ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1310 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1310 ************************************ From: "Brian M. Scott" 30 Oct 1998 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for our help in finding references for the name , and for the byname in Norse or Danish. Here is what we found about both names. Before I start, I'd like to clarify the service that the Academy offers. We try to help Societyfolk in choosing and using names that fit the historical cultures they are trying to re-create. Our research can sometimes be used to support submissions to the College of Arms, but that it not our goal and our results are often incompatible with the College's needs. If your main goal is to register a particular name, then we may not be able to help you. You found in the 'Beowulf' saga, which is a classic of Anglo-Saxon literature. It is not, however, a very good name source. Although its language is 10th c. Old English, its setting is 6th c. Danish, and some of the persons mentioned in it are Frisian. [1] The names in it have in general been adapted to Old English. In some cases this produces a fine Old English name; is an example. In others it produces names that could have been Old English but apparently weren't; an example is , which is not recorded as the name of any Anglo-Saxon person. Thus, without other evidence one can never be sure that a name from 'Beowulf' was an actual Old English name. We can generally be pretty sure that it wasn't an Old Norse name because of the way the names have been adapted to Old English forms. As I mentioned earlier, is a genuine Old English name, recorded about the year 800 in the form . [2] But in Domesday Book, which was written in the later 11th century, it appears as and . [3] (Since Domesday Book is written in Latin, Latin grammatical endings are often added to these basic forms, but they needn't concern us at the moment.) Notice that the has disappeared. We don't find it in any later citations either, so we assume that by the later 11th century the name had come to be pronounced \WOOL-g@r\, where \@\ is the sound of the in or and \WOOL\ is like the word . This is also the pronunciation represented by the latest examples of the name that we could find, and , both from 1258. [4] (It seems that the name died out by about the end of the 13th century.) At any rate the specific Old English form seems to appropriate only up to the middle of the 11th century; after that a Middle English form like would be appropriate as long as the name survived. , which is the Middle English ancestor of the modern word , comes from Old English ; we've found it as as early as 1131. However, the basic meaning of was 'beast; quadruped', not 'deer', and in the early Middle English period this was also the primary meaning of . The modern meaning gradually displaced the more general one, but we think that when any form of was still in use, still had 'beast' as its primary sense. It would therefore not be a good choice of word to refer to deer in the modern sense. The Old English words 'roe-deer', 'buck', and (later ) 'hart' would be much better choices for the Old English period; for the early Middle English period their descendants (or ), , and would be good. [5] The main problem with , however, is that Old English 'slayer' does not seem to have been used in bynames (nicknames). The bynames and , for instance, mean 'chicken leg' and 'bird leg' respectively. [6] (The here is related to the modern word .) If you want an authentic byname for a deer-hunter, a different word is needed. One very straightforward possibility for an Old English (pre-Conquest) byname is 'the hunter', pronounced roughly \seh HOONT-@\. This doesn't specify that you hunt deer, but of course they would be among the normal prey of a huntsman. However, we have a late Old English name 1053 'stab hare' to show that more specific bynames were possible by then. [7] On the basis of this pattern we think that the bynames 'stab hart' and 'stab buck' would not be out of place in the last few decades before the Conquest. They are pronounced \STICK-@-hairt\ and \STICK-@-book\ (with \book\ just as in the word ). Any of these three bynames would be suitable with the name in that form. The possibilities increase if you set your persona in the 12th or early 13th century, though you'd have to use a Middle English form of the given name. Of those with documentary support, is closest to the Old English . [4] Some of the possibilities are: c.1095, 1230 'stab (the) deer'; 1261-62 'chase roe'; 1208 and 1219, 1232 'pierce hart'; 1203 'the hunter'; 1195 'the huntsman'; and others not attested but easily justifiable. [8] The only culture in which we've found bynames containing an element something like and meaning 'killer' is Old Norse. A Norseman who is said to have died in 1024 was given the nickname 'seal-slayer'. However, he got this name for slaying a man called 'Thorir Seal' or 'Seal-Thorir', not for killing seals. (The slash stands for an acute accent over the preceding letter.) Similarly, the killer of a man whose nickname was 'hart' might have become known as 'hart-slayer', pronounced roughly \HYART-ar BAH-nee\. [9] (Here stands for an Old Norse letter that looks like an with a reversed comma dangling from its lower edge.) We have no evidence to suggest that this nickname would have been understood as referring to a killer of actual deer, however. If you chose to use this byname, you'd need a Scandinavian form of . By good fortune there was one; its standard Old Norse form is , pronounced \OOLF-gair\. (This time the \OO\ rhymes with .) The name seems to have been very rare, since we have only a handful of examples from all of Scandinavia. [10, 11, 12] Nevertheless, would appear to be a possible Norse name from the 10th or 11th century. However, in Norse culture men were usually known as their father's sons. If your father's name were , for instance, you would be known as . (The byname is pronounced \THOR-gairs sohn\, where the \TH\ is as in .) And if you then came to be known by the nickname , your name might be written down as . If you want to follow this path in constructing your name, an accessible source of Old Norse names for your father is 'Viking Names found in the Landna/mabo/k' [13], found at: http://www.wctc.net/~randomsf/landnamabok.htm We hope that this letter has been useful. Please write to us again if any part of the letter has been unclear, if you have other questions, or if you would like assistance in forming the rest of either an Old Norse or Old English name. Arval Benicoeur, Elisabeth de Rossignol, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Walraven van Nijmegen, and Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn also contributed to this letter. For the Academy, Giles Leabrook and Talan Gwynek ____________________________________________________ References: [1] Harvey, Paul, comp. & ed. The Oxford Companion to English Literature (Oxford: At the University Press, 1944); s.n. 'Beowulf'. [2] Boehler, Maria. Die altenglischen Frauenamen (Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Krauss Reprint, 1967 [1930]); p. 132. [3] von Feilitzen, Olof. The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book (Uppsala: 1937); s.n. Wulfgar. [4] Selte/n, Bo. The Anglo-Saxon Heritage in Middle English Personal Names. Vol. II (Lund, Sweden: Royal Society of Letters at Lund, 1979); s.n. . [5] The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973); s.vv. deer, roe, hart, buck [6] Jo"nsjo", Jan. Studies on Middle English Nicknames. Vol. I: Compounds. Lund Studies in English 55 (Lund: CWK Gleerup, c.1979); s.nn. Pultbayn, Bridbayn. [Here stands for o-umlaut.] [7] Tengvik, Go"sta. Old English Bynames (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktryckeri-A.-B., 1938); p. 387. [8] Reaney, P. H., & R. M. Wilson. A Dictionary of English Surnames (London: Routledge, 1991; Oxford University Press, 1995); s.nn. Prickard, Hunt, Stickbuck, Catch, Catcher, Catchlove, Catchpenny, Catchpole, Chase, and Chaser. [9] Lind, E.H. Norsk-Isla"ndska Personbinamn fra*n Medeltiden (Uppsala: 1920-1921); s.nn. Sels bani, hio,rtr. [Here stands for a-umlaut, and is a-ring, an with a small circle directly above it.] [10] Lind, E.H. Norsk-Isla"ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fra*n Medeltiden (Uppsala & Leipzig: 1905-1915, sup. Oslo, Uppsala, and Kobenhavn: 1931); s.n. U/lfgeirr. [11] Fellows Jensen, Gillian. Scandinavian Personal Names in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire (Copenhagen: 1968); s.n. Ulfgeirr. [12] Knudsen, Gunnar, Marius Kristiansen, & Rikard Hornby. Danmarks Gamle Personnavne. Vol. I: Fornavne (Copenhagen: 1936-48); s.n. Ulfger. [13] Sara L. Friedemann (aka Aryanhwy Prytydes merch Catmael Caermyrdin), 'Viking Names found in the Landna/mabo/k' (WWW: Privately published, 1998).