ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1233 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1233 ************************************ From: "Brian M. Scott" 23 Aug 1998 Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel! You asked about the documentability of the name or for an Englishman living sometime between 600 and 1400. Although one of our members has already supplied evidence that in some form was not uncommon in several medieval cultures, I've treated the name as a whole in this letter. is from the Latin descriptive byname , originally meaning 'villager, rustic', which came to be used as a given name in France by about the year 1000. In Old French it became . The Normans then took it to England, where it became quite popular as , , and the like in the 12th and 13th centuries. [1, 2] In the documents of that time, which were usually in Latin, it was common to use standardized Latin forms of given names; bynames, however, were often left in the vernacular and are therefore a more reliable souce of information on the forms actually in use. The correct, fully Latinized byname meaning 'son of Paganus', for instance, is , so when we find it written in Domesday Book in 1086, we can reasonably conclude that was then a current form. The byname in 1275 may actually refer to someone who lived c.1200, but it again suggests that a form with may have survived in the vernacular side-by-side with the much more common and . [2] In short, is probably a reasonable 12th century English given name, and or certainly is. There is no problem at all with the byname , for which we have examples in just this form from Domesday Book (1066), 1170, and 1183. [3] It has at least two possible sources. One is the Scandinavian given name , which seems to have been fairly common in the Danelaw. [4, 5] In much of England a 12th century man named would very likely have been the son of a man named . However, the Domesday Book citation already mentioned is for a man whose name is is variously given as , , or . is an earlier form of French 'savage, wild', so or must in this case be a descriptive byname from Old English 'fierce, grim'. To sum up, would be an outstandingly authentic 12th century English name, and is probably also authentic. The byname can be interpreted either as the name of Payn's (or Pagan's) father or as a descriptive epithet meaning 'fierce, grim'. Since most documents of that period were written in Latin, you might also want to have on hand a Latin version of the name. If is an epithet, the likeliest Latin form is simply . This is also possible if it is a patronymic (father's name), but 'Payn son of Grim' is more likely. I hope that this answers your questions; if not, please don't hesitate to write us again. Teceangl Bach and Arval Benicoeur also contributed to this letter. For the Academy, Talan Gwynek ===== References and Notes: [1] Morlet, Marie-The/re\se. Les Noms de Personne sur le Territoire de l'Ancienne Gaule du VIe au XIIe Sie\cle, Vol. II (Paris: E/ditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1972). [The slashes represent accents over the preceding vowels. [2] Reaney, P.H., & R.M. Wilson. A Dictionary of English Surnames. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. S.n. Pain. [3] Ibid. s.n. Grime. [4] The Danelaw is that part of England north and east of a line running roughly from London to Chester. The Treaty of Wedmore (878) between Alfred the Great and Guthrum recognized Danish settlement of this area and specified that Scandinavian law was to apply in it. You can find a map and further information at http://viking.no/e/england/danelaw/ekart-danelaw.htm [5] Fellows Jensen, Gillian. Scandinavian Personal Names in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire (Copenhagen: 1968). S.n. Gri/mr.