ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1816 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1816 ************************************ From: "Braddon Giles" 12 Nov 1999 Greetings from the Academy of St Gabriel! You wrote to us asking whether the name would be historically accurate for a Norse speaking woman from the year 900 on. This is what we found. was a very rare name, though we know there was at least one example from the early history of Iceland. Your patronymic - the name that identifies your father as a man named - needs a small grammatical correction. Its possessive form is , with no , so the name meaning 'Vermund's daughter' is . (The slash stands for an acute accent over the previous letter; this accent wasn't always written.) [1] We have found both the bynames being used in the early part of your period, meaning "serpent-tongue" and meaning "mouse". At this time bynames were used in two ways: as independent words placed after the given name, and prefixed to the given name to form a compound. 'mouse' was used as a prefixed byname in the form , as in the historical example from the 10th century. [2,3] A few Scandinavians seem to have been known by different bynames at different times, but so far as we can discover, multiple non-patronymic bynames were not used simultaneously; therefore we do not recommend that you use both and at once. Either or would be a very good name for a Norse woman from the Viking era, which is approximately 800-1200. We hope this letter has been useful. Please write to 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, Hartmann Rogge, Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn, Arval d'Espas Nord and Lindorm Eriksson. For the Academy, Giles Leabrook. 12/ Nov /99 ________________________________________ Bibliography and Notes. [1] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla"ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala & Leipzig: 1905-1915, sup. Oslo, Uppsala and Kobenhavn: 1931); s.nn. Svana, Vermundr. [The stands for an a-umlaut, and the stands for an with a small circle above it.] [2] This is the standardized, scholarly form of the name, which is actually spelled a little differently in the manuscript. The symbols {o,} and {TH} stand for letters not used in English; the first is an with a reversed comma dangling from its lower edge, and the second is the letter thorn, which looks like a superimposed on a

so as to share the same loop. [3] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla:ndska Personbinamn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala: 1920-21); s.nn. Ormstunga, Mu/sa-.