ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1736 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1736 ************************************ 13 May 1999 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether or are appropriate names for a man of Viking culture between 750 and 1000. This letter is a brief answer to your question. The first choice is definitely the better one, though we recommend spelling it <{TH}orgri/mr {TH}orgri/ms son>. {TH} represents the letter thorn, written like a lower case 'p' overlapped with a lower case 'b', so that they share the loop and have one long vertical. It is pronounced like the in . The slash represents an accent on the preceding letter. <{TH}orgri/mr> was common in Norway and Iceland throughout the Middle Ages [1]. is a reasonable alternate spelling, but is not: The double 'm' indicates a short 'i', while the accent in the standard spelling indicates a long 'i'. The name is pronounced \THOR-greem(r)\. The final 'r' is almost silent, pronounced only as an unvoiced roll and not as a separate syllable. is a Scandinavian version of the Latin . It was not used in Scandinavia until a couple centuries after your period [2]. 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 <{TH}orgri/mr {TH}orgri/ms son> would actually have been written with the runes corresponding to the spellings <{th}urkrimR {th}urkrims sun>. Here {th} stands for the third rune, the thorn. stands for the 5th rune, while stands for the 16th. 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 <{TH}orgri/mr {TH}orgri/ms son> 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 , a standard Anglicization of your name. We hope this brief letter has been useful. Please write us again if you have any questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Hartmann Rogge, Talan Gwynek, and Lindorm Eriksson. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 13 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] appears in Sweden in the late 12th century, but it was probably only used by clerics at that point. It did not become a common name until the 14th century. _Sveriges Medeltida Personnamn_ (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1974), h.1.