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 in . {ae} for the letter aesc (ash), written like an 'a' and 'e' squashed together so that share a vertical stroke. {dh} for the letter edh, written like a backward '6' with a crossbar on the upper limb; and pronounced in Old Norse like the in . a* for the Swedish letter 'a' with a small circle over it. a/ for an 'a' with an acute accent mark. a" for an 'a' with an umlaut. u" for a 'u' with an umlaut. o" for an 'o' with an umlaut. o| for a Swedish slashed-o. OLD ENGLISH FORMS Before getting to the names themselves, we have to explain a little bit about Old English grammar. Old English was an inflected language, and an Old English noun took different forms depending on how it was used in a sentence. Modern English retains a vestige of this characteristic: we still change , for instance, to in a possessive phrase like . Old English, however, went much further: a noun used in a prepositional phrase generally required a slightly different form from the same noun used as the subject of a sentence. For example, we have 'The bridge is old', but <{ae}t {th}{ae}re ealdre brycge> 'at the old bridge', with instead of , where modern English uses the same form, , for both. The form used for the subject of a sentence is called the nominative case; the form that was used after prepositions specifying a location is called the dative case. Now place-names are very often used in prepositional phrases; some modern English examples are , , and . So common are such phrases, in fact, that some modern English place-names are descended not from the nominative (subject) case of the Old English name, but rather from the dative case; we'll suggest such a development for one of our recommendations. This grammatical technicality is also important for anyone who wishes to form an authentic Old English byname meaning 'of X', where X is the name of your branch. An Old English name meaning 'three bridges' is quite plausible. It's true that the Old English word <{th}reo> 'three' most often appears in place-names referring to hills, mounds, trees, or measures of land, but there is a place-name in Hertfordshire that derives from Old English, and on that model we can construct the Old English place-name <{th}reo brycga> 'three bridges'. [1] This is the nominative case of the place-name, the form that would be used for the subject of a sentence. The dative case is <{TH}rim brycgum>, so an Old English equivalent of is . In Middle English this might well have developed into a place-name , pronounced roughly \THRIM-bridge\. [2] (Here \TH\ stands for the sound of in , not the sound in .) If we construe 'garrison' in its old sense of 'fort, stronghold', then it is reasonable to equate it with the Old English place-name element , a borrowing of Latin 'camp'. Although its primary meaning in literary sources is 'a city', it also meant 'an old fortification', a sense that is found in many place-names. This element is often combined with a word denoting a nearby landmark, and in fact in the place-name is from Old Norse 'a river' and Old English , a northern dialect variant of ; the original sense of the name was 'Roman fort on the river'. It's likely that the name was originally entirely Old English, having replaced Old English 'a river, a stream', a word found in such place-names as . [11, 12, 13] Thus, the compound 'old river fort' has approximately the desired sense and is a fine Old English place-name. Alternatively, we can combine with the very common Old English place-name element 'a fortified place' to produce an Old English place-name . [14] These are the nominative cases of these names; the dative cases are and . A man named living at one of these places might have been recorded in Old English as or . (The Old English prepositions <{ae}t> and seem to have been largely interchangeable in such bynames.) might have evolved into Middle English or in the 14th century and then to or a bit later in the SCA period. Old English might have produced a 14th century and a 16th century or . In southwestern England it might have become or in the 14th century, the latter of these being possible for the 15th or 16th centuries as well. [15] GERMAN FORMS German was not a uniform language in our period, but rather a collection of dialects that varied from one region to the next. These dialects fall into two major groups: Low German in the north and High German in the centre and south, including Bavaria, Austria, and German-speaking Switzerland. The High German dialects are further divided between the Upper German dialects of Switzerland, Austria, and southernmost Germany, especially Bavaria, and the Middle German dialects of central Germany. The medieval Low German dialects of the northwest were closely related to the eastern Dutch dialects. An element meaning 'three' seems to have been rare in German place-names, but it is occasionally found. For example, the 1357 bynames (masculine) and (feminine) both refer to someone holding a farm known as the 'three hillocks'. is a common 14th century Middle High German spelling of the word; another byname example is 1341 'three horse(s)'. In the late 14th century and into the 15th century the element was often spelled , as in the surnames 1370 and 1415. [21] Additional indirect support for the element is found in the place-name 'three hills' in Utrecht province of the Netherlands, which is recorded as as early as a 14th century forgery of a document of 1159: High German, Low German, and Dutch place-naming all follow similar patterns, and unlike some very specific topographical terms, the 'three' word (with minor variations in form) is common to all of these dialects. [22] Finally, the place-name in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, found as in 1348 and 1498 and as in 1530 and 1535, is almost certainly a Low German counterpart of the Dutch place-name. [23] The modern German word for 'bridge' is , plural . In the Upper German dialects, however, the usual medieval forms were and , with plurals and , being especially common in the southwest. [24, 25] is also a normal Low German form, as is ; examples include 1301 and 1408, both from Pommerania, and 1318 and 1325, both from Lu"beck. [26, 27] Finally, we found one Middle German citation, 1396. [28] There are now over 150 place in Germany with names ending in <-bruck> or <-bru"ck>, at least another 24 with names ending in <-brucke> or <-bru"cke>, and over 30 with names ending in <-brugge> or <-bru"gge>; a few may have other origins, but in general the second element of these names is 'bridge' in various dialect forms. In addition there are at least 24 with names ending in <-bru"cken> and at least three with names ending in <-bruggen> or <-bru"ggen>; with the same caveat as before, these names have a second element 'bridges' in one or another dialect form. [29] While it is of course possible that some of these place-names were created after 1600, it's clear that the 'bridge' word must actually be a rather common element in German place-names of the SCA period. In fact, there is even a 'two bridges' in the state of Rheinland-Pfalz; the earliest documentary mention of the place-name is from about 1170, in the personal name . There's no doubt about the etymology of the name: the French name of the place is 'two bridges'. [30, 31] On this evidence a place-name meaning 'three bridges' is possible throughout the German language area. In the north the spelling is suitable for the 14th and 15th centuries. In the south it's suitable for the later 13th and 14th centuries, especially in the southwest. is also suitable for this period in much of the south and probably in much of the centre as well. By the 15th century it appears that and would be better choices in the south and centre. The pronunciations are roughly as follows, where \oo\ stands for the vowel of and , and \@\ stands for the sound of in and : Drybruggen: \DREE-broog-g@n\ Drybrucken: \DREE-brook-k@n\ Dreybruggen: \DRAY-broog-g@n\ Dreybrucken: \DRAY-brook-k@n\ All have secondary stress on the second syllable, i.e., the same stress pattern as English . OLD NORSE FORMS The practice of slash-and-burn cultivation in Scandinavia is commemmorated in many place-names. One is the Norwegian place-name , from an unattested Old Norse place-name 'burnt clearing'. [32, 33] This is similar enough to your earlier idea 'burning ember' that we thought that it might appeal to you. We 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 Gunnvor Silfraharr, Walraven van Nijmegen, Talan Gwynek, Geoffrey of Blesedale, Juetta Copin, Maridonna Benvenuti, Ursula Georges, and Ari Ansson. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur, Calybrid ine Tere, and Aryanhwy merch Catmael 31 May 2006 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References and Notes: [1] Smith, A.H. English Place-Name Elements (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1956), s.vv. , <{th}reo>. [2] The 'bridge' element shows up in a variety of forms in Middle English, including <-brigge>, <-brige>, <-brugge>, <-bruge>, and others. We chose the spelling <-brigge> because it is common throughout the Middle English period and not confined to any particular dialect area; some examples are 1158, 1255, and 1358, 1395. [3, 4] The 'three' element is rare enough that we found only two examples showing Middle English developments of the Old English dative form <{th}rim>: the name of one of the Warwickshire hundreds appears in Domesday Book as , from Old English <({ae}t {th}{ae}m) {th}rim hlawum> '(at the) three mounds or hills', and we found an undated but evidently early <{TH}rem burghen>, from Old English <({ae}t {th}{ae}m) {th}rim beorgum> '(at the) three barrow mounds or hills', another name for Barrow Hills in Surrey. [5, 6] On the face of it these suggest rather than ; however, it is likely that both are somewhat unrepresentative of typical Middle English developments. Old English /i/, as in <{th}rim>, normally becomes Middle English /i/, spelled or . [7, 8] In Domesday Book, however, it sometimes appears as , in keeping with a more general Anglo-Norman tendency to substitute for ; another example is , a Domesday Book form of , from Old English * plus . [9, 10] We have chosen to suggest the normal development, but would also be possible, especially in the earlier post-Conquest period. [3] Watts, Victor, ed., in association with John Insley and Margaret Gelling. Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, Based on the Collections of the English Place-Name Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); s.nn. , , . [4] Ekwall, Eilert. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); s.n. . [5] Smith, op. cit. s.v. <{th}reo>. [6] 'Warwickshire', LoveToKnow 1911 Online Encyclopedia (WWW: LoveToKnow, 2003, 2004). http://37.1911encyclopedia.org/W/WA/WARWICKSHIRE.htm [7] Moore, Samuel, rev. by Albert H. Marckwardt. Historical Outlines of English Sounds and Inflections (Ann Arbor: George Wahr Publishing Co., 1964); pp. 66-8. [8] Mosse/, Ferdinand. A Handbook of Middle English, trans. James A. Walker (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968); p. 10. [9] von Feilitzen, Olof. The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1937); pp. 50f. [10] Watts, op. cit. s.n. . [11] Smith, op. cit. s.v. . [12] Watts, op. cit. s.n. . [13] Ekwall, op. cit. s.n. . [14] Smith, op. cit. s.v. . [15] Old English developed in a variety of ways in Middle English, but the spelling <-chestre>, seen for example in the 14th century spellings , , and , was quite common. shows even more variety in its Middle English developments, but <-bury>, from the dative case , was common from at least the late 13th century on. Some examples are 1290 and 1456 for what is now , 1289 to the present, and ca.1301, throughout the period 1288-1468, and from 1383 on for modern . [16] The Old English diphthong in the word 'river' was pronounced roughly \A@\, where \A\ stands for the vowel in and \@\ for the sound of in and . In Middle English this sound normally simplified to the vowel. (In fact it was a little longer in duration than the vowel in , so it was actually more like the vowel in or , but that's a very fine distinction.) In early Middle English it was often spelled or simply ; this is how Old English 'river settlement' became Middle English , , and , for instance. [17, 18] However, at the beginning of a name the diphthong could develop very differently, to \yah\. This development is especially characteristic of Somerset and Devon in the southwest, where and were very common dialect terms for a river or stream, but it can also be seen for example in the Yorkshire place-name , from Old English 'river ford', which is found as by 1283. [19, 20] These observations account for all of the suggested Middle English spellings. [16] Watts, op. cit. s.nn. , , , , , . [17] Moore and Marckwardt, op. cit., pp. 66, 76. [18] Watts, op. cit. s.n. . Eaton Bishop is found as and from 1241 to 1506; Eaton Socon is found as from 1086 to ca.1360 and as in 1208 and 1247; and Eaton Hall is found as from 1313 on. [19] Reaney, P.H., and R.M. Wilson. A Dictionary of English Surnames (London: Routledge, 1991; Oxford University Press, 1995); s.n. . [20] Watts, op. cit. s.n. . [21] Brechenmacher, Josef Karlmann. Etymologisches Wo"rterbuch der deutschen Familiennamen (Limburg a. d. Lahn, C. A. Starke-Verlag, 1957-1960); s.nn. , , , . [22] Ku"nzel, R. E., D.P. Blok, & J.M. Verhoeff. Lexicon van Nederlandse Toponiemen tot 1200 (Amsterdam: P.J. Meertens, 1989); s.n. . [23] Dittmer, Georg Wilhelm. 'Urkunden u"ber einige dem St. Johannis-Kloster zu Lu"bek vormals zugeho"rig gewesene Besitzungen in Meklenburg und die daraus bezogenen Hebungen', in Verein fu"r Mecklenburgische Geschichte und Altertumskunde: Jahrbu"cher des Vereins fu"r Mecklenburgische Geschichte und Altertumskunde, vol. 21 (1856), pp. 193-214 (WWW: LBMV Schwerin). http://portal.hsb.hs-wismar.de/pub/lbmv/mjb/jb021/355160900.html The 1348 citation, in a Latin context, and the 1535 citation, in a Low German context, may be inflected forms. [24] Paul, Hermann, & Walther Mitzka. Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik, 19th edn. (Tu"bingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1963); pp. 69, 114. [25] Brechenmacher, op. cit. s.nn. , , , , , offers examples ranging geographically from Switzerland to Austria, among them 1307 'Heinrich by the bridge', 1270 'Heinrich on the bridge' and 1300 'called Bridge-master', 1294 'Diepolt the Bridge-guard', 1430 'Haini at the bridge', and 1260. [26] Brechenmacher, op. cit. s.n. . [27] Bahlow, Hans. Deutsches Namenlexikon, Familien- und Vornamen nach Ursprung und Sinn erkla"rt. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch 65 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985); s.n. . [28] Mulch, Roland. Arnsburger Personennamen: Untersuchungen zum Namenmaterial aus Arnsburger Urkunden vom 13. - 16. Jahrhundert. Quellen und Forschungen zur Hessischen Geschichte, 29 (Darmstadt und Marburg: Hessische Historische Kommission Darmstadt und Historische Kommission fu"r Hessen, 1974); p. 107. [29] Heavens Above international location database (WWW: Heavens-Above GmbH). http://www.heavens-above.com/countries.asp In counting names we ignored those listed as an alias of another place-name, though many of these are probably old, and we ignored simplex names like , since we're interested in a two-element name. [30] 'Stadtinfo: Rosenstadt Zweibru"cken' (WWW: Zweibru"cken city government); p. 10. http://img.wekacityline.de/pdf/66482.pdf [31] Grand Larousse encyclope/dique en dix volumes (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1960); s.n. . [32] Sawyer, Birgit and Peter. Medieval Scandinavia from Conversion to Reformation ca. 800-1500 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); pp. 31-2: Most of the land that was cultivated, and much of the pasture, had once been wooded. The first stage in clearing woodland was to burn the trees and undergrowth. Numerous place-names refer to burning and include such words as the verbs or . Many such names are modern, and some may refer to the effect of natural fires, but others certainly reflect early clearances. Some are even more specific; over a hundred placenames in Norway include the noun , meaning 'trunks or roots of burnt trees, stumps in burnt ground'. [33] Sandnes, Jo|rn, & Ola Stemshaug. Norsk Stadnamnleksikon, 4th ed. (Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget, 1997); s.v. , s.n. .