ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1493 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1493 ************************************ From: "Brian M. Scott" 21 May 1999 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for our opinion of as an Old Norse woman's name. Here is what we found. Old Norse refers to a group of closely related languages spoken in much of Scandinavia during the early Middle Ages. We could not find as an Old Norse given name. is a form of the Old Testament name , and Old Testament names were generally rare in medieval Christian Europe and particularly rare in Old Norse. We found a couple of similar sounding names in Scandinavia. is an Old Norse name from Iceland.[1] is a later name, recorded in 14th century Denmark.[2] A woman in Old Norse society was generally identified as her father's daughter by adding a patronymic byname to her given name. If her father was named , she'd have been known as . Less commonly, a woman was identified by some other type of byname, which might identify a physical characteristic, a personality trait, or the place where she lived. A woman might occasionally be known as her husband's wife, but you shouldn't think of this as a married name in the modern sense. It's more accurate to call it an alternate description. the wife of (the Old Norse form of ) could have been known as , pronounced \LEE-n@ OOLFS KOH-n@\.[3] However, in other contexts she would have been identified by a patronymic, e.g. . (The slash stands for an acute accent over the preceding vowel.) Old Norse names were written in runes during the Viking era, not in Roman letters. If you would like to know how to write one of these names in runes, please write us again. A woman living in late 14th century Denmark might have used her husband's name in a possessive form as a byname. Thus a woman named whose husband was named might have been called , literally meaning 'Ulf's Liva', understood to mean 'Liva, Ulf's wife'.[4] This particular spelling is actually a bit unlikely, because at this time the husband's name was much more often spelled or ; it's much more likely that they name would have been written or . With any of those spellings, the name is pronounced \LEE-v@ OOLFS\. In summary, would be a plausible Old Norse name in the early Middle Ages in Norway or Iceland. would be a plausible 15th century Danish name. 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 Talan Gwynek, Arval Benicoeur, Lindorm Eriksson, Hartmann Rogge, and Aryanhwy merch Catmael. For the Academy, Juliana de Luna 21 May 1999 --------------------------------------------------- References: [1] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla"ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala & Leipzig: 1905-1915, sup. Oslo, Uppsala and Kobenhavn: 1931). [2] Knudsen, Gunnar, Marius Kristiansen, & Rikard Hornby, _Danmarks Gamle Personnavne_, Volume I: Fornavne (Copenhagen: 1936-48). [3] Uppsala University Department for Scandinavian Languages, _Rundata_, software pre-release version 8.84 (test) (Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala universitet, 1990). Inscription DR 97 has <{TH}orve/ Ve/gauts kona>: 'Thorve/ Ve/gautr's wife, had this stone raised in memory of...' [4] Mode/er, Ivar, _Svenska Personnamn: Handbok fo"r universitetsbruk och sja"lvstudier av Ivar Mode/er utgiven av Roger Sundqvist och Carl-Erik Thors med en bibliografi av Roland Otterbjo"rk som kompletterats och omarbetats av Sigurd Fries_, 3rd ed., Anthroponymica Suecana 5 (Lund: Studentlitteratur 1989, ISBN 91-44-29033-0).