ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3035 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3035 ************************************ ************************************************* * * * NOTE: Later research turned up additional * * information relevant to this report. * * See the end of the letter for details. * * * ************************************************* 13 Apr 2005 From: Gunnvor Silfraharr (no address) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked about the feminine name , which you found as a 13th c. English name of Norse origins, and asked us to evaluate it as a Hiberno-Norse name ca. 840-860. You also asked about feminine names that begin with , contain an <-r-> in the middle, and end with <-a>. Here is what we found. As we discussed in earlier correspondence, the specific spelling is Latinized: the <-a> ending was added to make the name fit Latin grammar in a document written in Latin. The underlying English name was probably something very like . The English name comes from the Old Norse name [1]. The slash here indicates an acute accent over the preceding letter, and the {dh} is used to represent the character 'edh', which looks like a backward 6 with a crossbar on the riser. Your period is only very shortly after the first Viking settlements were established in Ireland. By the 850's, the Scandinavian settlements in Ireland had only just started to be more than armed encampments of Viking warriors. It is unlikely that women from Scandinavia were immigrating and settling in Ireland this early, especially as the Vikings in Ireland appear to have been taking Irish wives, as attested to by the number of second-generation Norsemen with Celtic names [2]. Still, if a woman named had come to Ireland in this period, and her name had been recorded in Old Irish, the name might very well have been represented as [3]. This name is pronounced \SIGH-reedh\, where \dh\ is the voiced \th\, the sound of in , and , but not in , , and ; and \gh\ is the voiced equivalent of the raspy sound in the Scottish word or German . Looking at other evidence, runic inscriptions in Sweden from the 10th-12th centuries often show the name in the runic form [4]. This spelling shows that, in at least some dialects, the \gh\ sound was dropped. If a woman of that name had settled in Ireland, her name might have been recorded in Old Irish as , pronounced \SEE-reedh\. You also asked about other Old Norse feminine names that begin with , contain an <-r-> in the middle, and end with <-a>. We were able to find several names with the and <-a>, but none which also included an <-r-> in the middle: Sibba (ca. 1000-1050; Denmark; a short form of the name ) [4] Sigga (found in the Danelaw and in Norway ca. 1300 and 1326; a short form of women's names in ) [1, 5] So,lva (not dated, but early) [5] Steina (ca. 990-1010; East Gotland, Sweden) [4] Svala (one early example in Norway, also found in the Danelaw) [1, 5] In the names above, represents the Icelandic o-ogonek, an 'o' with a backward-comma-shaped hook hanging from the bottom. The o-ogonek is the standard scholarly representation of any of several symbols used by early Icelandic scribes to stand for a sound similar to that of the in the English word . If you are interested in any of these names, please write us again and we will provide pronunciations for them. 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, Arval Benicoeur, and Aryanhwy merch Catmael. For the Academy, Gunnvor Silfraharr 13 April 2005 ----------------------------------------------------- References [1] Fellows-Jensen, Gillian. _Scandinavian Personal Names in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire_. (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. 1968). S.nn. , , , . [2] Roesdahl, Else. _The Vikings_. (New York: Allen Lane/Penguin. 1987). P. 225. [3] We can make an educated guess as to the treatment of the feminine name in Irish records by examining the way Irish documents treated several Old Norse (ON) masculine names in . ON is recorded as Old Irish (OIr) , ON becomes OIr , ON was recorded in OIr as and , ON was written as OIr and , and ON was recorded as OIr . The above is used to represent the character o-slash. See: De Vries, Jan, _Altnordisches Etymologisches Wo"rterbuch_. 2nd edn. (Boston: Brill. 2000). S.nn. , , , , . [4] Lena Peterson. Nordiskt runnamnslexikon. Spra*k- och folkminnes-institutet. http://www.sofi.se/SOFIU/runlex/ S.nn. , , , , , , , . Here represents the letter a-ring, an with a small circle over the top of the letter. [5] Lind, E.H. _Norsk-Isla"ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fra*n Medeltiden_. (Uppsala & Leipzig: 1905-1915, sup. Oslo, Uppsala and Kobenhavn. 1931). S.nn. , , , , , . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Followup, Arval, 6 May 2005. The client sent a couple followup questions, which we answered directly: Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked: > 1. I am at this point pretty intent on keeping the time period and > place for the persona; since that's very early for a Norse woman to > be arriving in Ireland, I may change my persona to the offspring of > one of the Viking/Irish unions you referred to. In that case, > would the name have to be Irish to be historically accurate? What > language was spoken among the earliest Norse settlements in Ireland? Both. We don't have direct evidence to back up this statement, but we're pretty comfortable with it anyway: Even much later, after several generations in Ireland, the Norse continued to use their own language and names. Among themselves, the Norse spoke their own language. In their dealings with the Irish, they spoke Irish. Irish slaves or wives living among the Norse probably used both languages, as well. The legitimate children of a Norseman in one of these settlements would probably have been given Norse names. > 2. If a Norse name is still a possibility, I'm interested in two > on your list: Solva and Svala. Could you provide me with those > pronunciations? was pronounced \SOHL-wah\, and was \SWAH-lah\. Arval for the Academy 06 May 2005