ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2498
http://www.s-gabriel.org/2498
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26 Feb 2002
From:  (Josh Mittleman)


Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel!

You asked whether <Olaf Knutssen> or <Knut Knutssen> is an appropriate name
for a man in Norway during the mid-Viking period.  This letter is a brief
answer to your question.

<Knut> is a late-period form of an Old Norse name best spelled <Knu/tr>.
The slash represents an acute accent mark on the preceding letter.  The
final <-r> is a grammatical ending, indicating that this is the nominative
form of the name.  (The nominative form of a name is the one used in the
subject of a sentence or in direct address.)  The final <-r> is barely
pronounced, just a lightly voiced trill, not a separate syllable.  We have
found several examples of the name in the period you want to re-create [1]:

   Knvtr bondi aa Knvtzst{o,}dum, 10th century
   Knu/tr a/ Ho/li, c.1000
   Gv{dh}mvndr prestr Cnvts son, c.1140
   {TH}orgri/mr Knu/ts son, 1184

The symbol {o,} represents an <o> with a backward-comma-shaped hook hanging
from the bottom.  {dh} stands for the letter edh, written as a backward <6>
with a crossbar on the upper limb; and {TH} is the letter thorn, written as
a lower <p> with a vertical stroke that extends upward as far as it does
downward.  The last two examples show two versions of "Knut's son"; but the
spelling we recommend is <Knu/tz son> [3].

<O/la/fr> is an equally good given name for your period; note the
grammatical ending here as well [2], so we can recommend either <Knu/tr
Knu/tz son> or <O/la/fr Knu/tz son> as excellent Viking names.  They were
pronounced \KNOOT(r) KNOOTS sohn\ and \OWE-lahv(r) KNOOTS sohn\.  In both
pronunciations, \oh\ stands for the vowel in <more>, and \(r)\ for a lightly
voiced trill.


In your period, the Viking wrote with runes.  In this letter, we've
recommended standard scholarly Roman-alphabet spellings; but you may prefer
to write your name authentically.  We can't show you runes here, but you
can see several versions of the runic alphabet on the web:

  http://www.arild-hauge.com/enruner.htm

The one labeled Norwegian-Danish Runes from the 800s is a good choice.
Notice that these tables identify each rune with a Roman letter.  We will
use that labeling in this letter to give you the runic spelling of your
name.  We should stress that this is a modern scholarly convention, not a
notation that would have been used in our period.

In that system, the two names we've recommended can be spelled <knutr knuts
sun> or <knutR knuts sun> and <olafR knuts sun> or <ulafR knuts sun>.
Following the lead of the web page, we're using <r> here to represent the
5th rune and <R> for the 16th.


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 Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Talan Gwynek, and Lindorm Eriksson.

For the Academy,


  Arval Benicoeur
  26 Feb 2002


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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), s.n. Knu/tr.

[2] Aryanhwy merch Catmael, "Viking Names found in the Landna/mabo/k" (WWW:
privately published, 1998).
http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/landnamabok.html.

[3] Lind consistently uses <z> after dental consonants; since the root
<Knu/t-> ends in <t>, he has <z> here.  \z\ normally represents the sound
\ts\.  Lind's citations show <z> as perhaps the most common variant,
especially in the earlier ones; <zs> also occurs, as do <Knuz> and <Knuzs>.
There are of course also spellings with <s>.