ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3146 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3146 ************************************ 16 Aug 2006 From: Guaire mac Guaire Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel! You wanted to know whether was an authentic name for a Viking in the 10th century. Although you prefer that the name be appropriate for a Norman born person, you are willing to accept French, Swedish, Norwegian, British, or Irish origins for the sake of authenticity. You also expressed willingness to consider either spelling modification or alternative names close in sound to your proposed name for authenticity. Here is what we have found. We have no evidence that was used as a forename in any period culture, so we searched for more or less similar names that could have been used by Vikings anywhere during this period. An alternative that might appeal to you is the 10th century Viking name , which is at least somewhat similar in sound to the name you proposed. This was the name of several of the original Icelandic settlers and is well-attested in both Iceland and Norway throughout the Middle Ages. [1] was pronounced roughly \ORM(r)\ where the \(r)\ stands for a very lightly pronounced \r\ sound. Another possibility from this period is <{OE}ringr>, where <{OE}> stands for the O-E-ligature, an and an squashed together so that they share a common upright in the centre. Unlike , this was apparently a very rare name. We have found only three instances of it, all in runic inscriptions. Two of these are tentatively dated to the first half of the 11th century; the third is probably a bit later. [2, 3] Given its rarity and geographically limited attestation, <{OE}ringr> is chancier historical re-creation than for a 10th century Viking in Normandy. The name <{OE}ringr> was pronounced roughly \O"-ring(r)\, where \O"\ stands for the sound of o-umlaut in German 'sons' or in French 'dry nurse.' [4] is a fine name for your father: it was the name of several of the original Icelandic settlers and was common in both Iceland and Norway throughout the Middle Ages [5]. is a common rendering of the patronymic byname based on , but we recommend you use , as that is more similar to the way the name would have been written in runes in your period. Either way, it is pronounced roughly \KEH-tils sohn\ with the \s\ in \KEH- tils\ indicating the \s\ sound of , not the \z\ sound of and .. would be a fine name for a 10th century Viking of Icelander or Norwegian origin. I hope this letter has been useful. Please write to 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 Arval Benicoeur, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Juliana de Luna, and Talan Gwynek. For the Academy, Guaire mac Guaire 16 August 2006 ----------- References: [1] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla"ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala & Leipzig: 1905-1915, sup. Oslo, Uppsala and Kobenhavn: 1931); s.n. . [2] Peterson, Lena, "Nordiskt runnamnslexikon" (WWW: Institute for Dialectology, Onomastics and Folklore Research, 2001); s.n. . Since the name is known only from runic inscriptions, any spelling of it in ordinary Latin letters is to some degree conventional. The scholarly convention used by Peterson is a bit different from the one most commonly seen; we've chosen to use the latter in this letter. http://www.sofi.se/SOFIU/runlex/ [3] Samnordisk runtextdatabas. (WWW: Uppsala universitet, 2004); signa U461, U484, U1015$. http://www.nordiska.uu.se/forskn/samnord.htm [4] If you're not familiar with the German or French sounds, you can produce this vowel by placing your tongue in position to pronounce the sound of in and simultaneously pursing and rounding your lips as if to say . [5] Lind, op. cit., s.n. .