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Greetings,
Here's the information we found about "Edward Long-hair," which you wanted to use as an 11th-century name from Wessex.
There are several different forms of "Edward" that were used in the 11th century. The most common Saxon forms are: (1)
In the Domesday Book, which was written by Norman clerks, "Edward" appears as
In all these names, (us) indicates the Latin ending which was used to make men's names consistent with Latin use. In daily speech, a person whose name was written "Edwardus" would be called "Edward."
There are several reasonable translations of "long-hair" from your period, including: (2)
Langfeax
Langhaer
Langher
However, we didn't find any examples of Old English names which referred to hair length. There are plenty of names using the elements "long" and "hair," but we don't have any examples in which they were combined. Most names mentioning hair refer to the color. It's possible that it was used and not recorded, but we have no way to verify that.
The closest we came to "long-hair" was the 13th century name "Myttehere," which means "with the hair." The most likely 11thcentury form of this name is "Mid {TH}am here," where "{TH}" is the Old English letter "thorn."
A byname like "Eadward Mid {TH}am Here" would be a plausible 11th-century form of your name. If you want a byname that was definitely used in the 11th century, you may want to consider something different.
Talan Gwynek, Arval Benicoeur, Tangwystl verch Morgant Glasvryn, Effric neyn Kenyeoch vc Ralte, and Zenobia Naphtali contributed to this letter.
We hope this has been helpful, and that we can continue to assist you.
In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of S. Gabriel