ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3075
http://www.s-gabriel.org/3075
************************************

2 Oct 2005
From: Femke de Roas 


Greetings from the Academy of St. Gabriel!

You asked us if we could suggest a name similar to <Griffin de
Stokeport> that would be appropriate for a 9th century Frankish man. 
Here is what we found.

By the 8th century, the term 'Frank' would have simply have meant 'an
inhabitant of northern Gaul' [1]. 

The name <Griffin> is a pet form of an earlier form of the Welsh name
<Gruffudd>; our earliest examples, in the form <Grifin>, are from
Domesday Book and refer to men living in 1066 [2].  Thus, it is
unlikely that the name is appropriate for 9th century France.  There
was, however, a similar masculine name of Germanic origin that appears
in France as <Gripho> in the 8th and 10th centuries, as <Griffo> in
the 9th century, and as <Grifo> in the 10th century [3].  These forms,
however, are from Latin records, and it takes a bit of digging to
uncover the underlying vernacular names.  The details are rather
technical, so we've relegated them to a footnote [4].  Our conclusion
is that the name would most likely have been <Grife>, pronounced
roughly \GREE-f@\, in the early Old French of your period.  (Here \@\
stands for the sound of <a> in <sofa> and <about>.)

Unfortunately, the vernacular was only just starting to be written in
the 9th century.  In fact, only two 9th century vernacular works
survive, one from 842 and the other from about 880, and both use some
Latin spellings alongside attempts to represent the vernacular [11]. 
Thus, <Grife> is something of a fiction: it represents the spoken name
as accurately as we can reconstruct it, but in a written form that may
well not have been used for another century or two.  In writing we
would on the whole still expect to see <Grifo>, at least until very
late in the 9th century.

Surnames were uncommon in France in the 9th century, with about 20% of
the individuals recorded in our sources at that time having a
surname recorded.  This figure is from the southwest, where the French
use of bynames began.  The percentage in the region you have asked
about was probably lower [13].  Most of these are patronymic in form
and we suggest that you follow that model, rather than continuing to
use a locative byname.  We can offer a Latinized version of a
patronymic byname with considerable confidence.  A vernacular spelling
is likely to involve considerably more speculation.

Note that <Stokeport> is a medieval English form of the modern English
place-name <Stockport>; the earliest known instance of this spelling
is from 1188.  The name is of Old English origin, so even in a 9th
century form it would clearly be altogether unsuitable in a French
name. [14]

We hope that this letter is useful to you.  Please do not hesitate to
write again if any part was unclear or if you have further
questions.  Research and commentary on this letter were provided by
Arval Benicoeur, Gunnvor Silfraharr, Alzbeta Michalik, and Talan Gwynek.

For the Academy,
Femke de Roas
October 2, 2005

________________________________________________________________________

REFERENCES

[1]  Lodge, R. Anthony, _French: from Dialect to Standard_ (New York:
Routledge, 1993), p. 63-4.

[2]  Von Feilitzen, Olof, _The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of
Domesday Book_ (Uppsala: 1937), p. 275.

[3]  Morlet, Marie-The/re\se, _Les Noms de Personne sur le Territoire
de l'Ancienne Gaule du VIe au XIIe Sie\cle_, three volumes (Paris:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1965, 1972, 1985), I:115a.

[4]  Gallo-Romance nouns, including personal names, had two
grammatical forms.  To oversimplify just a little, one form, called
the nominative case, was used when the noun was the subject of a
sentence, and the other, called the oblique case, was used in most
other grammatical contexts.  Short names of Germanic origin whose
nominative cases ended in <-o> in early Gallo-Romance had oblique
cases ending in <-one>, some fairly well-known examples being <Wido> ~
<Widone>, <Hugo> ~ <Hugone>, and <Milo> ~ <Milone>.  The forms changed
a bit as Gallo-Romance developed into Old French, but the two-case
pattern remained, yielding for these names Old French <Gui> ~ <Guyon>,
<Hue> ~ <Huon>, and <Mile> ~ <Milon>. [6, 7]

We can be quite sure that <Grifo> followed the same pattern, with
early Gallo-Romance nominative <Grifo> and oblique <Grifone>, so it
remains only to determine what changes would have occurred by the very
early Old French of your period.  The name is related to Old High
German <grifan> 'to seize, to grasp'; from this word (or its Frankish
cognate) is derived Old French <grif> 'claw' [3, 8].  The name <Grifo>
would normally also have developed into <Grif>, since final <-o> was
regularly lost, but in names of this kind it usually shows an
exceptional development to <-e> [5].  This can be seen clearly in 
<Mile> above; the <-e> is also visible in <Hue>, though the <g> has
been lost as a result of other sound changes.  Thus, the early Old
French vernacular form of the name was most likely <Grife>.

The oblique case ending <-one> regularly developed into Old French
<-on>, just as in all of the examples above [9].  Thus, the oblique
case form <Grifone> will have become <Grifon> in early Old French;
this was pronounced roughly \gree-FOON\, with \OO\ as in <moon>.

By the end of the 13th century, the Old French system of separate
nominative and oblique forms of nouns had completely broken down, and
one form was used in all grammatical contexts.  Usually it was the
oblique form that survived, and indeed we find a masculine name
<Grifon> in Paris in 1292 that is very likely a rare survival of the
name that we've been discussing [10, 12].  Personal names sometimes
survived in both forms, the two then being treated as independent
names, as in the case of the pairs <Gui> ~ <Guyon>, <Hue> ~ <Huon>,
and <Mile> ~ <Milon> previously mentioned.  In your period, however,
the grammatical distinction was still observed, and <Grifon> would
have been used only as the oblique case of the name <Grife>.

[5]  Regula, Moritz.  Historische Grammatik des Franzo"sischen. 2
vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, Universita"tsverlag, 1956), II:25.

[6]  Lebel, Paul, _Les noms de personnes en France_, 6th ed. (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), p. 58.

[7]  Pope, M.K., _From Latin to Modern French_ (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1966), Sections 30, 793.

[8]  Robert, Paul, _Le Petit Robert 1: Dictionnaire alphabe/tique et
analogique de la langue franc,ais_ (Paris: Le Robert, 1985), s.v.
<griffe>.

[9]  Pope, M.K., _From Latin to Modern French_ (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1966), Section 800.

[10]  Ewert, Alfred, _The French Language_ (London: Faber & Faber
Limited, 1953, Sections 182-4.

[11]  Ewert, Alfred, _The French Language_ (London: Faber & Faber
Limited, 1953), Sects. 7, 152-3.

[12]  Colm Dubh, "An Index to the Given Names in the 1292 Census of
Paris", Proceedings of the Known World Heraldic Symposium 1996 (SCA:
Montgomery, Alabama; WWW: SCA, Inc., 1997).
http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/paris.html 

[13]  Monique Bourin, "France du Midi et France du Nord", in:
_L'anthroponymie, document de l'histoire sociale des mondes
me/diterrane/ens me/die/vaux_.  Collection de l'E/cole Franc,aise de
Rome, 226.  Monique Bourin, Jean Marie Martin and Franc,ois Menant,
eds.  (Rome and Paris: Ecole Franc,aise de Rome, 1996).  pp. 179-202.

[14]  _Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, Based on the
Collections of the English Place-Name Society_, Edited by Victor
Watts, Edited in association with John Insley, Margaret Gelling
(Cambridge University Press: January 2004), s.n. <Stockport>.