ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3039 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3039 ************************************ 31 May 2006 From: Aryanhwy merch Catmael Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked our help choosing a name for your Society branch, specifically for Old English or German place names meaning "three bridges", "tower on the plains", or "river garrison". In one of your earlier notes, you asked about a name meaning "burning ember"; and that prompted some research with results that might interest you. Before we start, we'd like to apologize for the amount of time it has taken us to complete this report, and hope that this information is still useful to you. We'll begin with possible place-names of Old English origin, then look at medieval German possibilities, and conclude with an Old Norse suggestion that you might find appealing. First, however, we will eliminate one of the ideas: we have not found any historically plausible way to construct English or German place names meaning 'tower on the plains. We could translate that phrase word for word, but we have no reason to believe that the result is a place name likely to have been used in either language in our period. Along the way we'll be using a number of special notations for letters that are not part of the standard Roman alphabet; for convenience of reference we list them here. {th} for the letter thorn, written like a 'p' with its vertical stroke extended up the same distance as it goes down; and pronounced like the