ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2525 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2525 ************************************ 17 Apr 2002 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is an appropriate name for a 7th century woman living near the northern German coast, and whether she would have used a byname meaning "potter" or one that identifies the place she lived. This letter is a brief answer to your question. The earliest example we've found of the name is Charlemagne's second wife, who lived in 771 [1]. It is therefore not an ideal choice for the 7th century, but it is plausible. We recommend spelling it this way, without the final <-e>. We don't believe the <-e> would have been used in early medieval German. When you write your name, you may want to use a Latin form like : Latin was the written language of your culture. In your period in Germany, almost everyone was identified only by a single given name, and that would be the most authentic sort of name for you to use. Occupational bynames like "potter" [2] didn't come into use until the 12th or 13th century. The quote mark in the name represents an umlaut -- two dots -- over the previous letter. We do have some written examples of more complex names from Germany in the 8th-10th centuries; you can see them in our reports 2397 and 2190: http://www.s-gabriel.org/2397 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2190 You'll see that these names are written in Latin. They were probably purely documentary forms: In speech, the person was known by only one name. These bynames fall into two categories: alternate names and patronymics. An alternate name is a second given name used by the person. In some cases, the second name is simply a short form of the first; in others it is unrelated. We don't know why a person was known by two names, but we're certain that people used one or the other, not both. A patronymic byname is one that identifies a person as her father's child. "Hildegard Adalgis' daughter". The final <-i> in the father's name is a Latin grammatical ending that marks the name as a possessive form, like <'s> in English. We found no examples of a locative byname (i.e. one that identifies a person by the place she lives) until long after your period. We recommend you avoid that choice. (In modern histories, you'll often find people from this period identified with locatives, e.g. . This is a modern convention which does not appear in early medieval records.) 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, Adelaide de Beaumont, and Talan Gwynek. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 17 Apr 2002 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Bahlow, Hans, _Unsere Vornamen im Wandel der Jahrhunderte_, Vol. 4 in the series _Grundriss der Genealogie_ (Limburg a. d. Lahn: C. A. Starke Verlag, 1965), s.n. Hildegard. [2] Bahlow, Hans, _Deutsches Namenlexikon : Familien- und Vornamen nach Ursprung und Sinn erklaert_ (Frankfurt am Main : Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985, 1990), s.n. To"pfer.