ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3182
http://www.s-gabriel.org/3182
************************************

22 Sep 2006
From: Aryanhwy merch Catmael 

Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel!

You asked for our help creating an authentic 10th or early
11th-century Norwegian feminine name, with <Solveig> as your given
name and either <Reinaldrsdottir>, <Tollefsdottir>, or <Halvorsdottir>
as your surname.  You also asked if it would be appropriate to use a
second surname, <av Bergen>.  Here is what we've found.

During the period in which you're interested, the Norwegian language
was still developing out of the Old Icelandic dialects.  It's not
until the the 12th century we can distinguish Old Norwegian dialects
from Old Icelandic dialects, and even then the differences remained
very minor until the 13th century. [1]  During the 10th century, a
woman living in Norway would have had simply an Old Norse name, and so
that is what we have focused on.

The name <Solveig> is a variant of a name whose standard scholarly
form is <So,lveig>, where <o,> represents the o-ogonek, an <o> with a
reverse comma hook.  We found a number of examples <So,lveig> in
Iceland, the earliest of which is from around 1000.  In Norway, the
name can be found further back, though it was less common there than
in Iceland.  <So,lveig> or <Solveig> is a fine choice for your name.
[2,3]  Describing the pronunciation of this name during your period is
a bit difficult, as the diphthong in the final syllable is one which
is not familiar to most speakers of American English.  A rough
approximation of the pronunciation is \SOHL-bhAeegh\, where:

  \bh\  is the sound of <b> or <v> in Spanish <lobo> 'wolf' and <uva> 
        'grape'. It is the sound made by positioning your lips to say 
        a \b\, but relaxing them slightly so that the air escapes. 
        This sound does not occur in English.

  \Aee\ is a diphthong falling roughly between the diphthong found in
        <eye> and the one found in <hay>.

  \gh\  is the voiced version of \kh\, which is the sound of <ch> in
        Scottish <loch> or German <Bach>.

If necessary \bh\ can be approximated by \w\ and \Aee\ by the <eye>
vowel; the first is an approximation, and the second is how the
diphthong was pronounced a bit earlier than your period.

Unfortunately, we cannot recommend any of your bynames in the forms
that you've asked about.  <Tollef> is a very late form of the
masculine name <{TH}orleifr> (where {TH} represents the letter thorn,
which looks like a <P> with the bar continuing above the circle).  The
earliest example that we found of <Tollef> is in the 15th century.
[4,5]  <{TH}orleifr> itself was quite common in both Iceland and
Norway throughout the medieval period, so <{TH}orleifs do/ttir>
'{TH}orleifr's daughter', is a fine choice. [4]  (Here, the slash
represents an acute accent over the previous letter.  The change from
<{TH}orleifr> to <{TH}orleifs> is the result of putting the name into
the genitive (possessive) case; it's analogous to the change from
<John> to <John's> in English.)  During your period, <{TH}orleifs
do/ttir> was pronounced roughly \THOR-lAeefs DOAT-teer\, where \Aee\
is the dipththong used above, and \oa\ is the sound of <oa> in <boat>.

The byname <Reinaldrsdottir> isn't quite correct; the name <Reinaldr>
becomes <Reinalds> in the genitive case, so the correct form would be
<Reinalds do/ttir>.  However, <Reinaldr> is not a native Scandinavian
name: it's a borrowing of Continental Germanic <Reinald>, and the only
example of it that we found is of an Englishman who was bishop of
Stavanger, who died in 1135. [6]  We recommend that you do not use
<Reinaldr> as your father's name.  However, we can recommend an
alternative.  <Reinaldr> had a native Old Norse cognate, <Ro,gnvaldr>,
which was common in Norway from an early date, so <Ro,gnvalds do/ttir>
is also a fine choice for your byname. [13]  <Ro,gnvalds do/ttir> was
pronounced roughly \ROHGHN-bhahlts DOAT-teer\ in your period.

The name <Halvor> is also more properly spelled <Hallvo,r>. 
<Hallvo,r> is a feminine name, of which we found only one example, an
early-period Icelandic woman. [7]  Matronymic bynames (bynames based
on the bearer's mother's name) are very rare in Old Norse. [9]  We
recommend that you do not use <Hallvarar do/ttir> as your byname. 
(<Hallvarar> is the possessive form of <Hallvo,r>.)

We did find a masculine name which sounds similar: <Hallvar{dh}r>
(where {dh} is the letter edh, which looks like a backwards '6' with a
cross-bar).  <Hallvar{dh}r> was extremely common in Norway, though
less so in Iceland. [8]  <Hallvar{dh}ar do/ttir> is a fine choice for
your byname, and in your period it would have been pronounced roughly
\HAHL-bhar-dhar DOAT-teer\, where \dh\ is the sound of <th> in <these>.

The byname <av Bergen> is not quite correct; these spellings are
appropriate for a later period, and during your period a different
preposition was used.  The modern name <Bergen> is from the Old Norse
<Bergvin> or <Bjo,rgvin>, literally 'hill-meadow' or 'cliff-meadow'
but here with the sense 'meadow or pasture between hills'.  The
spelling <Bergen> first becomes common in the 15th century, far after
your period. [14]  The element <vin> 'meadow' is common in Norwegian
place-names, where it tended to develop into the spelling <-yn>, and
finally <-en>. [15]  It's not clear whether <Berg-> or <Bjo,rg-> is
the most typical spelling of the initial element in your period, but
we believe that forms with <Bjo,rg-> are more likely.  We therefore
recommend the spelling <i/ Bjo,rgvin> for the 10th century; the
preposition <i/> 'in' was the one used most commonly with names
denoting low land. [16]  <i/ Bjo,rgvin> would have been pronounced
roughly \ee BYORGH-bhin\.

However, during your period, Norwegian men and women were most
frequently recorded with just a single given name, or a given name
plus one descriptive element.  We therefore recommend that you use
only one byname at a time, though in some circumstances you could've
been known as <i/ Bjo,rgvin>, and in others as your father's daughter.

The Norwegians during your period 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 "Runes from the 900's to ca. 1050 AD" 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.  

We haven't found any runic examples of <So,lveig>, but we can
reconstruct a probable spelling based on other names which use these
elements.  The element <so,l-> is related to the word <salr> 'room,
hall', and is also found in the masculine name <So,lmundr>.  Runic
spellings of <So,lmundr> tended to preserve the initial <a>; we find
it spelled <salmut>. [11]

It's not clear what the etymology, usually the best guide to early
runic forms, of <-veig> is.  The only name containing <-veig> for
which we have runic spellings is <Ragnveig>, which was spelled in
runes as <ranuaik> and <ranuauk>. [12]  The spelling <ranuauk> is
unexpected, and shouldn't be taken as typical.

Based on this, we believe that <So,lveig> could plausibly have been
spelled <saluaik> in runes.

The most likely runic spelling of the word for 'daughter' in your
period is <tutir>.  The rest of the elements in the bynames we've
recommended above would probably be spelled as follows:

   {TH}orleifs      {th}orlaifs
   Ro,gnvaldr       raknualts, rahnualts
   Hallvar{dh}ar    haluar{th}aR
   i/ Bjo,rgvin     i biarguin

We hope that this letter has been useful to you and that you won't
hesitate to write us again if any part was unclear or you have further
questions.  Research and commentary on this letter was provided by
Talan Gwynek and Juliana de Luna.

For the Academy,
Aryanhwy merch Catmael, 22 September 2006
 
--
References:

[1] Brief Intro

[2] 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. So,lveig

[3] Kruken, Kristoffer, ed. _Norsk personnamnleksikon_, 2nd ed. (Oslo:
Det Norske Samlaget, 1995), s.n. Solveig

[4] Lind, op. cit., s.n. {TH}orleifr

[5] Diplomatarium Norvegicum, vol. 21, no. 379
http://www.dokpro.uio.no/dipl_norv/diplom_field_eng.html

[6] Lind, op. cit., s.n. Reinaldr

[7] ibid., s.n. Hallvo,r

[8] ibid., s.nn. Hallvar{dh}r

[9] We have found only one solid example, in [10].

[10] Lindorm Eriksson (aka Christer Romson), _The Bynames of the
Viking Age Runic Inscriptions_ (WWW: Academy of Saint Gabriel, 2000) 
http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/lindorm/runicbynames/

[11] Peterson, Lena, "Nordiskt runnamnslexikon" (WWW: Institute for
Dialectology, Onomastics and Folklore Research, 2001), s.n. Salmundr
http://www.sofi.se/SOFIU/runlex/

[12] ibid., s.n. Ragnv{ae}ig

[13] Lind, op. cit., s.n. Ro,gnvaldr

[14] Sandnes, Jo|rn, and Ola Stemshaug, _Norsk Stadnamnleksikon_, 4th
ed. (Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget, Oslo), s.n. Bergen

[15] Cleasby, R., G. Vigfusson, & W. Craigie, _An Icelandic-English
Dictionary_ (Oxford: At the University Press, 1975), s.v. vin

[16] ibid., s.v. i/