ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 829
http://www.s-gabriel.org/829
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* NOTE: Some of the Academy's early reports     *
*       contain errors that we haven't yet      *
*       corrected.  Please use it with caution. *
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13 Apr 1998
From: Jaymi Bouziden 

Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel.

You asked for information on the Old Norse/Icelandic masculine name
<Thorgrim Ketilsen>, as used between 850 and 1050.  You also asked
which of the endings <-sen> or <-son> would be more appropriate for
an Icelandic/Danish name.

As an Icelandic name, <Thorgrim Ketilsen> is almost perfect.  The
standard spelling for the given name is <{TH}orgri/mr> (the {TH}
represents the character "thorn" [1] and the slash represents an acute
accent over the preceding vowel), pronounced \THOR-khreem\ (the <-r> is
almost silent, just an unvoiced final roll; the \kh\ is pronounced like 
the hard, rasping \ch\ in the Scottish "loch" or the German "Bach"). [2]
The Old Danish form is <Thorgrim>. [3]

The second name is a patronymic byname, identifying you as the son of a 
man named <Ketill>.  The Icelandic form is most likely written as 
<Ketils son>, pronouced \KET-ils sohn\. [2]  

<{TH}orgri/mr Ketils son> would be an appropriate masculine name for early 
period Iceland.  In Old Danish, the name would be almost the same, 
<Thorgrim Ketils son>, the given name having lost the inflectional <-r>.

However, this spelling uses Roman characters.  In your period, your name,
if written at all, would have been written in runes, specifically the
Viking Age futhark with 16 runes, as <{th}urkrimR kitils sun>. [4,5]  For
more information on the runic alphabet, or futhark, you might want to
look at these sites on the web.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/1568

http://gonzo.hd.uib.no/Runefonter/Gullskoen-e.html

We hope this letter has been useful.  Please write us again if you have any
more questions or if any of this letter has been unclear.  Talan Gwynek,
Arval Benicoeur, Lindorm Eriksson, and Walraven van Nijmegen contributed
research and commentary for this letter.

For the Academy,

Livia Montgomery

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[1] The "thorn" looks like a "p" and a "b" superimposed on each other, a
single loop with both an ascender and a descender; it is pronounced like 
the \th\ in "thing".

[2] Fleck, G. (Geirr Bassi Haraldsson). _The Old Norse Name_. Olney,
Maryland : Yggssalr Press, 1977.

[3] Lind, E.H. _Norsk-Isla:ndska Dopnam ock Fingerade Namn fra*n
Medeltiden_. Uppsala : A.-B. Lundequist, 1905-1915. Suppl. Oslo : J.
Dybwad, 1931.  (The colon represents an umlaut over the preceding letter;
the asterisk represents a small circle over the preceding letter.)

[4] Uppsala University. Department for Scandanavian Languages. _Rundata_,
software pre-release version 8.84 (test). Uppsala : Uppsala universitet,
1990.

[5] The <g> in <{TH}orgri/mr> is pronounced as a \kh\ and is written as a
k-rune.  There was no g-rune.  Likewise the <e> in <Ketil> is written with 
the i-rune and the <o> in <son> is written with the u-rune.  There were two 
r-runes.  The lower case <r> refers to the 5th rune and the capital <R>
refers 
to the 16th rune in the runic alphabet.

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