ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1589
http://www.s-gabriel.org/1589
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From: "Brian M. Scott" 
18 Mar 1999

Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel!

You explained that after having being told that the name <Odindisa> 
was unlikely to be registerable in the SCA, you submitted the name 
<Disa Egilsdottir>, which was then registered as <Dis Egilsdottir>.  
Having since discovered that <Odindisa> has been registered twice, 
you asked whether we had any information that would justify <Odindisa 
Egilsdottir> as a 9th century feminine Old Norse name.

There is no doubt that <Odindisa> is a genuine Old Norse feminine
name, though it has been slightly Anglicized.  The standardized Old
Norse form is <O/{dh}indi/sa>, 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 <Egil> is also attested in Viking age runestone
inscriptions, at least one of which is contemporary with the
<O/{dh}indi/sa> inscription. [1]  <O/{dh}indi/sa Egilsdo/ttir> 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 <Di/sa Egilsdo/ttir> is also a fine Viking
age feminine name: <Di/sa> 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 <o> and the {dh}.  Just as our
letter <s> represents different sounds in the words <base> and
<bays>, the Norse used one rune to represent more than one sound.
The name <O/{dh}indi/sa Egilsdo/ttir> would actually have been
written with the runes corresponding to the spellings <o{th}intisa
ikils tutir> or <o{th}intisa ikilstutir>.  (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 <O/{dh}indi/sa Egils do/ttir> 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 <Othindisa Egilsdottir> or <Odindisa
Egilsdottir>, 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

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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.