King’s College 2004 v Mistress Gunnvör sílfrahárr
21
Construction
of Old Norse Personal Names: Meaning
Viking Age peoples didn't select names based on
meaning
Etymology looks at ancient word roots, meaning not
always transparent
vFrom E.G. Withycombe, The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names (3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1988, pp. xiv-xvi):
"Of the great Indo-European family of languages the general principle was also that of one name for each individual, the majority of names being compounded of two elements chosen from a stock of special name-words, Such elements were naturally for the most part words of good augury, but they seem, in most languages, to have been combined with no particular regard for meaning. As Professor Stenton writes: 'Most compound names can be translated, but the translations often make nonsense. The men who coined the names Frithuwulf (peace-wolf), and Wigfrith (war-peace), were not concerned about their meaning. These are ancient names and they prove that at an early time the sense which a compound name bore was a matter of little importance... in most cases personal or family reasons determined the choice of a name, and speculation as to its meaning, if it came at all, came as an afterthought.' ...
The special name-words of which personal names were composed were originally ordinary significant words, but with the passage of time some of them fell out of use in the spoken language, and others underwent phonetic and semantic changes to which personal names were not always subject... The Frankish monk Smaragdus, who wrote at the beginning of the 9th century, shows that even as early as that there was no longer a clear understanding of the formation and meaning of Germanic names: thus he translated Uuilmunt ('will' + 'protection') as volens bucca (‘willing mouth’), and Ratmunt ('counsel' + 'protection') as consilium oris (‘counsel of the mouth’), confusing mund 'protection', with mund 'mouth'. The short uncompounded names were naturally even less comprehensible than the compounded ones; Redin lists 736 such names in Old English, of which he classes 338 as intelligible and 398 as unintelligible."
"Of the great Indo-European family of languages the general principle was also that of one name for each individual, the majority of names being compounded of two elements chosen from a stock of special name-words, Such elements were naturally for the most part words of good augury, but they seem, in most languages, to have been combined with no particular regard for meaning. As Professor Stenton writes: 'Most compound names can be translated, but the translations often make nonsense. The men who coined the names Frithuwulf (peace-wolf), and Wigfrith (war-peace), were not concerned about their meaning. These are ancient names and they prove that at an early time the sense which a compound name bore was a matter of little importance... in most cases personal or family reasons determined the choice of a name, and speculation as to its meaning, if it came at all, came as an afterthought.' ...
The special name-words of which personal names were composed were originally ordinary significant words, but with the passage of time some of them fell out of use in the spoken language, and others underwent phonetic and semantic changes to which personal names were not always subject... The Frankish monk Smaragdus, who wrote at the beginning of the 9th century, shows that even as early as that there was no longer a clear understanding of the formation and meaning of Germanic names: thus he translated Uuilmunt ('will' + 'protection') as volens bucca (‘willing mouth’), and Ratmunt ('counsel' + 'protection') as consilium oris (‘counsel of the mouth’), confusing mund 'protection', with mund 'mouth'. The short uncompounded names were naturally even less comprehensible than the compounded ones; Redin lists 736 such names in Old English, of which he classes 338 as intelligible and 398 as unintelligible."
A note on meaning being important to modern SCA folk and
how to use it as a tool to guide
clients towards documentable, authentic names.