ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2965 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2965 ************************************ 6 Jan 2005 From: Gunnvor Silfraharr Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for our opinion of a Swedish Viking Age name using as your name, with as your father's name, ideally dating from the 10th to 11th century. 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 notation {ae} represents an a-e ligature, which looks like the letters a and e pushed together. The name you found in a runic inscription from Bergen, Norway is dated to before 1332 and reflects a name in the Old West Norse dialect [1]. This is a poor match for both the time and place you want to re-create. There were differences in the dialects used in western Scandinavia and eastern Scandinavia, so a name from Norway is not necessarily the best recreation of a Swedish name [2]. We found examples in both Sweden and Denmark of three similar names, , , and : Sweden, [3] Aggi dictus Thorsten (undated, but early) Agge Peterssun (1145) Sweden, [3] Karl Agisun (1145) Sweden, Aki (Viking Age) [4, 5] Denmark, [6] Aggi dict. Thorsten (2nd half of the 12th c.) [7] Agge Peterss: (1145) [8] Denmark, [6] Agi (1158x1177) [9] Aghe Wind (1193, also found as ) Denmark, [10] Ascero Akonis f[ilius] (Latinized form, 1085) Aki Pik (1141) Aki Fris (1145) All three of these names -- , , and -- had endings in <-i> originally. This ending eventually weakened to <-e> in all of the Continental Scandinavian languages. We know that the change occurred earlier in East Scandinavian than in Norwegian, and it appears from a couple of the citations above that it may have started to appear by the end of your period. Note also that although is the standardized scholarly form, the name appears fairly consistently as (or Latinized ) in the earliest citations. These names are pronounced approximately as follows: : \AHG-gee\ : \AHG-g@\ or : \AH-ghee\ : \AH-kee\ The \AH\ is the sound of the in . The \AH\ is a little longer in duration in than in the others. The \@\ is used to represent a schwa, the sound of in and . In the first two pronunciations given above, the \g\ is a 'hard' \g\ as in . The \gh\ in the third pronunciation is the sound made by saying the in Scottish while vibrating your vocal cords. The name is a Norse form of Latin . Two East Scandinavian examples of this name are known from runic inscriptions: one from a Danish coin ca. 1065-1075; and the other from a runestone in Uppland, Sweden ca. 1200 [11, 12]. Other 13th century examples include , , , and [13]. An instance of this name used as a patronymic (indicating the name of a person's father) from 1145 was mentioned in the examples above. The normalized Old West Norse spelling (the modern scholarly form, based on 13th c. Icelandic practice) of the patronymic for this name would be [14]. In East Scandinavia the 'son' word would likely appear as [15], and combining this with the 1145 example of the patronymic shown above results in . This would be pronounced \PEH-tairs sun\, with the \s\ as in , not as in , and the \u\ as in . We were not able to find any East Scandinavian form of in use in your period. The 1145 citation, however, shows that the name was in use by the early 12th century, and we would not be greatly surprised if were in very limited use as early as the late 11th century. The names , , and impose no such limitations, as all three of them were already in use much earlier. Based on the earliest examples we located, we can recommend a personal name of (or possibly its variant ), , or , with a patronymic of or for vernacular (spoken) forms of a Swedish name from the late 11th century or early 12th century, just at the end of the Viking Age. You can write your name in several ways. By the 12th century Roman letters were being used for documents written in the vernacular as well as for Latin documents. Around 1100 and on into the 12th century the names , , and would have been written (or, increasingly often, ), , and in the vernacular; in thoroughly Latinized documents these would have been replaced by , , and , respectively. The patronymic doubtless took a variety of forms in the vernacular. We haven't enough evidence to say for sure what forms were most common, but and are clearly within the range of possibilities in the vernacular; the usual Latinization is . Here are some possible forms of the full name: Vernacular Forms Completely Latinized Forms ---------------- -------------------------- Aggi Peters sun Aggo Petri filius Agi Peters sun Ago Petri filius Aki Peters sun Aco Petri filius Additionally, from the Viking Age into the Middle Ages and beyond, the Swedes also wrote in runes. You can find several versions of the futhark, or runic alphabet, on the web: http://www.arild-hauge.com/esruner.htm The futhark labeled 'Swedish Runes from 1000 AD' or 'Swedish Runes from 1100 AD' are 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 your period. Runic spelling was not entirely consistent, but during your period we would expect to see both and represented in runes as [19], with appearing in runes as , using one of the futharks mentioned above. Remember that these spellings are suitable only when you write the name in runes; they should not be used with Latin letters. 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 Arval Benicoeur, Talan Gwynek, and Aryanhwy merch Catmael. For the Academy, Gunnvor Silfraharr 6 January 2005 ----------------------------------------------------- References [1] Bergen Inscription B205. (WWW: Runic Inscriptions from Bergen). http://www.nb.no/baser/runer/efullpost.php?bnr=B205 [2] Talan Gwynek. "A Very Brief History of the Scandinavian Languages". (WWW: Academy of St. Gabriel, 2002). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/talan/scandinavianlang.html Starting from the beginning of the Viking Age, there were enough differences between the Old Norse spoken in western Scandinavia (Norway, Iceland and other Scandinavian colonies in the Atlantic) to differentiate the western dialect from that of eastern Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden, and Scandinavian colonies in the Baltic and Russia). The differences in Old West Norse and Old East Norse increased noticably after 1000. [3] Sveriges Medeltida Personnamn. (WWW: Spra*k- och folkminnesinstitutet). http://www.dal.lu.se/sofi/smp/smp.htm S.nn. , . Here represents an a-ring, the letter a with a small circle at the top. [4] Lena Peterson. Nordiskt runnamnslexikon. Spra*k- och folkminnes- institutet. http://www.sofi.se/SOFIU/runlex/ S.n. . [5] Samnordisk Runtext Databas. http://home6.swipnet.se/~w-61277/rundata/pc.htm. Signa O"g183 has the runic form , and dates the inscription to the Viking Age. A photo of this runestone at http://w1.311.telia.com/~u31139493/runestones/og183.htm shows that the design includes a Christian cross motif, which would place the date towards end of the Viking period. [6] Knudsen Gunnar, Marius Kristiansen, & Rikard Hornby, _Danmarks Gamle Personnavne_, Vol. I: Fornavne (Copenhagen: 1936-48). S.nn. , . [7] The Danish example of is the same person shown in the Swedish example of , "Aggi called Thorsten". [8] The is the same person shown in the Swedish example of . The notation is a cover abbreviation for all of the various spellings of the 'son' word (, , , etc.). Here the notation {o|} represents o-slash, the letter with a slash through the letter. [9] The notation "1158x1177" means that the name is found once sometime between 1158 and 1177. [10] Knudsen Gunnar et al., op. cit., s.n. . [11] Lena Peterson, op. cit., s.n. . [12] Samnordisk Runtext Databas. http://home6.swipnet.se/~w-61277/rundata/pc.htm. Signa U65$ has the runic transliteration of the name as , and DRM65 has . [13] Knudsen Gunnar et al., op. cit., s.n. . [14] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla"ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala & Leipzig: 1905-1915, sup. Oslo, Uppsala and Kobenhavn: 1931). Cols. 830-833, S.n. . According to Lind, the form occurs in the Annals for 1110 and 1226. Lind also mentions an Icelandic ca.1000; in Norway he has in Oslo in the 1120s, a bit later, and a 1162, the last two from Heimskringla. [15] Gordon, Eric V. An Introduction to Old Norse. 2nd. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), Section 193. [16] Sveriges Medeltida Personnamn, op. cit., s.n. . [17] Knudsen Gunnar et al., op. cit., s.n. . [18] Ibid., s.n. . [19] We expect a runic spelling of for both and . There was a strong tendency not to write double letters in runic inscriptions, and in runes both \g\ and \gh\ were represented as .