ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2811 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2811 ************************************ From: "C. L. Ward" 4 Mar 2004 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is appropriate as an Old Norse/Icelandic masculine name from the period 750-1100 A.D. Here is what we found. Throughout this letter, we'll use some special notation for letters that we can't easily include here. The slash following a vowel represents an acute accent mark on the preceding vowel. The {TH} represents the character 'thorn', which resembles a lower-case p overlapping a lower-case b, so that they share a single loop. The character {o"} represents an o-umlaut, while {a"} is an a-umlaut. The notation {dh} represents the character 'edh', which looks like a backward 6 with a crossbar on the riser, while {o,} represents the Icelandic o-ogonek, an 'o' with a backward-comma-shaped hook hanging from the bottom. The character {a*} represents an a-ring, the letter a with a small circle at the top. Your given name appears in Icelandic in the form . The final <-r> is a grammatical ending that marks the name as being in the nominative case. There are two instances of this name in 10th century Iceland: for instance, in Nja/ls saga, we find a man named , "Otkell, son of Skarfr, son of Hallkell" (late 10th c.) [1, 2]. We found one later Icelandic instance of this name for a <{TH}osteinn Skarpsson>, who died in 1481 [2]. The name also occurs in a Viking Age runic inscription from So"dermanland, Sweden [4]. Additionally, was in use in 10th c. Iceland as a byname, probably meaning "cormorant", a type of water bird [3]. Based on this evidence, we conclude that the given name may possibly have occurred anywhere in the West Scandinavian region and in at least some parts of Eastern Scandinavia; though we have found no evidence of it in Denmark. However, it appears to have been an uncommon name everywhere. While we do not find examples of an Old Norse byname meaning "blue-hand", there are several bynames that combine ON , a word meaning "blue, livid; black; the color of bruises or post-mortem lividity", with words describing various body parts [5]: "blue foot" (undated example from Norway) 12th c. "Blue-Ka/ri" (here the by-name "blue" is attached in front of the personal name ca. 10th c. "blue-cheek" 1272-76 "blue-pate" 1303 (possibly Danish, as the Icelandic form would be ) "blue-nostril" 10th c. (and another, undated but also early) "blue-side" 10th c. "blue-beard" "blue-tooth", byname of a Danish king and of the father of one of the Icelandic settlers. There are also bynames containing the Old Norse word meaning, "hand" [5]: a woman's byname ca. 900. Here is "lacework, border" and probably refers to an ornamented band of some kind. contracted from , "arrow-" and , this was the byname of a grandson of one of the Icelandic settlers; the literal sense is "arrow-hand", probably for an archer. Based on these bynames, we think it is possible that someone with a notable birthmark on his hand, or someone with marks on the hand from some sort of major injury, might have been described as , "blue-hand". The byname would have followed the given name, e.g. . This name would be pronounced as \SKARVr BLAH-hohnd\, where \SKARVr\ represents a single syllable. The \R\ in \SKARV\ is trilled (sometimes called 'rolled') as in Italian or Spanish, the \r\ is a very short American \r\ sound, and \oh\ is the vowel of . You can write this name in several ways. In your period, the Norse wrote in runes. You can find several versions of the futhark, or runic alphabet, on the web: http://www.arild-hauge.com/enruner.htm The futhark labeled Norwegian-Danish Runes from the 800's is a good choice. Notice that these tables identify each rune with a Roman letter; we will use that labeling in this letter to give you the runic spelling of your name. We should stress that this is a modern scholarly convention, not a notation that would have been used in our period. You'll also notice that there are no runes corresponding to some of the letters in the name, like the and the . Just as our letter represents different sounds in the words and , the Norse used one rune to represent more than one sound. In the early 10th c. and earlier, the runic spelling would have been , where the in is the 10th rune, not the 4th, from the futhark mentioned above. The byname might also have been spelled , , or at times, with the being the 4th rune. Note that this spelling is suitable only when you write the name in runes; it should not be used with Latin letters. You may want to write the name as if you have to explain it to someone who doesn't read runes, since this is the standard scholarly form. When special characters are inconvenient you might write or , which are authentic 13th c. spellings that avoid special characters [6, 7, 8]. In conclusion, is a fine name. I 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, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Arval Benicoeur, Juliana de Luna, Mari neyn Brian and Julia Szent-Gyorgyi. For the Academy, Gunnvor silfraharr 4 March 2004 ----------------------------------------------------- References [1] Magnusson, Magnus and Hermann Palsson, trans. _Njal's Saga_ (Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1960). Note on Chronology, Pp. 375-6. first appears in ch. 47 of the saga. [2] 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. . [3] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla"ndska Personbinamn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala: 1920-21). S.vv. , , , , , , , , , . [4] Peterson, Lena, "Nordiskt runnamnslexikon" (WWW: Institute for Dialectology, Onomastics and Folklore Research, 2001) http://www.dal.lu.se/runlex/index.htm S.n. . The inscription cited is So"107: for a photograph of the runestone, see http://medlem.spray.se/christerhamp/gamla/so107.html [5] Zoe"ga, Geir T. _A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic_ (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1987 [1910]). p. 57 s.v. ; pp. 225-226 S.v. . [6] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla"ndska Personbinamn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala: 1920-21). S.v. has and from 'Egils saga'. [7] Gordon, Eric V. An Introduction to Old Norse. 2nd. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986). Pp. 106-7. 'Egils saga' was probably written in the early 13th c. and is preserved in a mid-14th c. vellum. [8] Cleasby, Richard and Gudbrandr Vigfusson. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957). P. 761 s.v. notes that the modern scholarly symbol actually stands for a number of different symbols and combinations of symbols in the vellum manuscripts, including and .