ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2589 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2589 ************************************ 10 Dec 2002 From: Josh Mittleman Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is an appropriate name for an Anglo-Saxon man at the time of the First Crusade or 1189-99. If not, you asked our help choosing another name. Here is what we have found. Your dating is a little askew. The First Crusade was 1095-99. Richard Lionheart was a leader of the Third Crusade, 1189-92. You can find a summary of the history of the Crusades on the web at: http://www.bartleby.com/65/cr/Crusades.html Unfortunately, doesn't seem to be a good choice for either period. was a fairly common name in the late 8th and 9th century and remained in use until c.974, but it appears to have dropped out of use before your period [1]. We found no clear example of any name with the element in use after the Norman Conquest [2]. That's significant: The influx of Norman culture, language, and names significantly changed the naming customs of England. Many Old English names were abandoned in favor of Norman names. Other names remained in use, but were written in quite different ways. Scholars generally stop speaking of Old English or Anglo-Saxon after the Conquest and instead refer to the resulting blend with Norman French as Middle English. If had remained in use, it would not have been spelled in this Old English manner in the late 11th or 12th century. If your primary goal is to use , then we recommend you shift your period to the 9th century, when the name was quite common and was pronounced \A@N-wulf\, where \A@\ represents a diphthong that starts with the vowel in and ends with the sound of the in or . The \u\ in the second syllable is pronounced as in . If you want a name suited to the 11th or 12th centuries, then we recommend you choose a different name. We have several lists of names from that period in our Medieval Names Archive at: http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/eng1066to1300.shtml 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, Juliana de Luna, and Maridonna Benvenuti. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 10 Dec 2002 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Searle, William George, _Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum_ (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1897), pp.211-212. [2] The names we did find that used the element are mostly early, though we did find a man named 970 whose name probably contains this element, and women named c.975 and in 1002. Boehler, Maria, _Die altenglischen Frauenamen_ (Nendlem, Liechtenstein: Krauss Reprint, 1967 [1930]).