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Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel!
You asked for our opinion of the name "Robert of York" as an 11th or 12th century English name. It is almost a perfect name for that period.
"Robert" appears in the Domesday Boke and was in use through the end of our period [1]. It is unlikely to have been used before the Norman Conquest, except perhaps by the occasional Norman immigrant.
The city of York was called "Eboracum" by the Romans, and its name slowly evolved from the Roman form to the modern one. It is recorded in various forms close to your period [2, 3]:
Eboraco c.1160 (in a Latin context) 3eorc, 3orc 1205
The symbol '3' represents the Middle English letter yogh, which is pronounced in these words very much like the 'y' in 'yes'. The first 'u' in "Euruic" and "Euerwik" represents a 'v', and the second 'u' in "Euruic" was probably pronounced as a 'w'. We conclude that the form "York" is possible at the end of the 12th century, but earlier than that we would expect the city's name to appear in one of the older forms.
In written documents throughout your period, personal names connected to place names usually use "de" rather than "of". In speech, people of your time probably used "of". That is to say, a man might be called "Robert of Euruic" and recorded in writing as "Robert de Euruic".
I hope this letter has been helpful. Talan Gwynek contributed to this letter.
For the Academy,
Arval Benicoeur
References
[1] E.G. Withycombe, The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, 3rd
ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
[2] P. H. Reaney & R. M. Wilson, A Dictionary of English Surnames (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995).
[3] Eilert Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names,
4th edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).