ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2647 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2647 ************************************ 27 Feb 2003 From: Josh Mittleman Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether <{TH}o/ro/lfr Smi{dh}r> is an appropriate name for a Norseman around 1000, and you asked how to spell it in runes. This letter is a brief answer to your question. In this letter, we'll use the following notation for letters that we can't represent in simple ASCII: {TH} represents the letter thorn, written as a lower-case 'p' with the vertical stroke extended upward; {dh} stands for the letter edh, written as a backward '6' with a crossbar on the upper limb; and a slash stands for an acute accent mark on the preceding letter. You've chosen a fine name: Your given name was quite common in Viking Iceland [1]. The vowel is the second syllable wasn't lengthened until late in the 12th century, so we recommend you put an accent only on the first 'o'. Your byname was moderately common, e.g. <{TH}orsteinn smi{dh}r Skeggjason>, . meant "smith, metal-smith". It was also used as prefixed byname, e.g. 10th century, 1254 [1, 2, 3]. The full name <{TH}o/rolfr smi{dh}r> was pronounced \THOAR-oalv(r) SMEEDH(r)\. \OA\ is roughly the vowel sound in . \TH\ represents the sound of the in , while \DH\ is the in . \(r)\ stands for a lightly-voiced rolled \r\ tagged onto the end of the last syllable -- but not a separate syllable. \EE\ here represents the sound of the vowel in . In runes, it could have been written <{th}urulfr smi{th}r> [4]. Since we can't include the actual runes in this letter, we've used a standard system for representing them with Roman letters. Note that this is a modern scholarly convention, not a notation that would have been used in our period. You can find a table with the runes labeled according to thie convention on the web at: http://www.arild-hauge.com/enruner.htm You might use either the Runes from the 900's to ca. 1050 AD, or the Norwegian Runes ca. 1000-1050 AD. 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 Talan Gwynek, Gunnvor Silfraharr, and Aryanhwy merch Catmael. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 27 Feb 2003 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Fleck, G. (aka Geirr Bassi Haraldsson), _The Old Norse Name_, Studia Marklandica (series) (Olney, Maryland: Yggsalr Press, 1977). [2] Arno/rsson, Einar, ed. _Landna/mabo/k I/slands_ (Reykjavi/k: Helgafell, 1948), chapters 67, 84. [3] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla:ndska Personbinamn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala: 1920-21), s.n. smi{dh}r. [4] Peterson, Lena, "Nordiskt runnamnslexikon" (WWW: Institute for Dialectology, Onomastics and Folklore Research, 2001), s.nn. Thorulfr, Smidr. http://www.dal.lu.se/runlex/index.htm.