ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2751 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2751 ************************************ 6 May 2003 From: Josh Mittleman Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! Out of the list we sent you earlier [1], you chose the name <{AE}llin> for a 14th century Norwegian woman. You asked how to pronounce it and you asked us to suggest bynames that means "Olav's daughter". {AE} here stands for an A-E ligature, i.e. the two letters squashed together so that the right leg of the 'A' is the vertical stroke of the 'E'. The name <{AE}llin> was pronounced \AA-leen\. \AA\ here represents a vowel somewhere between the vowels in and and long in duration. The \ee\ should be short in duration. itself is not a likely 14th century spelling. (The names we included in our previous report [1] are given in modern, normalized spellings.) The name appears in one large collection of Norwegian documents in many spellings, but is not one of them. The most common is , probably pronounced \OA-lah-v@r\, where \OA\ represents the vowel sound in and \@\ the sound of the in . Almost all of the spellings we found from your period include the final <-r>, <-er> or <-ar>, which is a grammatical ending that marks the nominative case. Other moderately common spellings include [2]: Olafu{ae}r Olafr Olafuar Olauer Olaf Olafer Olauer The most common spelling of the genitive (possessive) form of in this collection of documents is [2]. Many spellings occur [3]: Ollafs 1323 Olaafs 1335 Olafss 1347 Olaps 1347 Olaffs 1354 Olafz 1383 Oolafs 1387 Olofs 1387 Ollafzs 1391 Olefs 1400 Oolaafz 1401 Olafzs 1402 However, all of these are considerably less common than , so we recommend you use that form. By far the most common spelling of "daughter" in 14th century records [2, 3] is , so we recommend you generally write your name <{AE}llin Olafs dotter>. That name was pronounced \AA-leen OA-lahfs DOHT-tehr\. \OH\ stands for the vowel sound in . We hope this 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 and Aryanhwy merch Catmael. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 6 May 2003 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Academy of Saint Gabriel report 2685. http://www.s-gabriel.org/2685 [2] Chr-Emil Ore, "Advanced search in the Diplomatarium Norvegicum" (WWW: Dokumentasjons-prosjektet, 2000) http://www.dokpro.uio.no/dipl_norv/diplom_field_eng.html [3] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla:ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala & Leipzig: 1905-1915, sup. Oslo, Uppsala and Kobenhavn: 1931), s.n. O/la/fr.