|
Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel!
You asked whether an Anglo-Saxon man could have had the name <{AE}{th}elr{ae}d {ae}t {DH}eorcmor>. (Here {ae} represents the 'aesc', or a-e-ligature, {th} represents the letter thorn, and {dh} the letter edh, or 'crossed-d'.)
The name is almost authentic: it needs a little grammatical adjustment, and the place-name is a bit unlikely in this form, though the meaning is fine.
<{AE}{th}elr{ae}d> is a standard Late West Saxon spelling of a well-evidenced Old English given name. It appears as <Aedilred> in Bede's 'Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum', written in the first half of the 8th century, and it was still in use in the 11th century by king {AE}{th}elr{ae}d II (called <Unr{ae}d>). [5]
Old English bynames indicating place of residence are not uncommon. They take the form of a preposition, which may be <{ae}t>, <on>, or <of>, followed by a place-name in the dative case. [1] Thus, all we have to do is make sure that the place-name is a reasonable construction and that it's in the dative case. (This is the form of the noun normally used after prepositions indicating location.)
The Old English word <deorc> 'dark, gloomy, obscure' is extremely rare in English place-names; in fact, we found only one example of it, a place now called Darklake in Devon. [Sm] Note that the word begins with <d>, not {dh} ('edh'): your compound should be <Deorcmor>, not <{DH}eorcmor>. Its dative case is <Deorcmore>, so the whole name would be <{AE}{th}elr{ae}d {ae}t Deorcmore>. But owing to the extreme rarity of <deorc> in English place-names, we strongly encourage you to substitute another element with a similar meaning.
As it happens, there are two such elements that actually appear in compounds with <mor>. The first is <bl{ae}c> 'black, dark-colored, dark' : there are places named Blackmoor or Blackmore in Dorset, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, and Worcestershire. <{AE}{th}elr{ae}d {ae}t Bl{ae}cmore> would be an excellent 9th or 10th century name in the West Saxon dialect. [2]
The other element is <sweart> 'black, dark': there is a Swarthmoor in Lancashire. Thus, <{AE}{th}elr{ae}d {ae}t Sweartmore> would also be a fine name. You might want to know, however, that this element is found mostly in the Northern counties, where it was reinforced by the cognate Old Norse adjective <svartr> 'black'. [4] If your persona is from the south, and especially from outside the Danelaw, <{AE}{th}elr{ae}d {ae}t Bl{ae}cmore> would be a bit more likely.
To sum up, <{AE}{th}elr{ae}d {ae}t Bl{ae}cmore> would be very authentic indeed. <{AE}{th}elr{ae}d {ae}t Sweartmore> would also be very authentic, but it would definitely suggest that your persona lived in the North Country. <{AE}{th}elr{ae}d {ae}t Deorcmore> is generally consistent with Old English naming, but the use of <deorc> in the place-name is uncharacteristic and should be avoided if you want maximum authenticity. In all of these names you can substitute <on> or <of> for <{ae}t>, though <of> seems to be less common than the other two prepositions.
Zenobia Naphtali also contributed to this letter. We hope that it has been of use and that we can continue to help if you have further questions.
For the Academy,
Talan Gwynek
[1] Clark, Cecily, 'Onomastics', in Hogg.
[2] Ekwall, Eilert, _The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names_ (Oxford: At the University Press, 1989).
[3] Hogg, Richard M., ed., _The Cambridge History of the English Language_, Volume I: The Beginnings to 1066 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
[4] Smith, A.H., _English Place-Name Elements_ (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1956).
[5] Stro:m, Hilmer, _Old English Personal Names in Bede's History: An Etymological-Phonological Investigation_, Lund Studies in English 8, (Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1939). (Here <o:> stands for an o-umlaut.)