ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2712 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2712 ************************************ 12 Jun 2003 From: Juliana la Caminante de Navarra Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked us if would be an appropriate name for a man born around the time of the Battle of Hastings. Here is what we have found: is a later spelling of a name that was very common both before and after the Norman Conquest. [1, 2] The name itself is therefore an excellent choice, though this spelling was not used until after your period. In your period most documents were written in Latin. The most common Latinized form of the name seems to have been , though we also found several examples of <{AE}dricus> between 1086 and 1112. [1, 3, 4] (Here <{AE}> stands for the Old English letter ash, the A- E-ligature consisting of an and an squashed together so that the right leg of the is also the vertical stroke of the .) There was also still some documentary use of Old English during your period, though not a great deal. In some of these post-Conquest Old English documents we find traditional Old English spellings; in such a document your name would have been written . [5] It might also have been written with the late Old English spelling <{AE}dric>, which more accurately represented the late Old English pronunciation \AD-ritch\. [6] Finally, it might have been written , a form, probably showing French influence, that we actually find in a document of ca.1100-1130. [7] As we said above, at the time of the Conquest the name was pronounced approximately \AD-ritch\. This pronunciation eventually gave way to \ED-ritch\, but probably not within the lifetimes of most people born in 1066. Selwood is a place in Somerset whose name is well-documented both before and after your period; with minor modifications the byname is an excellent choice. The place-name, whose classical Old English spelling is 'willow wood', is found as and around 894 and again as in 1168. [8] In your period it was pronounced roughly \SAL-wu-d@\, where \u\ stands for the sound of in , and \@\ stands for the sound of in and . In an Old English document it would probably have been written or , and any of the prepositions , , and <{ae}t> might have been used; they were pronounced roughly \ohn\, \ohf\, and \at\, respectively, where \oh\ is the sound of the vowel in . In a Latin document the name might have been spelled in a variety of ways, including , , , , , , , and , but the preposition would have been . In short, in most records of your period the name would have been Latinized as or one of the variants noted above, but in those still written in Old English it might have appeared as <{AE}dric of Selwude> or one of the many possible variants already noted. The latter fairly closely represents the name as it was actually spoken: \AD-ritch ohf SAL-wu-d@\ (with minor changes if or <{ae}t> is used instead of ). I was assisted in assembling this report by Maridonna Benvenuti, Arval Benicouer, Talan Gwynek, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, and Deiniol ap Grwgwst. For the Academy, Juliana la Caminante de Navarra 13 June 03 References and Notes: [1] von Feilitzen, Olof. The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1937); p. 233ff. [2] Selte/n, Bo. The Anglo-Saxon Heritage in Middle English Personal Names, two vols. (Lund, Sweden: Royal Society of Letters at Lund, 1979); II:71f. [3] von Feilitzen, Olof. 'The Personal Names and Bynames of the Winton Domesday', in Martin Biddle, ed., Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, Winchester Studies 1 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1976); p. 155. [4] Jackson, Peter, ed. Words, Names and History; Selected Writings of Cecily Clark (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995); pp. 237, 340. [5] Tengvik, Go"sta. Old English Bynames (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktryckeri-A.-B., 1938); pp. 154, 162. We did not find a post-Conquest example of , but we did find several post-Conquest examples of other Old English names with the same first element still being spelled in the traditional way as . These include 1070, a completely traditional spelling of 'Eadnoth's son', and ca. 1100, for traditional . (Here <{dh}> stands for the Old English letter edh, which looks like a backwards <6> with a short slash through the upper part; stands for an o-umlaut, an with two dots over it.) [6] Ibid., p. 148. The citation is a late pre-Conquest <{AE}drices sune> 972-992 'Eadric's son'. The Latinized <{AE}dricus> already mentioned is probably based on this late Old English spelling. [7] Ibid., p. 122. [8] Ekwall, Eilert. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names_, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); s.n. .