ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3018 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3018 ************************************ 16 Apr 2005 From: Gunnvor Silfraharr (no address) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for for a late 10th c. Old Norse pronunciation and runic spelling of the feminine names or . Here is what we found. and do not represent the same name. Instead, these represent the Old Norse feminine names and . The notation {dh} used above represents the character 'edh', which looks like a backward <6> with a crossbar on the riser. The slash following a vowel represents an acute accent mark on the preceding vowel. The name appears fairly early in Iceland for three women, two of whom were a woman and her granddaughter. We also found a late (ca. 1400) Icelandic example. We were not able to find examples of this name from Norway, where it appears to have gone out of use at an early date, surviving only in the name of a now-lost farm [1]. The earliest instance of that we found is from the early 11th c. There's also a variant form of , but it isn't attested until the mid-14th c. is originally from , which in turn derived from an older form, [1]. The pronunciation of is roughly \GAIR-reedhr\. The \G\ is the the sound of in and . The \dh\ is the voiced \th\, the sound of in , and , but not in , , and . The \r\ at the end of the name represents an unvoiced trilled (essentially a single tap, not a separate syllable, similar to the in Spanish and not the trilled in Spanish ). is pronounced roughly \GU"-reedhr\. The \U"\ is the sound of u-umlaut as in German "to feel". To make this vowel, position your tongue to say \ee\, the vowel of , but simultaneously round and purse your lips as if you were saying \oo\ (as in ); this sound is not found in English. In writing these names in runes, you must first select which runic alphabet or futhark to use; these varied across Scandinavia and over time. You can find several versions of the futhark on the web: http://www.arild-hauge.com/enruner.htm The futharks labeled "Norwegian-Swedisk Rokrunes" or "Runes from the 900s to ca. 1050 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 the names you asked about. 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 these names, 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. Like spelling in the Roman alphabet, runic spelling varied, and the same name can appear in a variety of forms. Some spellings, however, are more characteristic of normal practice than others. For we recommend ; for , is a good choice [2]. 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 in is the 10th rune, not the 4th, and the runic is the 5th rune, while is the 16th. 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 and Arval Benicoeur. For the Academy, Gunnvor silfraharr 16 April 2005 ----------------------------------------------------- References [1] 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. . Here represents the letter a-ring, an with a small circle over the top of the letter, and represents an a-umlaut. [2] Lena Peterson. Nordiskt runnamnslexikon. Spra*k- och folkminnes-institutet. http://www.sofi.se/SOFIU/runlex/ S.nn. , , , , , , , <{TH}o/rfri/{dh}r>. The name appears in one runic inscription, U951A from Uppland, Sweden ca. 1020-1050 AD, as . This inscription clearly contains a mistake. The carver seems to have inadvertently repeated the initial and went on to the before correcting himself. Our suggested runic spelling uses a common runic spelling of the first element, such as occurs in the following runic spellings: kaiRfast(r) (Geirfastr, U1144$) kaiRuatr (Geirhvatr, So"320, G113A) Similarly, our suggested runic spelling also utilizes a common runic spelling of the second element, as found in runic forms of names such as: astri{th}r (A/stri/{dh}r, U136, U137) sikri{th}r> (Sigri/{dh}r, U884A, U1035) {th}eri{th}r ({TH}u/ri/{dh}r, Sm7). There are many examples of runic forms for , including: kiri{th} U77$ kuri{th} U328, U623 kuri{th}r So"116