ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1994 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1994 ************************************ 15 May 2000 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for our opinion of as an English name for the second half of the 11th century. Here is what we found. was introduced to England shortly after the Norman Conquest. The earliest citations of it we have are from 1110, when Latinized was found [1]. This name also took the form in the 12th century, most likely pronounced \ben-NAYT\ [2]. We believe that similar spellings would have been used in the previous century. We could not find evidence for a spelling in period. Locative surnames, which identify where someone is from, are a common kind of surname for the period after the Norman Conquest. The city we call was known to the Romans as , and its Latin name continued to be used in Latin documents until quite late in our period. This name was adopted into Old English as , which evolved in Middle English into <3eorc> or <3orc> (doubtless influenced by the Old Norse name for the place, , in which the / indicates an accent over the preceding vowel) and then to the modern (the 3 stands for a "yogh," pronounced as the consonant 'y' in this case). During your period of interest, several of these forms were used. In 1086, both Latin documentary form and Old English are found [3]. The first is pronounced \eh-BOR-a-coom\, the second \EV-er-witch\ (\EV-er-wik\ is a less common but possible pronunciation). A more typical Old English form from roughly the same period is , which would be pronounced the same as [4]. Slightly later, in 1205, the placename takes a more familiar form: <3orc> or <3eorc>, which were pronounced roughly as modern [4]. In the first few centuries after the Norman Conquest, most writing was done in Latin. Therefore, the written form of your name might be in Latin, while you used an English form for everyday use. We suggest the Latin form and the English form . I 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 Maridonna Benvenuti, Arval Benicoeur, Talan Gwynek, Antonio Miguel Santos de Borja, Mari neyn Bryan, Amant le Marinier, Adelaide de Beaumont, and Julie Stampnitzky. For the Academy, Juliana de Luna 15 May, 2000 ----------------------------------------------------------------- References [1] Clark, Cecily, "Battle C. 1110: An Anthroponymist Looks at an Anglo-Norman new Town" (p. 237) in _Words, Names and History: Selected Papers_, ed. Peter Jackson (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995). [2] Reaney, P. H., & R. M. Wilson, _A Dictionary of English Surnames_ (London: Routledge, 1991; Oxford University Press, 1995), s.n. Bennet [3] Mills, A. D., _A Dictionary of English Place-Names_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), s.n. York [4] Ekwall, Eilert, _The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names_, 4th edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), s.n. York