ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2555 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2555 ************************************ 22 Aug 2002 From: Josh Mittleman Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is an appropriate name for a mid-5th century Frankish woman. Here is what we have found. Before we start, we would like to apologize for the time it's taken us to answer your question. may be a modern Scandinavian adaptation of the name of the character in the Nibelungenlied. We haven't found any period example of the a spelling like , though web searches show that it is in modern use. The original historical name was used in the 8th century in the Old High German and Langobard languages and appears several times in German heroic literature; but we've found no evidence that it was used by the Franks or that it existed as early as the 5th century [1]. The element appears in Latin records of a couple Frankish masculine names a bit later than your period, and a feminine element Latinized as <-linda> was used in Frankish by the time of Charlemagne [2]; so some form of was probably available in your culture by the 7th or 8th century. Placing it in the 5th century requires more speculation than we are comfortable with. If you'd like to consider other given names better suited to your period, you can find some on the web: Masculine & Feminine Names from the Merovingian Line c.400-c.600 AD http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/merovence.html is a much later Latinization of a name that appears in early records as [3]. This is also a Latinization, but it is better suited to your period. The element <-dottir> is not correct for your culture: It is Old Norse, not Frankish or even German. However, we have no evidence that patronymic bynames (surnames that identify people as their father's children) were used in any 5th century Germanic language. Bynames of any type were quite rare before 1000 or so: People were identified by just a single name. The few counterexamples we have from your period (in Latin records, of course) simply identify a man by two different given names [4]: 5th c. "Feletheus also Feva" 5th c. "Gunthigis who is called Baza" 6th c. Tours "Wistrimundus called Tato" In spoken language, these people were identified in one way or the other, -- or , for example -- but never both. The compound name was used only in written Latin. If a woman were identified as her father's daughter in this period, that would also have been only in written Latin, where it could conceivably have taken a form like "Ingund Chlodovech's daughter". However, we should stress that we have no examples of this style of surname in Germanic cultures anywhere near your period. You had originally also asked our help designing arms, but you withdrew that part of your question after we discussed the problem of designing arms for a person who lived 700 years before heraldry was invented. We want to assure you that we would still be happy to help you design authentic medieval arms, even if they don't match the culture of your name. Let us know if you're interested. We 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 Talan Gwynek, Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Adelaide de Beaumont, and Ursula Georges. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 22 Aug 2002 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Gillespie, George T., _A Catalogue of Persons Names in German Heroic Literature_ (700-1600) (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1973), s.n. Sigelint. [2] Nicolaa de Bracton, "Early Germanic Names from Primary Sources" (WWW: privately published, 1997). http://members.tripod.com/nicolaa5/articles/german.html [3] Woolf, Henry Bosley, _The Old Germanic Principles of Name-Giving_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. 1939), pp.182, 184-6. His earliest example of is the grandson of a man who was in his prime between 481 and 511. Others lived in the late 6th and 7th centuries. [4] Stark, Franz, _Die Kosenamen der Germanen_ (Wiesbaden: Dr. Martin Sa:ndig oHG., 1967 [1868]), p.150.