ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1765
http://www.s-gabriel.org/1765
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From: "Brian M. Scott" 
13 Jul 1999

Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel!

You said that you'd been using the name <Tarrach Alfson> for many
years and asked whether it or something similar could be documented
as a masculine name for an Anglo-Saxon in the period 500-800.

We can find no evidence that <Tarrach> or anything very similar to it
was used as an Old English name.  In fact, a stronger statement is
possible: the formation of Old English names is quite well
understood, and it seems unlikely that anything very similar to
<Tarrach> was used without making it into the written record.  The
least dissimilar Old English name element that we can find is
<Torht->, as in the name <Torhthelm> 825.  This element was fairly
common in Old English names, but we can find no evidence that it was
ever used by itself. [1]  Other names containing it and known from
multiple citations from the 8th or early 9th century are <Torhtmund>,
<Torhtred>, <Torhtweald>, <Torhtwine>, and <Torhtwulf>. [2]

Many Old English names began with an element <{AE}lf->, and c.1055
this element occurs by itself as a complete name. [3, 4]  It may have
been used in this way at least by the end of your period.  If so, the
son of a man named <{AE}lf> (or named <{AE}lfwine> or the like and
called <{AE}lf> for short) could have been known as <{AE}lfes sunu>
'{AE}lf's son', pronounced roughly \AL-ves SOO-noo\. (Here \OO\ and
\oo\ stand for the sound of <oo> in <book>, not the sound of <oo> in
<moon>.)  Thus, there's a reasonable chance that a name like
<Torhthelm {AE}lfes sunu> is plausible for the end of your period.


We did find one cultural setting in which a name that sounds much
like <Tarrach Alfson> would be plausible, but it's far removed from
Anglo-Saxon England in the 6th - 8th centuries: it's the southeastern
coast of the North Sea in the 15th (and probably also 16th) century.
In this area the Dutch name <Diederik> (corresponding to modern High
German <Dietrich> and old Germanic <Theodric>) tended to lose the
second <d>, as in <Dierk> 984.  In the Frisian language it eventually
assumed such forms as <Tiarcho> 1398, <Tyarck> 14th c., and <Tyaryck>
1420, the last of which probably indicates a pronunciation something
like \TYAR-@k\. [5]  (Here \@\ stands for the vowel spelled <a> in 
<about> and <sofa>.)

It's also in this area that the name <Adolf> is found contracted to 
<Alof>, <Aleff>, and even <Alff> 1453.  This last is in fact a 
recorded spelling of the name of a Duke of Schleswig, the region just 
south of Denmark. [6]  Finally, it's in just this part of Germany that 
patronymics in <-sen> are common, probably on account of Danish 
influence. [7]  An East Frisian <Tyaryck Alffsen> would be quite 
believable in the 15th and probably 16th centuries. [8]


I hope that this letter proves useful; if you have any further 
questions, please write us again.

For the Academy,

Talan Gwynek
12 July 1999

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References and Notes:

[1] Stro"m, Hilmer.  Old English Personal Names in Bede's History: An
Etymological-Phonological Investigation.  Lund Studies in English
VIII (Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1939; Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus
Reprint, 1968); p.37.  [Here <o"> stands for o-umlaut.]  The name 
<Torhthelm> is pronounced roughly \TORKHT-helm\, where \KH\ stands 
for the soft rasping sound of <ch> in Scottish <loch> and German 
<Bach>.

[2] Searle, William George.  Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum (Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge, 1897); pp.457-8.

[3] Stro"m, op. cit., p.5.

[4] Here {AE} stands for the a-e-ligature, the letter that looks
like an <a> and an <e> squeezed together so that they share a single
upright between them.

[5] Stark, Franz.  Die Kosenamen der Germanen (Wiesbaden: Dr. Martin
Sa"ndig oHG., 1967 [1868]); p.134.

[6] Ibid., p.139.

[7] Bahlow, Hans.  Deutsches Namenlexikon (Baden-Baden: Suhrkamp
Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985); p.13.

[8] A patronymic is a second name that tells who your father was. The
construction represented by <Alffsen> far from the most common type
of Frisian patronymic, but it does occur, e.g., <Fadeke Ammessen>
1427 and <Hero Tansen> 1527 (Stark, op. cit., p.171).