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/