ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3054 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3054 ************************************ 1 May 2005 From: Gunnvor Silfraharr (no address) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked about as a name for a Norse woman born around 980 AD, and also asked about other bynames meaning "the tall". Here is what we found. The name most probably originated as a short form of women's names like <{TH}o/rfinna>, , and , all of which were used in Iceland around the year 1000. So far as we can tell, no such names were then in use in Norway [1, 2]. The notation {dh} used above represents the character 'edh', which looks like a backward <6> with a crossbar on the riser. The slash in the names above represents an acute accent mark on the preceding letter. 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 name was pronounced roughly \FIN-nah\. For slightly greater accuracy you could pronounce the a little bit more like \ee\ than like the in English . We also found several instances of the name you've selected for your father. Early examples of the name consistently have : [1]. The patronymic formed from this name is , pronounced roughly \KOHL-swaeynz DOAT-teer\, where we've used \aey\ to represent a diphthong similar to the vowel sound in but starting with the vowel in rather than the one in . The resulting sound might roughly be described as sounding halfway between the vowel sounds in and . You also asked about the byname "the tall". This is indeed the feminine counterpart of the masculine byname found in the Icelandic Book of Settlements (Landna/mabo/k); in your period it was pronounced roughly \in HAH-wah\ [3, 4]. Since we have not found an example of the feminine byname, it isn't the very best historical re-creation, but on the whole we think it likely to be appropriate. There were also other bynames meaning "the tall". We found two bynames that were specifically used for tall women. The first, "the great, the tall", appears in the name of <{TH}ordi/s in mikla {TH}orgeirs do/ttir>, an early Icelandic woman who married one of the original settlers there. This byname is pronounced roughly \in MIK-lah\, where the in has the same slightly \ee\-like sound as the one in . The corresponding masculine byname was very common [4]. Nja/ls saga mentions another byname for a tall woman, or "long-breek", used for , born ca.940 [5], who the saga tells us was given this name because she had grown tall [4]. This byname is pronounced roughly \LAHNG-broke\. The 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 . You can write your name in several ways. In your period, the Norse wrote in runes. You can find several versions of the futhark, or runic alphabet, on the web: http://www.arild-hauge.com/enruner.htm The futhark labeled "Norwegian-Swedish Rokrunes" is 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 our period. You'll also notice that there are no runes corresponding to some of the letters in the name, like and . Just as our letter represents different sounds in the words and , the Norse used one rune to represent more than one sound. Runic spelling was not entirely consistent, but in the tenth century we would expect to see spellings similar to , , or from the futhark mentioned above. In these runic spellings, represents the tenth rune, while is used for the fourth rune. Remember that these spellings are suitable only when you write the name in runes; they should not be used with Roman letters. Since the Icelanders didn't start using Roman letters until the 12th century, any recommendation that we give for writing your name in Roman letters is necessarily a bit artificial. The spellings that we've used so far, , , and , follow a standard scholarly normalization based on the kinds of spellings found in 13th century Icelandic manuscripts. This normalization is one of the most familiar, so it's a perfectly reasonable choice. However, there is another scholarly normalization that is based on the kinds of spellings found in the very earliest Icelandic manuscripts, which you might prefer as being a little closer in time to your own period. In this normalization the names are written as follows: Finna en ha/ua kollsueins do/tter Finna en mikla kollsueins do/tter Finna langbro/k kollsueins do/tter. In conclusion, any of these three names is suitable for an Icelandic woman born around 980, but we have no evidence that was used in Norway. 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, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Talan Gwynek, Adelaide de Beaumont, and Juliana de Luna. For the Academy, Gunnvor Silfraharr 1 May 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.nn. , , , <{TH}o/rfinna>. Here represents the letter a-ring, an with a small circle over the top of the letter, and represents an a-umlaut. [2] Friedemann, Sara L. (aka Aryanhwy merch Catmael), "Viking Names found in the Landna/mabo/k" (WWW: privately published, 1998-2003). http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/landnamabok.html [3] Friedemann, Sara L. (aka Aryanhwy merch Catmael), "Viking Bynames found in the Landna/mabo/k" (WWW: privately published, 1999-2004). http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/vikbynames.htm [4] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla"ndska Personbinamn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala: 1920-21). S.vv. , , , , . [5] Magnusson, Magnus and Hermann Palsson, trans. and eds. _Njal's Saga_ (New York: Penguin, 1960). "Note on Chronology", p. 375.