ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1606
http://www.s-gabriel.org/1606
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* NOTE: Later research turned up additional     *
*       information relevant to this report.    *
*       See the end of the letter for details.  *
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21 Apr 1999
From:  (Josh Mittleman)


Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel!

You asked whether <La*rs Stormefora*rsage>, meaning "Lars Stormbringer", is
an appropriate name for a man living in Denmark during the Viking period.
Here is what we have found.

We assume you used <a*> to represent a-ring, i.e. an <a> with a small
circle just above it.  This character, unique to Swedish, didn't exist
until very late in our period, long after the Viking era.  In Swedish, it
represents a different sound from the plain <a>: <a> is pronounced as in
<father>, while <a*> is pronounced like the vowel in <for>.

<Lars> is a form of the saint's name <Laurentius> (i.e.  <Laurence>)
that appeared in Denmark and Norway in the mid-15th century.  We found
no evidence that any form of this name was used in early medieval
Scandinavia.  The earliest Scandinavian forms of <Laurentius> that we
could find are <Larens> c.1300, <Lafranz> c.1300, <Lasse> 1330 [1, 2,
3].  We found <Laris> in 1319-20, <Laurs> in 1391, <Lars> in 1448 (in
a patronymic recorded as <Lars:>), <Larss> 1488, and <Llars> 1489 [3,
4].  <Lars> is a plausible name in Denmark from the 15th century
onward, but not earlier.

The spelling <La*rs> is incorrect.  It is not spelled with a-ring in modern
Swedish or Danish, and we found no period example which suggests the
pronunciation that would have been spelled that way [5].

<Stormefora*rsage>, which you intended to mean "storm bringer", is not an
appropriate nickname for your period.  It is a compound of modern Danish
words meaning "storm" and "to cause".  We are not sure how to express this
idea in Old Norse or medieval Danish.

More fundamentally, your intended meaning, "storm bringer", does not fit
any pattern of byname formation that we can deduce from names of real
people.  We may be able to support a byname meaning "storm" or "ill
weather" [6], but we don't see any way to justify "storm bringer".
Therefore, we recommend you choose another byname.  

If you'd like to consider other possibilities, you can find a discussion of
Viking names, with lists of first names and bynames, on the web:

  A Simple Guide to Creating Viking Age Norse Names
    http://www.wctc.net/~randomsf/sg-viking.htm


We 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, AElfwyn aet Gyrwum,
Caelin on Andrede, Lindorm Eriksson, and Hartmann Rogge.

For the Academy,


  Arval Benicoeur
  22 Apr 1999


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References

[1] 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).

[2] Jansson, Sven B. F., _Runinskrifter i Sverige_, 3rd ed. (Uppsala:
AWE/Gebers: 1985, 91-20-07030-6). 

[3] Knudsen Gunnar, Marius Kristiansen, & Rikard Hornby, _Danmarks Gamle
Personnavne_, Vol. I: Fornavne (Copenhagen: 1936-48).

[4] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla:ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fra*n
Medeltiden_ (Uppsala & Leipzig: 1905-1915, sup. Oslo, Uppsala and
Kobenhavn: 1931).

[5] The example <Laurs> may represent the pronunciation \LOWRSS\, with the
\OW\ as in <cow> or perhaps like the <au> in modern German.  However, it
may simply be a learned spelling, hearkening back to the Latin <Laurentius>
and not really be evidence of a variant pronunciation at all.  It could
even be an abbreviation for <Laurentius>.

[6] We found English bynames <Storm>, 1206, 1297, <Tempeste> 1168, 1209,
<Tempest>, and <Ilwedyr> "ill weather" 1316.  Reaney, P. H., & R. M.
Wilson, _A Dictionary of English Surnames_ (London: Routledge, 1991; Oxford
University Press, 1995), s.nn. Storm, Tempest, Fairweather.

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Correction, 22 Aug 2003, Arval: Re-wrote the paragraph on <Lars> to
correct misinterpretations of the data.