ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2431 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2431 ************************************ From: "Sara L Friedemann" 22 Jan 2002 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You wanted to know if would be an appropriate name for a Norwegian man born in the 980's. Here is the information we have found. and are partial anglicizations of Old Norse names that are best represented in Roman letters as and , where the represents an with a reversed comma hanging from its lower edge. Both are excellent choices; they were both common in Norway and Iceland, and were in use from the earliest times that we have records for. [1] Ulfr son of Bio,rn would have been known as . The change from to is a requirement of Norse grammar; it is analogous to the change from to in English. would have been pronounced \OOLVr BYAR-nar sohn\, where \oh\ is the sound of in . In your period, the Norse language was written with the runic alphabet (the futhark). would have been written in runes as . Since we can't print runes in this letter, we've used a conventional modern system for representing them with letters in the standard western alphabet. You can find five versions of the futhark, with the conventional labels we've used, on the web: http://www.algonet.se/~tanprod/zerunes1.htm Either version of the younger futhark (with sixteen runes each) would be appropriate for your period. There are two a-runes, and for both 's in , the tenth rune with one diagonal stroke is appropriate. There are also two r-runes. We have used the lower case to represent the fifth rune, and the upper case for the sixteenth rune. You said that you intended to use the byname to mean something along the lines of 'wielder of a black hammer,' or 'owner of a black hammer.' As is English, it would not be an appropriate byname for a Norwegian man of any time period. We have therefore researched Norse nicknames that have similar meanings. There are a number of different words used in Norse for different shades of black. The word , which you found, was usually used for the blue-black color of a bruise or of post-mortem lividity, as in 'black as death.' [3] Examples of bynames that we found using include 'blue-black beard' 10th c., 'blue-black-tooth's beard,' and 'blue-black tooth' 10th c. [2] Another word, , related to the modern English , also means 'black,' but, like , was used primarily in constructions meaning 'black as death.' [3] The usual Old Norse word for 'black' is . We find it used in a number of medieval bynames, including 'black he-goat' 1241, 'black-head' 1255, 1337, 'black skald (poet)' c.998, c.1000, 1231, and 'black-maned' 1239. [2] Unfortunately, none of the examples cited above support a construction meaning 'black hammer': all describe the person or some part of him as black. Additionally, we found no example of a byname created from a color adjective and a tool or implement; so we cannot recommend any byname that means "black hammer" as good re-creation. The Old Norse word for "hammer," , does occur by itself as a byname; however, it was usually not used to refer to the tool. Rather, was often used in place names to denote a rocky crag, and bynames using most likely reflected that fact. Examples that we found are 'cliff [near a] farm' and 'wall-hammer, precipitous cliff.' (Here, the {dh} represents the letter edh, which looks like a backwards <6> with a cross-bar through the upright part.) Only two bynames that we found appeared to use the word to refer to the tool: 'pull-hammer' 1240-1244, and 'riveting hammer' 1243. [2] We cannot say for sure that these last two bynames were used literally of someone who worked with such tools; it is just as likely that they were used metaphorically, likening the bearer in some way to such a tool. Based on these examples, we do not believe that a byname such as is plausible. It is more likely that a man who used a hammer and had a dark, swarthy complexion would have had a byname which indicated one or the other, e.g., either 'the black,' or 'hammer,' and not both. We recommend that you consider this option. If you wanted to use both one of these nicknames and the patronymic byname we discussed above, the nickname would follow the given name, and the patronym would follow the nickname, e.g., , "Ulfr, the black, son of Bi,orn." It would also be quite appropriate to use one byname at one time, and another at a different time. As we mentioned above, Viking names from this period were spelled in runes. Appropriate runic spellings for are , , and , and for is . In , the first uses a different rune than the second ; both should be represented by the the tenth rune. We hope that this letter has been useful to you, and that you will not hesitate to write again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. Research and commentary on this letter were provided by Lindorm Eriksson, Talan Gwynek, Dietmar von Straubing, Gunnvor silfraharr, Arval Benicoeur, Ursula Georges, and Juliana de Luna. For the Academy, ~Aryanhwy merch Catmael, 22Jan02 --------------------------------------- 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). snn. Bio,rn, U/lfr [2] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla:ndska Personbinamn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala: 1920-21). s.vv. bla/r, bla/skeggr, bla/tannarskegg, bla/to,nn, dra/ttarhamarr, hnio/{dh}hamarr, svartakiappi, svartakollr, svartaska/ld, svartmo,nunger, svartr [3] Cleasby, R., G. Vigfusson, & W. Craigie, _An Icelandic-English Dictionary_ (Oxford: At the University Press, 1975). s.vv. blakkr, bla/r