lower case ). There were also two runes for \a\ sounds. For the in , you want the 10th rune, the a-rune. The in would almost always have been written with the u-rune. Unlike modern writings, Viking age runes didn't put a space between words. Instead they often used a small cross (like the letter ) or two dots (like a colon <:>). These signs were used somewhat unsystematically. They are usually between words, but sometimes two words are written entirely unseparated and sometimes the separating mark is used between two parts of the same word. You could write your name, for instance, as or . If you separate and then you can write them with two s-runes. Runes were probably most often carved in wood, and also in stone, bone, and metal, but were not written on paper or parchment. Of course, it may be hard to maintain the authenticity of this aspect of runic writing in SCA circumstances. Sometimes two runes next to each other can share a stem. This practice is called "bind runes". The and the in your name are examples. In short twig runic (very badly drawn here), with the letters drawn separately looks like this: | |\ | | \ /| | | / | | | | | | | | | As bind runes, the same two-letter combination would be: |\ | \ /| | / | | | | | | I hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Zenobia Naphtali, Tangwystyl ver'Morgant Glasvryn, and Rune-Lindorm Eriksson. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 5 Aug 1998 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] The Cuchullain cycle is Irish, not Welsh, and is unrelated to the Arthurian cycle. appears in Welsh literature, not Irish. Very few names were shared between Irish and Welsh, and because the two languages used very different spelling systems, the ones that were shared looked very different in each language. [2] _Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru_ [University of Wales Dictionary] (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, several dates). [3] _The Mabinogion_, trans. Gwyn Jones & Thomas Jones (Everyman's Library, 1974). [4] _The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales_, trans. Patrick K. Ford. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -