ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2721 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2721 ************************************ 26 Jul 2003 From: "Brian M. Scott" Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel! You asked whether there was a Viking feminine name sounding something like , preferably appropriate to the 10th or 11th century but later if necessary. Failing that, you wondered whether or was used by the Scandinavians as early as the 10th or 11th century. You also wanted, if possible, a byname meaning 'Reiner's wife' and one indicating a connection with the Netherlands, perhaps . We'll discuss the individual elements first and then consider how they might be combined in a full name. The discussion is a bit involved, but there's a brief summary of our conclusions at the end of the letter. We were unable to find any Old Norse feminine name particularly similar to , so we concentrated on and . Unfortunately, the name (in any form) was a relative latecomer to Scandinavia. The earliest known bearer of the name in Scandinavia was the Russian-born wife of King Harald Hardraade of Norway in the mid-11th century. Her name was actually , a Russian form of , but her Swedish mother modified it to to give it a more familiar sound in Norse ears. [1] The next known bearer of the name in Scandinavia was a Swedish nun in the late 12th century; her name is recorded in Latin as . [2] In the late 13th century the name occurs a few times in Sweden, but only in Latin documents, where it appears as , , , , (for a woman who appears elsewhere as ), and a Latinized version of . At about the same time in Denmark it appears as , , , and , and a little earlier, in the 1260s, as and . [2, 3] In the West Norse area there is one Icelandic instance of from the 13th century, but after Harald Hardraade's wife the name is not found again in Norway until 1352. [4, 5] Finally, an or is also mentioned in the Icelandic Annals for the years 1230, 1231, 1234, and 1235, but since the Annals include foreign events of importance, and we have not seen the actual entries, we cannot be sure that she was even Scandinavian. [4] It is not unlikely that these entries refer to St. Elizabeth of Hungary (also known as St. Elizabeth of Thuringia), who died in 1231 and was canonized in 1235; her popularity as patroness of the poor is thought to have been largely responsible for increasing European use of the name from the late 13th century on. [6, 3, 7, 8] All in all it seems unlikely that a native Scandinavian woman would have been named or before about 1250. At that point we think that a Scandinavian 'Elisabeth' would actually have been known in Sweden and Denmark as or and in Iceland as , though she could certainly have been recorded as in a Latin document. [9] In Scandinavia is primarily a variant spelling of Old Danish or , a name that may be more familiar in its Old Norwegian form . [10] (Here <{ae}> stands for the letter aesc, the a-e-ligature formed by squashing together an and an so that they share a common upright.) Our earliest Danish examples are from the late 12th and 13th centuries and are all Latinized; typical forms are , , and . These probably reflect an Old Danish , pronounced very roughly \RAY-nehr\; it's possible that the name might also have been written in Old Danish, but at that early date we think it somewhat unlikely. The name was not particularly common, but after about 1250 it would certainly be possible for a Dane named to have a wife named or . (We've concentrated on Danish because the name because the Old Swedish and Old Norwegian forms were even further away from , and the name seems not to have been used in Iceland. [10, 11]) Whether this spousal relationship would have been expressed in the wife's byname is another and harder question. As you may know, Scandinavian bynames are typically patronymic, identifying the bearer as a child of his or her father, and a spousal byname would at least be quite unusual. We did find a handful of examples; <{TH}oralfs kona> 1289 'Thoralf's wife' and 1282 'Eilifr's wife' are quite typical. [12] (Here <{TH}> stands for the runic letter thorn, which looks like a superimposed on a

so that their loops coincide.) These are Norwegian, but in Denmark we find 1377 'Elsef Jens' wife'. [3] All of these are a bit later than we'd like, especially the last, but this may be due to the limitations of our sources and the fact that women are quite poorly represented in the early documentary sources. On the basis of the available evidence a hypothetical Old Danish byname would clearly not be the best historical re-creation, but we suspect that such forms were used from time to time. In a Latin document the same description could have appeared as , , , or . The byname is a typographical error for 'the Flemish (woman)'. (One source gives the adjective as , but this appears to be incorrect, or at best an unusual variant.) [14, 15, 16] We have not been able to date any of our examples of this byname and its masculine counterpart, most of which appear to be literary. A more common byname for a Fleming was Old Norse 'a Fleming', corresponding to Old Danish ; both are found from about 1300 on. [16, 17] We cannot be certain, but it appears that early examples of both bynames are literal: the bearers actually were of Flemish origin. If this is so, a woman of Scandinavian origin would probably not have borne either byname. To sum up, we think that 'Elisif Regner's wife' is a possible late-13th century Danish name, though we have to caution that this type of byname seems to have been very rare and in the absence of early Danish examples cannot be considered the best historical re-creation. It would have been pronounced roughly \EL-ih-seef RAY-nehrs KU-n@\, where \U\ stands for the vowel of , and \@\ stands for the sound of in and . , pronounced roughly \EL-seef\, is a possible variant of the given name. We would not expect to see a native Scandinavian named before the late 13th century, and we would not expect to see one with a byname meaning 'Flemish' or 'the Fleming'. Arval Benicoeur and Aryanhwy merch Catmael also contributed to this letter. We hope that it has been useful and that you'll not hesitate to write again if you have further questions or would like us to investigate the possibility of a similar name in a Dutch or Flemish context: information that we noted in our research for this letter suggests that something close to a Latin would likely be possible in the Netherlands as early as the mid-twelfth century. For the Academy, Talan Gwynek 26 July 2003 ===== References and Notes: [1] Kruken, Kristoffer, ed. Norsk personnamnleksikon. 2nd ed. (Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget, 1995); s.n. . The Norse were already familiar with as a name element, as it was the name of Thor's wife. [2] Sveriges Medeltida Personnamn. Vol. 1- (Uppsala: 1967-. bd. 1, h. 5: ISBN: 91-7402-136-2; Bloms Boktryckeri AB: Lund 1981); s.n. . [3] Knudsen, Gunnar, Marius Kristiansen, & Rikard Hornby. Danmarks Gamle Personnavne. Vol. I: Fornavne (Copenhagen: 1936-48); s.n. . [4] Lind, E.H. Norsk-Isla"ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fra*n Medeltiden (Uppsala & Leipzig: 1905-1915, sup. Oslo, Uppsala and Kobenhavn: 1931); s.nn. , . (Here stands for a-umlaut, and stands for an with a small circle directly above it.) [5] Kruken, op. cit., s.n. . [6] Farmer, David Hugh. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988): s.n. . [7] Drosdowski, Guenther. Duden Lexikon der Vornamen, 2nd ed. (Mannheim: Dudenverlag, 1974); s.n. . [8] Withycombe, E.G. The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); s.n. . [9] Until relatively late the -like forms are found only in Latin contexts. In Sweden, for instance, they are not found in non-Latin contexts until 1412. [2] In contrast, the vernacular forms already appear in Latin contexts in the late 13th century, sometimes unchanged, as in 1303 'Elisif daughter of Johan de Nubyli', and sometimes superficially Latinized by the addition of grammatical endings, as in '(to) Elisiv' 1298. [2] This is very strong evidence that in the 13th century the normal Scandinavian forms were , , and the like, and that and the other similar spellings were strictly documentary Latin forms that were probably not used in the spoken language. [10] Knudsen et al., op. cit., s.n. . [11] Lind, op. cit., s.n. . [12] Bjerke, Robert. A Contrastive Study of Old German and Old Norwegian Kinship Terms. Indiana University Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics, Memoir 22 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969); p. 160f. These examples actually occur as <{th}oralfs kono> and , with a lower-case thorn and an inflected form of the noun (Old Danish ) 'wife, woman'; the inflectional change is required by the grammar of the sentences in which these names appear. [13] We do not actually have examples of this kind from Scandinavia, but we are virtually certain that this reflects the limitations of our sources. This type of byname is found in every culture for which we have documentary Latin records. [14] Fleck, G. (aka Geirr Bassi Haraldsson). The Old Norse Name. Studia Marklandica (series) (Olney, Maryland: Yggsalr Press, 1977). Here 'the' is the feminine form of the definite article; is masculine and would go with masculine . [15] Cleasby, Richard, Gudbrand Vigfusson, and William A. Craigie. An Icelandic-English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957); s.v. . [16] Lind, E.H. Norsk-Isla"ndska Personbinamn fra*n Medeltiden (Uppsala: 1920-21); s.vv. , . [17] Knudsen et al. Vol II: Tilnavne (Copenhagen: 1949-64); s.n. .