ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3111 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3111 ************************************ 8 Aug 2006 From: Aryanhwy merch Catmael Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for our opinion of as a 10th century Icelandic masculine name. Here is what we found. The initial settlement of Iceland by Norsemen, most of whom came from the western coast of Norway, took place between about 870 and 930 CE. [1] About 200 years later Icelanders set down a written record of the principal settlers, their holdings, their wives and descendants,some of their feuds, and various other incidents associated with the settlement. This record is known as _Landna/mabo/k_ (Book of Settlements); its oldest surviving versions date from the late 13th and early 14th centuries. (In this letter, we're using the slash to represent an acute accent over the previous letter). No one knows how accurate a record it is; scholarly opinion by and large ranges between accepting it as generally pretty reliable for broad detail and dismissing it as a collection of legends. Few if any scholars take it completely at face value, but for all this uncertainty it remains our principal source of information on the names of the early Icelanders. [2] is almost right: the standard scholarly form of the name is , where stands for o-ogonek, an with a reversed comma hanging from the lower edge. This is a good choice. The name is ancient in Norway, where it was borne by a great grandfather of one of the original Icelandic settlers and by the father of another, but from the settlement of Iceland to the end of the Viking age the name was used mostly in Iceland. At least three 10th century Icelanders are said to have borne the name. [3] Like the given name, the patronymic is a good choice that just needs a little adjustment. Although the masculine name isn't recorded as the name of any of the original settlers, it was common in Iceland from the 10th century on. [4] Certainly by the later 10th century an Icelander named could have been the son of a man named ; the question is just how the patronymic should be written. We recommend the form .Two points probably require explanation: writing it as two words, and the use of instead of . In your period a patronymic was more a literal description than a part of one's name, so it was normally written as two words. [5] In fact this practice was generally continued in the earliest non-runic records that we've found, which date from the 13th century, so it seems clearly the best choice for your period. [6, 8] Old Norse spelling was not standardized. Consequently, scholars generally use standardized forms unless specific documentary spellings are relevant to the discussion. There are several different standardizations in use, but all are based partly on manuscript spellings and partly on a kind of theoretical linguistic abstraction of the language. From an abstract point of view, the possessive form of the name is formed by dropping the final <-r> and adding <-s> to make , which is probably the most common standardized form. However, it's a bit misleading in terms of documentary spellings: early documents more typically have spellings like and . [4] This is probably because the name was pronounced roughly \BRAHNTS\, and in Old Norse the letter represented the sound \ts\: similar early spellings are commonly found whenever the name would otherwise end in <-ds> or <-ts>. At any rate, the observation has led to an alternative convention of replacing the possessive by after the letters and . This convention seems to us to be better historical re-creation, so we recommend that you use it. The result, when you write your name in Latin letters, is , pronounced roughly \HAHL-byorn BRAHNTS soan\. However, in your period the Icelanders were not yet using Latin letters, and your name would have been written (or more likely carved) in runes. You can find several versions of the futhark, or runic alphabet, on the web: http://www.arild-hauge.com/enruner.htm Unfortunately, we have little or no evidence of just which runes were used in Iceland. Given the very close linguistic and cultural ties between Iceland and Norway, however, it's very likely that the futharks labelled 'Norwegian-Swedish Ro"krunes (ca. 800-900)' and 'Runes from the 900's to ca. 1050 AD' would be suitable. (The represents an o-umlaut). Your name would be written with the runes corresponding to the labels . (Note that stands for the 10th rune, not the 4th rune, and stands for the 5th rune, not the last one.) To summarize, is a fine 10th century Icelandic masculine name for your husband's persona. 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, Ursula Georges, Eleyne de Comnocke, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Maria Abramsdottir, Ines Alfon, Ari Ansson, and Arval Benicoeur. For the Academy, William Lyons of Portland, 08 August 2006 -- References: [1] Foote, P.G., & D.M. Wilson. The Viking Achievement (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1980); p. 52. [2] Sverrir Jakobsson. 'What is the source value of Landna/mabo/k? And when is it thought to have been used?' (WWW: Vi/sindavefurinn, 12 February 2005). http://visindavefur.hi.is/?id=5451 [3] Lind, E.H. Norsk-Isla"ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fra*n Medeltiden (Uppsala & Leipzig: 1905-1915, sup. Oslo, Uppsala and Kobenhavn: 1931); s.n. . (Here stands for a-umlaut, and stands for an with a small circle directly above it.) [4] Lind, op. cit., s.n. . [5] Samnordisk runtextdatabas (WWW: Uppsala University, 2004). Relevant examples dated to the 10th century are signa O"l 2, O"g 82, and DR 55. (Here <"> stands for an umlaut over the preceding vowel.) http://www.nordiska.uu.se/forskn/samnord.htm [6] Bjerke, Robert. A Contrasting Study of Old German and Old Norwegian Kinship Terms. Indiana University Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics, Memoir 22 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969); pp. 141-151 list all instance of the 'son' word through 1310 in Old Norwegian documents collected in the Diplomatarium Norvegicum. [7] Two-word forms like outnumber one-word forms like by more than three to one in the 13th century citations. [7] Diplomatarium Norvegicum (WWW: Dokumentasjonsprosjektet, 1998). http://www.dokpro.uio.no/dipl_norv/diplom_field_eng.html [8] One of the earliest extant Icelandic manuscripts is Codex Regius No. 2365, which is dated to the second half of the 13th century. [9] A facsimile was published in 1891; much of it has been made available on-line. In it the name name of Loki, son of Laufey, appears as and , where <{av}> stands for a letter that looks like a ligature of and , and the is actually represented by a stroke over the . [10] [9] Gordon, E.V. Introduction to Old Norse, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957); pp. lxvii, lxxxii. [10] Edda Mythic Poems. Codex Regius, Leaves 1-39. Facsimiles by F. A. Wimmer & F. Jo/nsson, 1891. Scanned from copies in the personal research collection of Samuel D. Sinner. Formatting (c) 2004 by Samuel D. Sinner. http://www.angelfire.com/moon/drsinner/regius.html The examples are on Page 34, near the beginnings of lines 10 and 13. The first 18 lines of the same sheet can also be seen in the photograph opposite p. lxiv in [9].