Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 697

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 697

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/697

Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel!

You asked whether you could plausibly spell the name <Etheldreda> with an initial {AE} (aesc) provided that a Saxon family was doing the naming. You also noted that a scholarly text on Anglo-Saxon culture locates Tamworth on a map of 9th century England and asked whether that would be sufficient documentation for the locative byname <of Tamworth>.

Whether it's plausible to spell <Etheldreda> with an initial {AE} depends on just when the name is supposed to have been in use and on who was writing it. Since you didn't specify a time period, I've covered several possibilities in my comments.

As you noted, the name occurs in a rather wide variety of spellings. The normalized late West Saxon form is <{AE}{dh}el{dh}ry{dh}>, where {dh} represents the letter 'edh' (crossed <d>). [5] Exactly this form (in the dative case, with addition of a final <-e>) is found in the 10th c. [1] By about 1200 spellings like <Aildreda> are typical, though we occasionally encounter a conservative <Adeldreda>, even for the same person. [4] After the middle of the 13th century the name is increasingly likely to appear as <Audrey>, though <Etheldreda> continues to be used into the 14th century in Essex and Suffolk, perhaps in memory of St. Etheldreda. [3, 4]

In general I think that the forms ending in <-eda> show Latin influence; the more Old English forms use <y> or <i> instead of the <e>. The {AE} is an Old English usage. As such it is likely to occur in conjunction with other Old English spelling features, and it's unlikely to occur much after c.1200.

Tamworth existed in the 9th century, but the author of the book that you found was using the modern spelling. The name can be found in Old English records as <Tamouuor{dh}i> 781, <Tamouuorthig> 781, <Tomewor{dh}ig> 799, and <Tamewor{th}ig> 922 (where {th} represents the letter 'thorn'); in Domesday Book it appears as <Tamuuorde>. [2] The locative byname itself has been recorded as <de Tamewurthe> 1189-99 and <de Tamwurth> 1262. [3]

Putting all the pieces together, these data suggest the following possibilities. In the 10th century or so the name might have appeared as <{AE}theldry{dh} {ae}t Tamouuor{dh}ige>. Many other forms are also possible. For instance, you can replace the preposition <{ae}t> with <on> or <of>. In the given name you can substitute a thorn or an edh for the <th> or the <d>, or replace the final edh by a <d>.

In the late 12th century the name could have appeared as <Adeldreda de Tamewurthe>, though <Aildreda> is probably a more typical spelling of the given name by then. By the mid-13th century or so <Aldreda de Tamwurth> would be a typical form.

This letter is acceptable to the College of Arms as documentation for any of the suggested forms; just print it out in its entirety, complete with headers.

I hope that this information is helpful. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to write us again.

For the Academy,

Talan Gwynek


[1] Boehler, Maria, _Die altenglischen Frauenamen_ (Nendlem, Liechtenstein: Krauss Reprint, 1967 [1930]).

[2] Ekwall, Eilert. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

[3] Reaney, P.H. & R.M. Wilson, _A Dictionary of English Surnames_ (London: Routledge, 1991).

[4] Seltén, Bo. The Anglo-Saxon Heritage in Middle English Personal Names: East Anglia 1100-1399 (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1972, 1979). (The slash represents an acute accent over the preceding vowel.)

[5] Some scholars prefer to normalize the name as <{AE}{th}el{th}ry{th}>, where {th} represents the letter thorn; the thorn and the edh were largely interchangeable in later Old English usage, though the edh was definitely preferred at the end of a word.