Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel!
You asked for suggestions for a name for a Viking craftsman in the late 10th or early 11th century, possibly using <Hagar> as the given name. Here is what we have found.
<Hagar> is not a Viking name, the comic strip notwithstanding. There is a woman in the Old Testament named <Hagar>, Sarah's handmaiden and Abraham's concubine [Genesis 25:12]; we know of no other place where the name exists. We therefore recommend very strongly that your client avoid the name.
The most similar Viking names that we can find are <Heggr>, <Hagbar{dh}r>, and <Hagni> [1, 3]. None of these sounds much like <Hagar>. They are pronounced roughly \HEG\, \HAHG-barth\, and \HAHG-nee\. The final <-r> in the first two names is nearly silent; it is only pronounced as an unvoiced rolled \r\. It is _not_ a separate syllable. {dh} represents the letter edh, which is pronounced like the "th" in <this> and written as a 'd' with the upper limb curved to the left and crossed by a bar.
It may interest you that in the Swedish version of the comic strip "Hagar the Horrible", the main character is called <Hagbard>, the modern version of <Hagbar{dh}r>. This name appeared on a runestone toward the end of the Viking age (950-1150), which is just when you want to set your persona [4]. It appears in runes as <iahbathr>. We suspect that the initial i-rune represents either an error for the h-rune or a reduced form of the \h\ sound. The h-rune was often used for \g\. The <th> represents the thorn-rune. You can find illustrations of runes on the web at:
http://www.kuai.se/~griffon/runes/futhark/
In Viking culture, any free man would have been known as his father's son, e.g. <Hagni Thorvaldsson> "Hagni, son of Thorvaldr". Some men were also known by a descriptive byname, like <Hagni Svartr> "Hagni the Black" or <Jotun-Hagbar{dh}r> "Giant Hagbar{dh}r" [2].
One good place to look for Viking names is the book _The Old Norse Name_ by G. Fleck (aka Geirr Bassi Haraldsson). Many heralds in the Society own copies; you can buy it for about $5 from Black Sheep Books, 9850-3 San Jose Blvd., Jacksonville, FL 32257, (904) 880-1895. It contains lists of documented given names and bynames and a short description of how to form patronymics in Old Norse. It is an excellent guide to basic Viking names.
I hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Zenobia Naphtali, Talan Gwynek, and Lindorm Eriksson.
For the Academy,
Arval Benicoeur
References
[1] Fellows Jensen, Gillian, _Scandinavian Personal Names in Lincolnshire
and Yorkshire_ (Copenhagen: 1968).
[2] Fleck, G., _The Old Norse Name_ (Studia Marklandica, no date).
[3] Uppsala University Department for Scandinavian Languages, _Rundata_,
pre-release version 8.84 (test) (Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala universitet, 1990).
[4] Swedens Runic Inscription U 1041.