ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1589 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1589 ************************************ From: "Brian M. Scott" 18 Mar 1999 Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel! You explained that after having being told that the name was unlikely to be registerable in the SCA, you submitted the name , which was then registered as . Having since discovered that has been registered twice, you asked whether we had any information that would justify as a 9th century feminine Old Norse name. There is no doubt that is a genuine Old Norse feminine name, though it has been slightly Anglicized. The standardized Old Norse form is , and the name occurs on a Swedish runestone dated to the middle of the 11th century. [1, 2] (The slashes stand for acute accents over the preceding vowels, and {dh} represents the letter edh, the 'crossed-d'.) The name is also attested in Viking age runestone inscriptions, at least one of which is contemporary with the inscription. [1] is a fine Viking age feminine name; and although the attestations are from the 11th century, there seems to be no reason that it could not have been used two centuries earlier. In passing we note that is also a fine Viking age feminine name: also occurs on Viking age runestones. [1] You can write this name in several ways. The genuine Norse representation for your period is in runes. You can find five versions of the futhark, or runic alphabet, at the following site: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/1568/futhark.html Either version of the younger futhark (with sixteen runes each) would be appropriate. You'll notice, however, that there are no runes corresponding to some of the letters in the name, like the and the {dh}. Just as our letter represents different sounds in the words and , the Norse used one rune to represent more than one sound. The name would actually have been written with the runes corresponding to the spellings or . (Here {th} stands for the third rune, the thorn.) Note that this spelling is valid only when you write the name in runes; it should not be used with Latin letters. You may want to write the name as if you have to explain it to someone who doesn't read runes, since this is the standard scholarly form. When special characters are inconvenient you might write or , both of which are quite standard Anglicizations of the name. Lindorm Eriksson, Hartmann Rogge, Arval Benicoeur, Juliana de Luna, and Alan Fairfax provided research or commentary for this letter. We hope that it has been useful and that you'll not hesitate to write us again if you've any further questions. For the Academy, Talan Gwynek 18 March 1999 ===== References: [1] Uppsala University Department for Scandinavian Languages. Rundata, software pre-release version 8.84 (test) (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1990); Vs 24; Sm 148 #, Gs 13: So: 352, M 3. Accessible at: http://www.nordiska.uu.se/samnord.html [2] Foote, P.G., and D.M. Wilson. The Viking Achievement (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1984); p. 11.