CHAPTER I.
Section I.—The Keltic Race.
We now pass to a class of names whose associations belong almost entirely to the modern world, yet whose history is far more obscure than that of those on which we have previously dwelt.
From the Hebrew, the European family have derived their religion; from the Greek, their ideas; from the Roman, their laws; from the Teuton, their blood and their energy; but from the Kelt they have taken little but their fanciful romance. In only one country has the Kelt been dominant, and then with a Latinized speech, and a Teutonic name, testifying to the large modifications that he must have undergone.
Among the rugged moors and cliffs which fence Western Europe from the Atlantic waves, he did indeed preserve his freedom, but without amalgamation with other nations; and in lands where he fell under subjection, he was so lost among the conquerors as to be untraceable in language or feature, and with the exception of the Gaul, has bequeathed nothing of his character to the fused race upon his soil.
We trace the Hebrew nation with certainty from its majestic source; the Greek shines on us in a dazzling sunrise of brilliant myth; the Roman, in a grave, stern dawn of characteristic legend; but of the earlier progress of the wild, impulsive Kelt we have but the faintest indications.
Much as he loved his forefathers, keen as was his delight in celebrating the glories of his race, oral tradition contented him, and very strong was the pressure from the neighbouring nations before his bards recorded anything in writing, even the long genealogies hitherto preserved in each man’s accumulated names. The beauty of their legends did indeed recommend them to the general store-house of European fancy, but though the spirit may be Keltic, the body through which it comes is almost always Teutonic.
Section II.—The Keltic Languages.
The Keltic nations used languages which showed that they came from the Indo-European root, and which are still spoken in the provinces where they remain. They have no really ancient literature, and were left at the mercy of wild tongues, so that their losses have been very great, and the divergence of dialects considerable.
The great and distinguishing feature of the entire class is their peculiar inflections, which, among other puzzling features, insert an aspirate after the primary consonant, so as entirely to change its sound, as for instance in an oblique case, mor, great, would become mhor, and be pronounced vor, to the eternal confusion of people of other nations, who, however the vowel or the end of a word might alter, always trusted to know it by the main syllable. A large number of guttural sounds distinguished these languages, and some of these were annihilated by the ensuing aspiration; but when spelling began, the corpses of the two internecine letters were still left in the middle of the word, to cumber the writer and puzzle the reader, so that the very enunciation of a written sentence requires a knowledge of grammar.
The vowels likewise sometimes change in the body of the word when it becomes plural, and the identification of plurals and of cases with their parent word is so difficult that few persons ever succeed in the study of Keltic, except those who have learnt it from their mothers or nurses, and even they are not always agreed how to write it grammatically.
The Keltic splits into two chief branches, so different that Cæsar himself remarked that the Gauls and Cimbrians did not use the same language. For the sake of convenience these two branches are called by philologists the Gaelic and the Cymric. The first is the stock which has since divided into the Gaelic of the Highlands, the Irish of Ireland, and the Manx of the little intermediate isle. In fact they are nearly one; old Gaelic and old Irish are extremely alike when they can be found written, and though they have since diverged, the general rules continue to be the same; and some of the chief differences may be owing to the fact, that while the Highlanders have adopted the Roman alphabet, the native Irish still adhere to the Anglo-Saxon.
The Cymric is still spoken in Wales and Brittany, and only died out a century ago in Cornwall. Welsh and Breton agree in so many points that the natives of either country are said to be able to understand one another, though they would be entirely unintelligible to an Irishman or Highlander. Indeed it may be doubted whether Greek and Latin are not more nearly akin than the two shoots of the Keltic tree. One great difference is that the p of the Kymric always becomes k or c hard in the Gadhaelic: thus plant or children in Wales, are the well-known Gaelic clan; Paisg, Easter, is Cisg; pen, a head, is caen; and the Cornish word Pentyr, the head of the land, or promontory, is the same as the Scottish Cantyre.[[94]]
The Gauls had been completely Romanized in the South before they heard of Christianity. They gave up Greek and Roman idols rather than Druidism when they listened to the Gospel. It is thought that the first seeds were sown by St. Paul, and that afterwards the Eastern Church at Ephesus, under St. John, had much communication with them. Britain probably owed her first gleams of light to the imprisonment of Caractacus and his family at Rome; but however this might be, Gaul furnished hosts of martyrs in the persecution, and Britain did her part in testifying to the truth. Many districts long remained unconverted, however, in both countries. St. Martin is said to have completed the conversion of Gaul in the end of the third century, and in Wales St. Germain still found a host to baptize in the fifth century. Indeed, the predominance of heathen remains over Christian, have made antiquaries very doubtful whether Britain could have been by any means universally converted at the time of the fall of the Roman empire. It had, however, sent forth one great missionary, namely, St. Patrick, from the northern province of Valentia. He found a feeble Church in Ireland, but so enlarged its borders and won all hearts, that from his time that island was Christian in name, and filled with such clusters of hermitages and convents as to win its title of the Isle of Saints.
This Keltic Church, with its eastern traditions, was the special missionary Church of these little heeded times. From Ireland, St. Columba went forth to Iona, whence he and his disciples gradually converted the Picts; and though St. Gregory’s mission laid the foundations of the polity of the Anglo-Saxon Church in Britain, there were the Scottish Aidan, the Welsh Chad, and Gallic Birinus doing the work quietly, in which the Roman monks had been less successful. From Ireland again, St. Columbanus, St. Gall, and many others set forth to complete the work of conversion in France and Switzerland, and many churches and convents regard as their founders and patrons, obscure Irish hermits forgotten in their own country. These have been the chief diffusers of Keltic names, being called after some hereditary native word, which their saintliness was to raise to high honour.[[95]]
[94]. Max Müller; Encyclopædia Britannica; Villemarqué, Legoindec’s Dictionary; Hanmer, Chronicle; Clark, Student’s Handbook of Comp. Grammar; Prichard, Celtic Nations.
[95]. Knight, Pictorial History; Mazzaroth; Knight, Celt, Roman, and Saxon; Grimm, Deutsche[Deutsche] Mythologie; Jones, Welsh Sketches; Irish Poems; Montalembert.
Section III.—Keltic Nomenclature.
The Kelts were highly poetical and romantic in their nomenclature. In general their names were descriptive; many referred to complexion, and many more described either masculine courage or feminine grace and sweetness. But, unfortunately, the language is so uncertain, and its commentators are so much at war, that in dealing with these, after the well-criticized ancient tongues, is like passing from firm ground to a quaking bog, and in many cases there is but a choice of conjectures to deal with.
The names to be examined are of various kinds. First, the historical ones that have come through Latin writers, terribly disguised, but the owners of them certain to have existed. These are usually more Cymric than Gaelic, and Welsh and Breton writers find explanations for them. A few truly mythological ones will be considered with these, and placed according to the order—if order it can be called—assigned to their supposed owners in the pedigree of Brut, in which England used to believe on the word of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the Welsh on that of their native chronicle of Brut. Then follow a most controverted collection, chiefly of the two Gaelic nations. They were the property of a set of heroes called the Feen, who are the great ancestry of the chiefs of the Scottish race in both islands, and who are said to have performed fabulous exploits at some distant period, which gains some sort of date from the poem representing Ossian, the last survivor of the band, as extremely miserable under the teaching of St. Patrick. The fact was probably that the floating myths of the Gael attached themselves to some real adventurous band, and the date is no more to be depended on than those of Geoffrey of Monmouth; but it gives a point by which to arrange the names still in great part surviving both in Ireland and Scotland, though often confused with those imported from other languages.
After this follows the cycle of names made popular by the romances of King Arthur’s court, which naturally find their place at the time of the fall of the Roman power in England. These, as far as they can be understood or interpreted at all, are Cymric, and some have become tolerably well known throughout Europe.
The different classes connected with one or other of these will nearly dispose of all the Keltic names worth notice. The remaining will chiefly belong to the saints, in which Wales, Brittany, and Ireland were particularly prolific. The odd thing is that all the Welsh saints were in some way or other of royal birth, so that the royalty of Wales must have been peculiarly pious. Brittany, likewise, had sundry hermits; and Ireland deserved its title of the Isle of Saints, though, as will be seen, some of them were of a strangely Irish order, and regarded as strong cursing powers.
The Gaelic race had the remarkable custom of calling their children the servant, the disciple, or the votaress of the patron saint, and it is not till recent times that the prefixes Giolla, Maol, and Cailleach have been entirely dropped, and their traces are often remaining in appellations in Ireland and Scotland.
The name was entirely personal, not hereditary; but the pride of ancestry caused the father’s, grandfather’s, forefather’s names, to the remotest generation, to be heaped upon one head, connected in Welsh by Mab, or, as it was contracted, Ap.
The Welsh, about the fifteenth century, found these pedigree names unmanageable in contact with ordinary society, and contented themselves each with one ancestral surname for good. Some incorporated their Ap, as Pryce, Ap Rhys, Pugh, or Ap Hugh; some, in English fashion, adding the possessive s to the end of the father’s name, like the hosts of Joneses and Williamses; others took some favourite name from the roll of ancestry, or called themselves after their estates.
In Gaelic the word Mac, the son, or O, or ua, the grandson, connected the person with the ancestor whose name was chosen.
The Keltic taste in names was of the grand order, generally in many syllables, and lofty in sense and sound, much in the style of the Red Indian. Thus we find Brithomar, the great Briton; Bathanat, son of the boar; Louarn, the fox; Carvilius, friend of power, among the Kymric nations of England and the Continent: and in less complimentary style, Mandubrath, man of black treason. This man of black treason was, in Britain, Avarddwy Bras, also called one of the three disgraceful men of Britain. It is said that Caswallon had murdered Avarddwy’s father, and afterwards set out on what the Triads call one of the three unwise armaments, which weakened the force of the country. The cause is romantically described by the Triads to have been, that his lady-love, Flur, had been carried away by a Prince of Gascony to be presented to Julius Cæsar; moreover, the Mabinogion says, he and his two friends went as far as Rome to recover her, disguised as shoemakers, whence they are called the three bold shoemakers of the Isle of Britain. The aid that he gave the Gauls does, in fact, seem to have attracted the notice of Cæsar, and the black treason was Avarddwy’s invitation to the Romans. He was the father of Aregwydd Voeddog, whose second name, derived from victory, was certainly the same as Boadicea, though her deed identifies her with Cartismandua. Caswallon, or Cassivellaunus, as the Romans called him, is sometimes explained as Cas-gwall-lawn, chief of great hatred, sometimes as lord of the Cassi. The Gaels have many grand men’s names, but, perhaps, have used the most poetry in those of their women. Feithfailge, honeysuckle ringlets; Lassairfhina or Lassarina, flame or blush of the wine; Lassair, or flame, the same in effect as the Italian Fiamma; Alma, all good, a real old Erse name, before the babes of September 1854, were called Alma, after the Crimean river, which probably bore a Keltic name; Bebhirn, or, as Macpherson writes it, Vevina, the sweet woman; Essa, the nurse; Gelges, white swan; Luanmaisi, moon fairness; Ligach, pearly.
Yet thirst had her namesake, Ita; Diédrè was fear; Dorvenn, sullen; Uailsi, pride; Unchi, contention.
All of these, and many besides, have entirely fallen into desuetude, and all the Keltic countries have a practice of adopting names from their neighbours, supposed to answer to their own, but often without the slightest affinity thereto.
Thus Anmcha, courageous, is supposed to be translated by Ambrose; Aneslis is rendered by Stanislaus; Fachtna, is Festus; Baothgalach, or rashly courageous, Boethius.
Corruptions must be permitted to our English tongues and throats, which break down at a guttural, so it is no wonder that Dorchaidha, or patronymic O'Dorchaidhe, should be sometimes turned into D'Arcy, sometimes D'Orsay, and sometimes into Darkey, which really translates the word; and sometimes Darcy; but it is rather hard when we have to read Archibald for Gillespie, and Edward for Diarmaid.[[96]]
[96]. Villemarqué; O'Donovan; Highland Society’s Gaelic Dictionary.
CHAPTER II.
ANCIENT KELTIC NAMES.
Section I.—Welsh Mythic Names.
Welsh myths we say advisedly, for whether these were really Druidical myths or not, they have become so much disguised by Welsh bards, down to Christian times, that there is no knowing what was the original framework. Our concern is with the names connected with these traditions.
The primary personages of semi-divine rank in these traditions are Hu Gadarn, or the Mighty, the sun god, and his wife Ceridwen. It is believed that the two sacred islands of Iona and Mona were both originally Ynysgwaw Hu, the island of the worship of Hu. Others, however, say, that Iona was only I-thon, or isle of the waves.
The word Hu is not explained; but it has passed into a name in Wales and Brittany. Old French has the name inflected as Hue, Hues, Huon, and the feminine Huette; and the true Anglicized Welsh form is Hu or Hew, though it is now universally confounded with the Teutonic Hugh, from hugur, thought, with which it may be cognate, and the Welsh patronymic Ap Hu is always spelt Pugh.
The Triads speak of Aed Mawr, or Aedd, as father of Pridain, but he may have been either a title of Hu, or else the god himself. Aodh is, in fact, in sound and sense, closely related to the Greek αίθω (aitho), and our heat is of the same kin.
Dr. Meyer thinks this Aed Mawr of the Triads was the forefather from whom the Ædui mentioned by Cæsar were called, and further derives from him Cæer Aeddon, or Dun Aeddon, Dun Edin, or Edinburgh. Yet, on the other hand, it is a part of our English faith that Auld Reekie is our Northumbrian Edwin’s burgh.
Aed, Aeddon, Aodh, Aedhan, were far more popular names than those derived from Hu. Aeddan is lamented by Aneurin as a British warrior slain among the victims of Henghist’s treachery; and two Aoidhs reigned, the one in Connaught, the other in Scotland, in 570; and to the latter of these, called by Scottish historians Aidan, or Edan, they ascribe the foundation of their capital; but it was at that time in the possession of the Angles, and if called after any Aodh, it must have been after an earlier one. The Irish Aodh is said to have been about to expel the bards, but to have been prevented by the intercession of St. Columb.
At one time Ireland was afflicted with thirteen contemporary Aodhs; and at least two so called reigned in Scotland—Aodhfin, or the white, the Ethfine of historians, and Aoidh, or Eth, the swift-footed. So common was the name among the Irish that one hundred Aodhs and one hundred Aidans or Oédans were killed in the battle of Maghrath. The MacAodhas of Ireland were once many in number; and became MacHugh or Magee; in Scotland, Mackay; or were sometimes translated into Hughson or Hewson. But the most interesting person so called is known to us as Aidan. He visited Wales and Scotland, became a monk of Iona, and then went forth as a missionary to the North of England. He was the friend of the admirable Oswald, free of hand, king of Deira, who used to interpret[interpret] his Keltic speech to the Angle population; and his gentle teaching won to the Church multitudes whom the harshness of former missionaries had repelled. He is reckoned as first bishop of Lindisfarn, and has left his name to sundry churches of St. Aidan. Aoidhne, or Eithne, was the Irish feminine once distinguished, but now disused.
Aidan is still a female name among some Welsh families.
Another Irish St. Aeddan, who was bishop of Ferns about the year 632, has a most curious variety of namesakes—some from his baptismal name, others from his pet appellation Móedóg, that is M'Óedóg, namely Ma Otdóg, my little Aodh. This strange custom of prefixing the possessive pronoun, first person singular, to the proper name of a saint was very general. Maodhòg, as it has since become, is still common in Wexford, where the Irish language has disappeared. It is pronounced and written Mogne, and is perpetuated in honour of the Saint of Ferns. Madog, or Madawc, was the usual form in Wales, where it has always been in great favour. Madawc, prince of Powysland, who died in 1158, in great favour with Henry II. The Latin translation of Aidan, Aideus, or Aidanus, has adhered to him in Basse Bretagne, but has there been cut down into Dé, St. Dé being the appellation of a village there, the church of which is dedicated to Mogne, is by Irish Protestants often Anglicized as Aidan, by the Roman Catholics as Moses.
The leek is said to have been used by the Welsh in the worship of Ceridwen, the wife of Hu. Afterwards a story rose that, in one of Cadwallawn’s battles, his Welshmen marked themselves with leeks from a garden hard by, and the story was later transferred to the Welsh troops of the Black Prince in France.
Ced, or Cyridwen, shows no namesakes; but buadh, or budd, victory, furnished for her the epithet of Buddug, or Buddud; and, perhaps, she is the Boundonica mentioned by Dion Cassius as a Keltic goddess. Probably it was either as a victorious omen, or else in honour of her, that the name of Buddug was given to that fierce chieftainess of the Iceni, whose savage vengeance for her wrongs has won for her a very disproportionate fame, as much changed as her name, when we call it Bonduca, or, more usually, Boadicea. It has not met with much repetition, yet we have heard of a family so patriotic as to contain both Caractacus and Boadicea. Buadhach was, however, long a man’s name in Ireland, and Budhic was one of the early Armorican princes.
Gwion, an unlucky dwarf, destroyed by Ceridwen, seems to have left his name behind him, whether it be as M. Pitre Chevalier explains it, esprit, sense, or be connected with the Welsh gwyth, and Cornish gwg, anger.
Aneurin mentions a knight named Gwiawn as having been slain in the battle of Cattraeth; and Gwion is a knight of Arthur’s court, figuring as Sir Guy among the knights of the Round Table, and furnishing Spenser with his Sir Guyon, the hero of the second ‘Book of Courtesie’ in his Faerie Queen.
Guy has since been a favourite name, but it has become so entangled with the Latin Vitus that it is almost impossible to distinguish the Keltic from the Roman name. It appears to have prevailed in France very early as Guy, Guies, Guyon, in the feminine Guiette; and besides the Sicilian infant martyr, Vitus, obtained two patrons, St. Guy, the Poor Man of Anderlecht, a pilgrim to Jerusalem, who died in 1014; and the Italian, St. Guido, abbot of Pomposa, in Ferrara, who died in 1042. Both lived long after their name had become so popular, that it could not have depended upon them. Queen Matilda, in her Bayeux tapestry, labels as Wido, the Count Guy of Ponthieu, who captured Harold on his ill-starred expedition to Normandy, and thus she evidently does not consider him as Vitus.
Guy and Guido were both fairly frequent with us, until ‘Gunpowder Treason’ gave a sinister association to the sound of Guido Fawkes, and the perpetual celebrations of the 5th of November, with the burning of Guy Fawkes in effigy, have given a meaning to the term of Guy, that will probably continue long after the last tar-barrel has flamed and the last cracker exploded over his doom.
Guido and Guidone were the proper Italian forms, much used in the whole Peninsula, and appearing in Ariosto’s poem in the person of Guidon Selvaggio, a rustic, uncivilized knight. From the sound it was long imagined that the names came either from guide or from guidon, a banner or ensign; but there can be no doubt that either the Keltic Gwion or the Latin Vitus was their true origin.
Section II.—Lear and his Daughters.
Geoffrey of Monmouth made the eleventh of his kings, descended from Brute, to be called Leir, and live at Leircester, or Leicester, on the river Sore, somewhere about the time of the prophet Elisha.
He is one of the earliest authorities for the story of Lear and the ungrateful daughters, whom he calls Gonorilla and Regan. He gives the name of Cordeilla to the reserved but faithful daughter who could not pay lip service, but redeemed her father’s kingdom when he was exiled and misused by her flattering sisters. It was a very remarkable conception of character, even thus barely narrated, without the lovely endowments with which we have since learnt to invest the good daughter. The sequel in Geoffrey’s chronicle related, that after his kingdom was restored, old Leir died in peace at Leicester, and was buried by Cordeilla “in a certain vault which she ordered to be made for him under the river Sore, at Leicester, and which had been built originally under the ground to the honour of the god Janus; and here all the workmen of the city, upon the anniversary solemnity of that festival, used to begin their yearly labours.”
He further narrates that Cordeilla was dethroned by her nephews, and committed suicide in despair. To this story adhered both the old ballad-monger and Spenser, in the history studied by Sir Guyon; but Shakespeare loved his sweet Cordelia too well to stain her with self-murder, and, though omitting all allusion to Christianity, made her in all her ways and actions a true Christian, and never perhaps showed more consummate art than in producing so perfect an effect with a person so chary of her words.
Whence did Geoffrey get the story which has produced such fruits?
Lear (gen.), Lir, is the sea. He is also a mythological personage, a god in the elder Irish belief, and father of Mănănnán, the Erse Neptune.
Afterwards, later ballads humanized Lear, and made him the father of Mănănnán, one of the Tuath De Danan, or early conquerors of Ireland, and Lord of the Isle of Man, which is said to be called after him. There is a tradition in Londonderry that his spirit lives in an enchanted castle in the waves of Magilligan, and that his magic ship appears every seventh year. Moreover, the daughters of Mănănnán, granddaughters of Lear, were called Ainè and Aoiffè, and had a desperate quarrel about their husbands' excellence in hunting.
Wales, on its side, shows in the Isle of Anglesea a cromlech, called the tomb of Bronwen, daughter of King Llyr or Leirus. The tomb was opened in 1813, and an ancient urn, once probably containing ashes, was found there. It seems that a somewhat more substantial Llyr lived about the time of the Roman conquest, and was the father of Bronwen, who married the king of Ireland, was ill-treated by him, and received a box on the ear, which was one of the three fatal insults of the Isle of Britain. This lady is very probably the Bronwen of the cromlech; but the conjecture of the Rev. Edward Davies is, that in the story of King Lear, we may have the remains of an ancient myth.
It is certainly remarkable that the notion of Lyr, in connection with turbulent daughters or granddaughters, should be common to both Britain and Ireland. Mr. Davies explains Cordelia to have been originally Creirdyddlydd, the token of the overflowing, also called Creirwy, or the token of the egg. Creir is a token, the sacred article on which a man makes oath, whence it came to mean either a relic or a jewel. Creirdyddlydd might thus be the jewel of the sea, or the token of the flood. At any rate, Creirdyddlydd or Creirwy is a creation of ancient Welsh poetry, once mythical, the daughter of the sea, Llyr or Llud, on which Geoffrey seized for his history. Bronwen, or white bosom, is either another daughter of Lyr, or else Creirdyddlydd under another name, and is supposed to have been the British Proserpine. Both Bronwen and Creirwy are called Gwrvorwyn, man-maid, or virago, and it does not seem impossible that here we see the origin of Cordelia, Regan, and Goneril, as they have been adapted to English pronunciation, the token of the overflowing, the fair bosom, and the virago. Surely these are the daughters of the ocean, rebellious and peaceful. Dynwen, too, is the white wave, the patroness of lovers; and as we shall find by-and-by wave names are remarkably common among the Welsh.
Lear is also called Llwyd, the grey, or the extended, a fitting title for the sea, and which has passed on to form Lloyd, so common as a Welsh Christian and surname, and adopted in England as Floyd.
Creirdyddlydd has due justice done her in the Mabinogion, where we further learn that she remains with her father till the day of doom, and that in the mean time two kings, Gwyn ab Nudd and Gwythir mab Graidiawn, have a battle for her hand on every May-day.
Cordula is set down in Welsh and German calendars on the 22nd of October as one of the 11,000 virgins, her feast following that of St. Ursula. It may be remembered that St. Ursula was said to be Cornish; and that her only recorded companion should bear a Cymric name, is in favour of some shade of foundation for her story. Kordula is in consequence a German name. Kordula was a princess of Lingen in 1473; and Michel and Kordel are two children in German household tradition so constantly falling into mishaps as to have become a proverb for folly.
The Germans fancy Cordula is a diminutive of the Latin cor, a heart; others have wildly made it the feminine of Cordeleo, lion heart, and it has been confused with Delia, the epithet of Diana, from Delos, her birthplace; but Creirdyddlydd is certainly its origin, and remembering that in Welsh d is softened and aspirated by being doubled, is not far from it in sound. Cordelia is hereditary in some Irish families; but is chiefly used for love of Shakespeare’s heroine of filial love.
Bronwen makes her appearance again in the romance of Sir Tristram, under the name of Brengwain, the maid of Yseulte. When the Lady Yseulte was sent from her home in Ireland, under the escort of Tristram, to be married to King Mark, of Cornwall, her mother entrusted a love potion to Brengwain to be given on the wedding night.
Unfortunately, a tempest arose on the voyage, and, in the consequent exhaustion, “Swete Ysonde, the fre, asked Brengwain a drink.” And Brengwain, bringing the magic cup by mistake, caused the fatal passion between Yseulte and the knight.
Even the “hound that was there biside, yclept Hodain,” who licked up the drops that were spilt of the philtre, became attached to the knight and lady with the same magic love.
Bronwen or Brengwain has since been in use as a Welsh female Christian name.
The names of the granddaughters of the Irish King Lear were Aine and Aoidheal, a spark, and their dispute was whose husband was the best hunter. Aine means joy or praise, and also fasting. Friday is Diah-Aoine, or fasting day in Irish. Aine, the daughter of Eogah-hal, was looked on as queen of the fairies of South Munster, and her abode was said to be Cnoc Aine or Knockany, the Hill of Aine, in county Limerick; Aoibhinn was queen of the fairies in Thomond or North Munster; Una, of those in Ormond.
Aine continued to be a favourite name in Ireland for many centuries; but in later times it has become the practice to Anglicize it as Anna and Hannah, and possibly Anastasia, though this may have come more directly from the Greek. In 705 reigned a Scottish king called Ainbhceallach the Good. He is turned by different authors into Arinchellar, Armkelleth, Amberkelletus, etc., and his right one is either joyful war, or agile war, or if with the b, ferocious war. He was too good for his savage people, and was dethroned at the end of a year, and is usually mentioned by the few historians, who name him, as Amberkelleth.
It is evident then that Aine had come to Scotland with other Gaelic names, and it is probable that this is the word that had come forth as Anaple or Annabell in Scotland long before the period of devotion to St. Anne. In 1158 Annabel Fitz Duncan, daughter to Duncan, Earl of Moray, carried the name into the Lucie family; Annabella of Strathern appears in 1244; Annaple Drummond was wife to King Robert III. of Scotland, about 1390; and thenceforth Anaple has been somewhat common in Scotland, while Anabla and Anabella are equally frequent in Ireland, and Annabella is occasionally used in England as Anna made a little finer.
Aoiffe was more generally used than Aine, but most likely is the origin of the Effie of Scotland, now always used as short for Euphemia, though the Highland version of this name is now Aoirig, or Oighrigh. In other places Aoiffe seems to have been turned into Affrica. In the beginning of the twelfth century ‘Affrica,’ daughter of Fergus of Galway, married ‘Olaus’ the Swarthy, King of Man, and her daughter ‘Effrica’ married Somerled, Thane of Argyle and Lord of the Isles, by whose genealogists she seems to have been translated into Rachel. Africa is still used as a female name in the Isle of Man and in Ireland. Aoiffe was the wife of Cuchullin in the Ossianic poetry, and Evir Allin and Evir Coma, properly Aoibhir Aluin and Aoibhir Caomha, the pleasantly excellent and pleasantly amiable, both appear there.
The recognized equivalent for Aoiffe was, however, Eva, beginning almost from the first Christian times, so that, until I found Aoiffe in such unquestionably heathen company as Lear and Mănănnán[Mănănnán], I had made up my mind that she was the Gadhaelic pronunciation of our first mother.
Eva is found in the oldest documents extant in Scotland, and high in their genealogies: Eva O'Dwhine carried the blood of Diarmaid to the Anglo-Norman Campbells; Eva of Menteith married one of the first Earls of Lennox; and Alan, the first High Steward of Scotland, married Eve of Tippermuir, and made her the ancestress of the Stuarts; about the same time that the Irish Aoiffe or Eva, for she at least is known to have borne both names, was being wedded to stout Earl Strongbow.
Aevin, or Evin, is occasionally found in the house of Kennedy, but Eveleen is by far the most common form of both names in Ireland, and has held its ground unchanged. Eibhlin in Irish.
To our surprise, however, Aveline or Eveline make their appearance among the Normans long before the marriage of the Earl of Pembroke. Aveline was the name of the sister of Gunnar, the great-grandmother of William the Conqueror; and Aveline or Eveline was so favourite a Norman name that it well suits the Lady of the Garde Douloureuse in the Betrothed. Avelina de Longo-Campo, as the name is Latinized in old chronicles, married the last Earl of Lancaster, and was the mother of that heiress Avelina or Eveline, who, though short-lived and childless herself, carried to her husband, Edmund Crouchback, and the sons of his subsequent marriage, the great county of Lancaster, which made the power of the Red Rose formidable.
Eveline has never been frequent, but was never entirely forgotten in England, (for instance, an Eveline Elstove was baptized in 1539,) and was revived as an ornamental name by Miss Burney’s Evelina. At present it is one of those most in vogue, but it ought not to be spelt with a y, unless it be intended to imitate the surname Evelyn, the old French form of the Latin avellana, a hazel. It was well that the tree-loving author of the Sylva should bear such a surname, and from him and his family, men have frequently been christened by it; but ladies do not follow the old Eveline of song and romance unless they use the true feminine termination.
It is curious that several Keltic names should have come to us with the Normans. They may either have been of the set interchanged with the Northmen at some pre-historical time, or old Keltic ones picked up from the Gallic inhabitants of Neustria, or from the Bretons on the border. In the present case, the latter supposition is the most likely, as the Scandinavians do not seem to have used Eveline. It may of course be after all a diminutive of Eve, but the alternate use of the initial A and E seems to contradict this, and identify it with Aoiffe, daughter of the Irish King Lear.
Section III.—Bri.
The root brig, meaning force or strength, is found in many branches of the Indo-European tongues. It is considered to be akin to the Sanscrit virja, strength, and is found in the Greek verb βρίθω (britho), to be heavy, or to outweigh, and the adjective βριαρός (briaros), strong. And thus it named the hundred-handed Titan, whom gods called Briareus, and men Ægeon, and who, in the Titanic revolution, was disposed of either in the Ægean Sea, or under Mount Ætna. Briennios, the surname of some of the eastern emperors, must have come from this root.
In the Keltic tongues it again appears in Irish as bri or brigh, force or valour, and Bryn, height, answering to the Roman virtus (a near connection, as we shall presently see), and the old French word brie, peculiarly expressive of the gay, light Gallic courage, was a now forgotten legacy from the ancient population. Thence came Brenhin, Bren, or Bran, or, as the Romans made it, Brennus, a king or chief—well known for the forays on Italy, and capture of Rome.
Another Brennus was the leader of a division of the great host of Gauls, that, about B.C. 279, came out of Pannonia, and made a backward rush towards the East. One of their bands settled in Asia Minor, and were the parents of the Galatians; but Brennus was less successful. He marched upon Delphi, promising his followers the plunder of the Temple; but was totally defeated by the Delphians; and finding his army destroyed, and himself severely wounded, put an end to his own life.
Next time Bran comes to light, it is altogether in Welsh setting. The Triads and the prolific Genealogy of Welsh Saints, are the authorities for the existence of a prince of that name. Bran the Blessed, the son of Llyr Lledaith, and father of Caradwg, is, we are told, one of the three blessed princes of Britain, having brought home the faith of Christ from Rome, where he had been seven years as a hostage for his son Caradwg, whom the Romans put in prison after being betrayed through the enticement, deceit, and plotting of Cartismandua, or by her Welsh name, Avegwydo Foeddog, the daughter of Avarwy, who betrayed Caswallon. Her act is called by the Triads one of the three secret treasons of Britain.
Now Caradwg is, without a doubt, the Caractacus of Roman history, and the captivity of his family exactly coincides with the time of St. Paul’s first journey to Rome. Moreover, as has been already shown under the head of Aristobulus, there is great reason to consider that Aristobulus, the friend of St. Paul, was the same as the Arwystli, whom the Triads commemorate as among their first missionaries. A farm-house in Glamorganshire, called Trevran, house of Bran, is pointed out as the place where Bran used to reside, and it is near Llanilid, which is considered as the oldest church in Britain.
Such is the British account of the father of Caradwg. The Roman account is, that Cunobelinus was king of the Silures, and husband of Cartismandua, queen of the Brigantes, and was a prosperous and powerful prince in league with the Romans.
Cunobelinus is in like manner a title, though not of man. Cûn is, as will be shown in due time, a chief or lord. Bel or Belin was the Keltic god of light and of war, in whose honour British coins were struck in the heathen days of Bran, whose own name the Romans thought they were reading on his coins. Beli also meant war, and more than one king was called from him.
Bran the Blessed may thus be our old friend Cymbeline, a name repeated in Cornwall, but from literature, not tradition. Cartismandua, or Aregwydd, is the wicked queen, and Caradwg one of the sons.
As to Imogen, the real charm of the play, no British lady either accounts for or explains her name; but in German genealogies we fall upon Imagina of Limburg, in 1400; and there are various other instances of the like, so that Shakespeare may be supposed to have heard of one of them, and adopted her as the heroine of the old story of the deserted and betrayed wife, which he so strangely placed at the court of the last independent British prince. Or Imogen may be a Shakespearian version of Ygnoge, daughter of Pandrasus, emperor of Greece, and wife of Brutus, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth. In Anne of Brittany’s funeral oration, in 1514, her birth was deduced from this last.
Caradwg’s own proper name comes from the same root as the Greek χάρις, grace, and the Latin carus, dear. It means beloved, and has the Breton form Keridak. Caer Caradoc, in Shropshire, retains the name of his camp. He had a worthy namesake in Caradawc Vreichfras, or strong armed, called the pillar of the Kymry, and one of the three battle knights of Britain. Vreichfras means the strong arm, but the French trouveurs rendered it Brise-bras, the wasted arm; and told of an enchanter who fixed a serpent on the knight’s arm, from whose torture nothing could relieve him but that she whom he loved best should undergo it in his stead. His faithful wife offered herself; the serpent was just about to seize on her, when her brother smote off its head with his sword; but her husband thus never recovered the strength of his arm! Others, however, read Vreich-fras as Fer-a-bras, iron arm; and thus, perhaps, from some Breton romance, was one of the Hauteville brothers called William Ferabras. Hence, again, did the French and Italian romancers name their fierce Moorish champion Ferraù, or Ferragus, the same who lost his helmet, and possessed the healing salve, valued by Don Quixote as the balsam of Fierabras!
Caradwg’s wife, Tegan Euvron, or golden beauty, was mentioned by the Triads as one of the three fair ladies and chaste damsels of Arthur’s court, possessing three precious things, of which she alone was worthy,—the mantle, the goblet, and the knife. Later romance and ballad have expanded these into the story of the three tests of the faithful wife; and Sir Caradoc and his lady remain among the prime worthies of the Round Table.
In the twelfth century a saint named Caradwg retired from the world in disgust at the violence shown to him by his master, Rhys, prince of South Wales, on learning the loss of two greyhounds that had been in Caradwg’s charge. He lived in various hermitages in Wales and left a well in the parish of Haroldstone, called by his name. Moreover, soon after his death, he was said to have suddenly closed his hand, in frustration of the designs of the historian, William of Malmsbury, who wanted to cut off his little finger for a relic. Our insular saints were decidedly of Shakespeare’s opinion, and had no desire to have their ‘bones moved’ or be made relics of.
Caradwg, Caradoc, and Keriadek continue to be used in Wales, Scotland, and Brittany.
Cara, friend, was sometimes prefixed to a saint’s name by the Christian Gael, as Cara Michil, friend of St. Michael, as the name of his devout client, and thus arose such surnames as Carmichael.
This pursuit of Cymbeline and his family has carried us far from Bran the Blessed. Under this, his proper name, he stands forth in old Welsh, romance as the original importer of the Sanc-greal. One very old and wild version says that King Bran brought from Ireland a magic vessel, given him by a great black man in Ireland, which healed wounds and raised the dead.
In the twelfth century the Sanc-greal had assumed its Christian character, and Bran the Blessed, as the first Christian prince of Britain, was said to have received it from St. Joseph of Arimathea, and guarded it to the end of his life. No wonder, therefore, that Brittany loved and honoured his name.
Bran was a Pictish prince, killed in 839, in battle with the Danes, and it is highly probable that St. Birinus, the Keltic apostle of Wessex, was another form of Bran.
Brian has been from very old times a favourite Christian name in both Brittany and Ireland, the first no doubt from the Christian honours of the blessed Bran, the second from the source whence he was named.
The great glory of Brian in Ireland was in the renowned Brian Boromhe, King of Leinster, or of the tribute, so called from the tribute, once shaken off by Ulster, but which he re-imposed. He defeated the Danes in twenty-five battles, and finally was slain in the great battle of Clontarf, on the Good Friday of 1014. Around that battle has centered a wonderful amount of fine legendary poetry on both sides.
Brian, or Bryan, is a very frequent Christian name, but according to the usual lot of its congeners, has an equivalent, i. e. Bernard, chiefly in Ulster, with which it has not the most distant connection.
Brien was always a favourite in Brittany, and is very common as a surname with the peasantry there. The Bretons, who joined in the Norman conquest, imported it to England. Two landholders, so called, are recorded in Domesday Book; and during the first century of Norman rule it was far more common than at present, when it is considered as almost exclusively Irish. Some of our older etymologists have been beguiled into deriving it from the French bruyant, noisy.
The feminine Brennone is given in German dictionaries, but it, as well as Brennus, are there derived from old German, and explained as protection, which is clearly a mistake.
Brieuc was a Breton saint; Breasal was once common in Ireland, and survives in a few families, but is generally turned into Basil, and sometimes to Brazil, in which shape the Manxmen frequently bore it.
Brîgh or strength, is the most satisfactory explanation of Brighid, the daughter of the fire-god, and the goddess of wisdom and song, skill and poetry.
Cormac, king and bishop of Cashel, explains the word as a ‘fiery dart;’ but this looks like one of the many late and untrustworthy interpretations of Keltic names.
Brighid was always a favourite female name in Ireland, and has become one of the very few Keltic ones of European popularity. This was owing to a maiden who was brought up by a bard, and afterwards became a pupil of St. Patrick; and from a solitary recluse at Kildare, rose to be the head of five hundred nuns, and was consulted by the synod of bishops. She died in 510, and after her death, a copy of the Gospels was found in her cell, too beautiful to have been written by mortal hand, “with mystical pictures in the margent, whose colours and workmanship were, at first blush, dark and unpleasant, but in the view marvellously lively and artificiall.”
It was long kept at Kildare, and a little hand-bell, such as was much used by the Irish missionaries, and which had belonged to her, and was, therefore, called Clogg Brighde, or Bridget’s Bell, was exhibited to the devout, in both England and Ireland, until it was suppressed by a prohibition from Henry V., perhaps, because it tended to keep up a national spirit.
She was one of the patron saints of Ireland, and was regarded with such devotion, both there and in Scotland, that children were baptized as her servants, Maol Brighde, Giollabrid; and to the present day, hers is the favourite name in Ireland.
St. Bride’s churches are common, both in England and Scotland, and the village of Llanaffraid, in Wales, records her in her Welsh form of Ffraid. Bridewell was once the palace of St. Bride, and after its conversion into a prison, spread its sinister name to other like buildings. The Portuguese believe themselves to possess the head of St. Bridget at Lisbon, and have accordingly more than one Doña Brites among their historical ladies.
Sweden has also a St. Bridget, or rather Brigitta; but her name is in her own tongue Bergljot, shortened to Berglit, and then confounded with the Irish Bridget. It unfortunately means mountain-fright, or guardian defect, though German antiquaries have twisted both Bridgets into Beraht Gifu, bright gift. Be that as it may, the Swedish Brigitta was a lady of very high birth, who, in her widowhood, founded an order of Brigittin nuns, somewhere about 1363, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and was greatly revered for her sanctity. She named the very large class of Norwegian, German, and Swedish Bridgets or Berets, who are almost as numerous as the Irish.
| English. | Irish. | Scotch. | French. |
| Bridget | Brighid | Bride | Brigitta |
| Bride | Biddy | ||
| Italian. | Portuguese. | Swedish. | German. |
| Brigida | Brites | Brigitta | Brigitta |
| Brigita | Brita | Esth. | |
| Begga | Pirrit | ||
| Bergliot | |||
| Beret | |||
| Lusatian. | Lettish. | Lith. | Lapp. |
| Brischia | Britte | Berge | Pirket |
| Brischa | Birte | Berzske | Pikka |
| Pirre | Pikke |
Section IV.—Fear, Gwr, Vir.
The free days of the Kelt were fast ending. He fell before Roman discipline, though not without a worthy struggle.
In Cisalpine Gaul, Marcellus and Scipio themselves found Britomartus, or Viridomarus, king of the Boii, so worthy an antagonist that Marcellus, having slain him in single fight, dedicated his spolia opima in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius. In Spain, a Lusitanian hunter or shepherd, named Viriathus, carried on a guerilla warfare with the Roman legions for fourteen years. In Gaul, Cæsar mentions Virdumarus among his allies the Æduans, and says that their chief magistrate was termed vergobretus, and among his enemies, the Unelli and Arverni, he records Viridovix, Vergosillanus, and Vercingetorix.
The last chieftain was one of the most gallant men who struggled in vain against the eagles.
However, our concern is chiefly with his name. In fact, these Virs of Cæsar might have been placed in our preceding division, for they are from the same root, bri, or force, and still more resemble the Sanscrit virja, as well as the Latin virtus and vir. Exactly answering to vir, though coming in an independent stream from the same source, the Gaelic man is fear, plural fir; the Cymric is gwr, gen. gyr, plural wyr. Again, valour or virtue is in Welsh gwyrth, and gwr is the adjective for excelling.
Thus there can be no reasonable doubt, that the ver or vir of the Latin version of these Keltic heroes was a rendering of the fear of the Gael, or of the gwr of the Cymry, both not infrequent commencements; and the double name of the hero of Cisalpine Gaul, Viridomarus, or Britomartus, brings us back to the original root. It may be that Britomartus referred to his great strength.
Vergobretus, the magistrate of the Ædui, is explained either as Fear-co-breith, man who judges, or War-cy-fraith, man placed over the laws; or, taking gwr as excelling, and brawd, as justice, he would be excelling in justice.
Viriathus must be referred to fear, man, and, perhaps, to aodh, fire.
Vercingetorix himself may be translated into Fear-cuin-cedo-righ, man who is chief of a hundred heads; and his cousin, Vergosillanus, is the man either of the banner or the spear, according as sillanus is referred to saighean, a banner, or to saelan, a spear.
Here, then, are the tokens of kindred between the Gauls of the continent and the Gael of our islands, for Fear, the frequent commencement in both Ireland and Scotland, is assuredly the word that Cæsar rendered by Vir, more correctly both in sense and sound than he knew.
Fearghus, man-deed, from gus, a deed, is the rendering of one of the most national of Gaelic names, though Macpherson makes it Fearguth, man of the word.
Bold genealogists place Feargus at the head of the line of Scottish kings, and make him contemporary with Alexander the Great. Another Fergus was son of Finn, and considered as even a greater bard than his nephew, Oisean. Poems said to be by him are still extant, in one of which he describes his rescue of his brother, Oisean, who had been beguiled into a fairy cave, and there imprisoned, till he discovered himself to his brother by cutting splinters from his spear, and letting them float down the stream that flowed out of the place of his captivity.
Fearghus, the son of Erc, a Dalriad prince, was, in 493, blessed by St. Patrick, and led the great migration of Scots to Albin, together with his brothers Loarn and Aonnghus, who each named their own district, while he reigned over the whole region of the Scots,—that around Argyle; whither he had transported the stone of dominion, that sooner or later brought conquest to the race who possessed it. From these Fearghus or Farghy in Ireland, Fergus in Scotland, and the feminine Fergusiana still continue in use.
Fearachar is another Scottish form. Ferquard is given as prince of the Scots in Ireland, at some incalculable time; and Fearchur or Ferchar was the king of the Scots just after St. Columbus' death. He is Latinized as Ferquardus; and this was the name of an Earl of Ross in 1231; and as Farquhar has continued in favour in the Highlands. Feardorcha is the blind man. Fardorougha is an incorrect modernism, and Ferdinand and Frederick the supposed equivalent.
Gwr, or Wr, is the Cymric form of the same word, and the parallel to Fergus among the Picts was Wrguist, or Urguist, a prince who lived about 800, and whose daughter was called after him, married the Scottish Eacha or Fergusiana, and thus led to the union of the two races under her descendant, Kenneth MacAlpin.
Gwrtigearn, excelling king, is a Silurian prince of doubtful fame. Through Latinism we know him as Vortigern. It would seem that when the usurpation of Maximus had involved the Roman empire in confusion, and left Britain without any legions to defend it against the robber nations round, that he made some attempt at a partial revival of national spirit; but, failing this, entered into a treaty with the Anglo-Saxon invaders, and was thought to have betrayed the cause of his country.
What these doings were is another matter. We all know the romantic history of Vortigern’s letter to Henghist and Horsa; of his visit to the Saxon camp; of Rowena and her cup; of the Isle of Thanet marked out by strips of cow-hide; and of the treachery of the Saxons at Stonehenge. There is nothing morally impossible in the story as it was dished up for modern history, and it used to satisfy our ancestors before they had found out that a small king on the Welsh border could hardly have dealt with Thanet, and, moreover, that the Teutonic immigration had been going on for many years past on the eastern coast.
As to the cow-hide and the massacre, they are said to be old Thuringian traditions; and the Welsh seem to have either invented or preserved the story of the fascinations of Rowena. At any rate, they named her; for, alas for Saxon Rowena, there is nothing Teutonic in the word, and the Kymric form Rhonwen, white skirt, betrays its origin. Rhonwen, or Bradwen, is the name by which she is called in the Gododin, a poem ascribed to the bard Aneurin, and, perhaps, containing some germs of truth, though its connection with the Stonehenge massacre is hotly disputed.
CHAPTER III.
GAELIC NAMES.
Section I.—Scottish Colonists.
The strange and wild beliefs that prevailed regarding the original settlement of ancient Ireland, have left strong traces on the names still borne by the population, both there and in Scotland.
We need not go back quite to Adam’s great-grandson, and the wicked race that sprang from him, and all perished, except one giant, who took up his abode in a cave, and there lived till he was baptized by St. Patrick; nor to Fintan, who was changed into a salmon during the time that the flood prevailed, and afterwards gave rise to the proverb, “I could tell you many things were I as old as Fintan.” A bard, so called, was said to have existed, and a poem is attributed to him, which gives a very queer account of the first settlers, though he does not there claim quite such a startling experience.
Fomorians, Fir Bolg, men dwelling in caves, or, more probably, ravaging men, and Tuath De Danan, i.e. chiefs, priests, and bards, are all conducted in turn to Erin by tradition and poetry; but none equal in fame or interest the tribe called Milesian, from whom the purest Irish blood is supposed to descend.
The favourite legends start this famous colony from the East, where Phenius, the head of the family, was supposed to have taught the Phœnicians letters, and left them his name! His son, Niul, not to be behindhand with him, named the Nile, having been sent on an embassy to Egypt, where he married Pharaoh’s daughter! Whether her name was Scota or not, authorities are not agreed; but all declare that it was her father who was drowned in the Red Sea, and that a subsequent dispute with the Egyptians caused either Niul or his son to migrate to Spain.
It is this Niul, or Niale, to whom the whole legion of Niales are to be referred. The name, from niadh, means a champion, and was probably carried backwards to the ancestor from the various Neills, who thought they might as well claim the Nile as their namesake.
Neill of the Nine Hostages, was one of the greatest of the ancient heroes; he was the last but one of the pagan kings of Ireland, and himself most unconsciously imported the seed of the Gospel, for it was his men who, in a piratical descent on the Roman colony of Valentia, carried off the boy who, in after days, was to become the Apostle of Ireland,—one of the many slaves by whom the Gospel has been extended. Neill of the Nine Hostages was killed by an assassin about the year 405; but his family, the Hy Neill, or children of Neill, became one of the leading septs in the North of Ireland. Of them the story is told, that on going to settle on the Ulster coast, one of them resolved to take seisin of the new country by touching the shore before any one else, and finding his boat outstripped, he tore out his dagger, cut off his right hand at the wist, and threw it on the beach, so that his fingers were the first laid on the domain. Such, at least, is the tale that accounts for the O'Neill’s war-cry, Lamhdearg Aboo (Red hand set on), and for the red hand on the shield of the O'Neills and of Ulster, afterwards given by James I. to the knights baronets, whom he created as ‘undertakers’ of the new colony of English, which he wished to found in Ulster.
Ireland thus frequently used Neill, or Niall, and Scotland Niel, as it is there spelt, but it is far more surprising to meet with it among the Scandinavian races. It is evidence that there must have been some considerable intercourse between Ireland and the North before the days of the piracies of the historical ages. The old Irish legends constantly speak of Norway as Lochlinn, or the land of lakes, and show visits taking place between the inhabitants; and there are names to be found in both countries, borrowed from one another, too far back to be ascribed to the Norse invasions.
In the Landnama Bok, the Domesday Book of Iceland, no less than three Njals appear, and the Njalssaga, the history of the noble-spirited yet peaceful Icelander, who, even in the tenth century, had never shed blood, and preferred rather to die with his sons than to live to avenge them, is one of the finest histories that have come down to us from any age. Njal’s likeness to the contraction Nils, has caused many to suppose that it also is a form of Nicolas, but the existence of Nial both in Ireland and Iceland before the conversion of either country contradicts this. Nielsen is a frequent Northern patronymic, and our renowned name of Nelson probably came to us through Danish settlers.
The Northmen apparently took their Njal to France with them, and it there was called Nesle or Nêle. Chroniclers Latinized it as Nigellus, supposing it to mean black; and in Domesday book, twelve landholders called Nigellus appear, both before and after the Conquest, so that they may be supposed to be Danish Niels, left undisturbed in their possessions.
Nigel de Albini, brother to him who married the widow of Henry I., must have been a genuine Norman Niel; and through the numerous Anglo-Norman nobles who were adopted into the Scottish peerage, this form was adopted in addition to the old Gaelic Nial, or as a translation of it, for the young brother of Robert Bruce is called by both names, Nigel and Nial. At present this Latinized Normanism of the old Keltic word is considered as peculiarly Scottish, chiefly because it has been kept up in that form in old Scotch families.
Fergus, Loarn, and Aonghus are said to have been the three brothers who led the migration from Erin to Caledonia, and transferred the name of Scotland from one isle to the other in 503, and Loarn and Angus gave their names to two districts in Scotland.
Anguss was indeed a popular name both in Scotland and Ireland. It comes from the numeral aon, one; it also conveys the sense of pre-eminence, means excellent strength, and it is generally pronounced Haoonish in Gaelic. Irish genealogists make Aongus Turimheach king two hundred and thirty-three years before the Christian era; and we are afterwards told of another Aongas, king of Munster, who had a family of forty-eight sons and daughters, of whom he gave half to St. Patrick to be monks and nuns. In Hanmer’s Chronicle, King Arthur visits Ireland and converses with King Anguish, which painful title is precisely that which Henry VIII., in his correspondence, gives his brother-in-law, the Earl of Angus.
Angus is specially at home in Scotland, but there it has been called Hungus and Ungus, likewise Enos, and is now generally translated into Æneas, the christened name of many a Scot who ought to be Angus; and the Irish are too apt to change it in the same way.[[97]]
[97]. Hanmer, Chronicle; Ossianic Society’s Transactions; Taylor, Hist. of Ireland; Dasent, Nialsaga; Highland Society’s Dictionary; Ellis, Domesday Book.
Section II.—The Feen.
A remarkable cycle of traditions are cherished by the Gaelic race regarding a band of heroes, whom they call the Fiann, or Fenians, and whose exploits are to them what those of Jason, or Theseus, were to the Greeks.
Scotland and Ireland claim them both alike, and point to places named after them and their deeds; but the balance of probability is in favour of Ireland, as their chief scene of adventure, although they may also have spent some time in Morven, as their legends call the West of Scotland, since the Gaelic race was resident in both countries, and kept together in comparative union by its hatred to the Cymry in both. This supposition is confirmed by the semblance of a date that is supplied through the conversion of the last survivor of the band by St. Patrick, which would place their era in the end of the fourth century, just when the migrations of the Scots were taking place, supposing these to have lasted from about A.D. 250 to 500. Still, the Fian may be only one of the ancient imaginations of the Gael, and either never have had any corporeal existence at all, or else, genuine ancient myths may have fixed themselves upon some forefathers, who under their influence have been magnified into heroic—not to say gigantic—proportions.
These tales, songs, and poems lived among the story-telling Highlanders and Irish, unnoticed, until the eighteenth century, when the Scottish author, James Macpherson, perceived that they contained a mine of wild beauty and heroic deeds, and were, in fact, the genuine national poetry of his race.
He put his fragments together into the books of an epic, and wrought up the measured metre of the Gaelic into a sort of stilted English prose, rhythmical, and not without a certain grandeur of cadence and expression; moreover, he left out a good deal of savagery, triviality, repetition, and absurdity; and produced an exceedingly striking book, by expanding the really grand imagery of the ancient bards, and, perhaps, unconsciously imparting Christian heroism to his characters.
There had been some unscrupulousness from the first. Either from nationality or ignorance, Macpherson had entirely ignored the connection with St. Patrick, and made his heroes altogether Scottish, though passing into Ireland; and when a swarm of critics arose, some questioning, some mocking, he did not make a candid statement of what were his materials, but left the world to divide itself between the beliefs that the whole was Ossian’s, or the whole Macpherson’s. Had he been truthful, he would have gained high credit, both as poet and antiquary; but he brought on himself the reputation of an impostor, his literary talents have been forgotten, and the poems themselves are far less regarded than they deserve.
Be the truth what it may, the names of the Fianna were in constant use long before Macpherson was heard of.
In Ireland and West Scotland, the early poems represent Finn and his friends performing high feats of prowess.
Finally, the Feen either invaded Ireland, or became obnoxious to the natives, and were set upon at the battle of Garristown, or Gabhra, pronounced Gavra, loud shouting. The last survivor of them was the poet Oisean, or Ossian, as he is now called, who was said to have lived till the coming of St. Patrick, and to have been taken into his monastery, where old Irish poems show him in most piteous case, complaining much of fasts, and of the “drowsy sound of a bell.”
Section III.—Finn.
Leader of the Fianna, and bestowing on them their very title, stands the great Fion, the grand centre of ancient Gaelic giant lore; his full title being Fionn Mac Cumhail, pronounced Coul. Fingal, the name the Scots have known him by ever since the time of Barbour, is really a confusion of Faingall, the toilers of the Gaul.
There is no doubt of the meaning of fion. It is the same with the Cymric Gwynn, or Wynn, and like them signifies white, fair, or clear, as in the name of Lough Fyne.
One very remarkable feature in the history of Finn is that the same meaning of white attaches to it in ancient or poetical Scandinavian, though not in the other Teutonic languages; nor is the name found in any Teuton nation but the northern ones, except that in the Saxon chronicle, Finn is Odin’s fourth forefather, whereas he is his grandfather in the Edda.
In the great Anglian poem of Beowolf, Finn is king of the Frisians, but is conquered by the Danes, strangely enough, under Henghist; another poem, called the Battle of Finnsburh, records the strife—Finn lost half his kingdom, but the next year he killed Henghist; then being set upon by the other Danes, lost his crown and life. It is likely that, old as the poem is, it has been much altered, and that it really existed before the Anglian colonization of our island; indeed, there is reason to suppose that it was in memory of the burgh of this Frisian Finn, that Finsbury manor in the city of London acquired its name.
Finn is a giant in Norway, compelled by the good Bishop Laurence to erect the church at Lund, after which he was turned into stone by way of payment, wife, child, and all, as may still be seen. Again in Denmark as a trolld, he did the same service for Esbern Snare, building Kallundborg church, on condition that if his name was not guessed by the time the church was finished, his employer should become his property. As in the German tale of Rumpel Stitzchen, the danger was averted by the victim, just in time, overhearing this amiable lullaby in the hole of a rock—
“Be still, my babe, be still,
To-morrow comes thy father Finn,
Esbern’s heart and eyes for a toy thou shalt win.”
Next morning Esbern saluted Finn by his name, as he was bringing the last half-pillar, whereupon he flew away, pillar and all, wherefore the church only stands to this day on three pillars and a half!
Finn alone, and in combination, is rather a favourite in the North. The Landnama-bok, which gives the Icelandic genealogies from the settlements there in the ninth century down to the middle of the thirteenth, has five men named Finnr, two, Finni, and three ladies called Finna; and in the three countries in the, mainland it has been equally common, even to comparatively recent times, when Finn Magnusson was one of the chief authorities for Scandinavian antiquities. Among the compounds of the name, the Swedes have Finngaard, which their pronunciation contrives to make sound like Fingal, with what is called the “thick l;” and in modern times it is so spelt in allusion to Macpherson’s hero. The name Finnketyl, or Finnkjell, with the feminine Finnkatla, is explained as the cauldron or vessel of some semi-divine Finn. Kettles are rather common in the North, but almost always belong to some divinity of high rank. Finn has his weapons, as Finnbogi, or Finbo, a white bow; Finngeir, a white spear; his sport, as Finleik, white game or reward; his forest, as Finnvidr, or white wood; as well as his guardianship, as Finn-vardr, or white ward, all represented in northern nomenclature, in a manner analogous to those of the national deities.
All this makes it highly probable that Finn was an idea borrowed from the Gael by the Norsemen, especially as the hammer of Thor is sometimes to be heard in Scottish legend resounding in the hand of Finn. Fionn is still a name in Ireland, but in English is translated into Albany; and in Scotland Fionnlaoch, white soldier, has become Finlay.
There are many other Keltic names connected with Finn in the sense of white, such as Finghin, or the fair offspring, which became Finian or Fineen; and as such was the name of two saints, one a friend of St. Patrick, and that teacher of St. Columb, who, when Columb had written out the Psalms from a book lent by him, claimed the copy on the plea that it was the offspring of his manuscript. Nevertheless, St. Columb took care that St. Finan should be duly revered in Scotland, where he has various churches, and one royal namesake, for probably he was the real original of the Finnan, whose reign is placed B.C. 134. Another St. Finghin is patron of Ulster, and left his name to be a favourite in the families of M'Carthy, O'Sullivan, and O'Driscoll, until Finghin M'Carthy Anglicized himself as Florence, in which he has ever since been imitated by his countrymen, though the change did not bring him much good fortune, as his enemies represented that his alias showed sinister intentions; and for other more definite misdeeds, he was thirty-six years imprisoned in the Tower of London. It was a mistake in Lady Morgan to make Florence M'Carthy a woman, for Florence and Flory in Ireland were always men. We do find a Florence mentioned as contemporary with St. Patrick; but this is doubtless meant as a translation of Finghin.
The ladies, however, have not been behindhand in spoiling their derivative from Fionn. Fionn-ghuala, or white shoulder, was a tough-looking name enough, though no one need complain of it as Finnuala, as it actually is spoken, still less as Fenella. Early Keltic maidens used it frequently, and it is found in all manner of shapes in genealogies. In the clouds at the opening of Scottish history, we find Fynbella, or Finella, recorded as the cruel Lady of Fettercairn, who, in 994, killed King Kenneth III.
Another Fynbella was Lady of the Mearns in 1174; Finvola is found in the M'Leod pedigree twice in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Macdonnells called her Finwald in 1497. Finvola and Finola thickly stud the Irish pedigrees; and it was perfectly correct in Scott to make Fenella the name of the little wild dumb sprite, whom he placed in the Isle of Man as a daughter of the house of Christian. In almost all its original homes, however, Fenella has been discarded, having been ousted by its supposed equivalent, Penelope (a weaver), and only in a few Irish families is it still retained, and then in the form of Nuala. In Scotland it has turned into the well-known Flora or Florie.
The other feminine forms of Finn have entirely passed away. They were Finbil and Finscoth, white blossom and white flower, answering to the Blanche-fleur of Romance, which it is possible was really meant as a translation; Findelvh, fair countenance; Finnabhor, of the fair eyelids; Finni, the fair; and Findath, fair colour.
Section IV.—Cu, Cun, Gal.
We have treated the name of Fionn alone, because that is, comparatively, plain sailing, while the second syllable of the name by which we call him is beset with interminable perplexities.
If he was only Fingal, it would be easy enough to translate him by ‘white courage;’ but unluckily we know that this was a Lowland contraction, used indeed in Barbour’s Bruce, in the fourteenth century, but not the original form. He was Finn Mac Cumhail; or, according to Hector Boece, in 1526, Finn, filius Cœli, Finn, the son of Heaven; thus making him—as every mythic worthy from Hercules to Arthur has been made—an astronomical parable.
In the first place, it may be observed that Cumhail is in pronunciation nothing but Coul, or Coyl. That murderous letter h has destroyed the m, and itself into the bargain, and their only use is to testify to what the etymology of the word has been.
Here we unite with the other branch of the language in a most curious manner, for Col, Coel, or Coll, was a highly mythic personage in Kymric legend, connected with the original population of Britain.
He is one of the three great swineherds of Britain, in the Triads, the other two being Pwll and Tristram; also, he is one of those who conferred benefits upon Britain, and appears in company with Hu Gadarn.
The title of the swineherd is accounted for in the Welsh tale of a sow called Henwen, the old lady, who was placed under his charge, and came swimming straight for Britain, with Coll holding by her bristles, wherever she swam. There were predictions that Britain would suffer harm from her progeny, and Arthur therefore collected his forces to oppose her landing; but at Aber Tarrogi she came to the shore, and at Wheatfield in Gwent she laid three grains of wheat and three bees, whence corn and honey are the great pride of the district. At Dyved she produced a barleycorn and a pig, to the subsequent benefit of Dyved beer and bacon. She favoured Lleyn with rye, but on Snowdon she bestowed the wolf and the eagle, and on Mona a kitten.
Without going back, like Mr. Davies, to make the sow either into the ark, or a Phœnician ship, it is worth observing that there are traces in Ireland of some pig myth. There is a famous poem called The Hunting of the Pig, resulting in its being slain at Muckamore; and muc, a pig, and torc, a boar, are constantly found in old names of places, as if the swine cult had been of a higher kind than that at present received by the species.
Not wholly substantial is the next British Coel-ap-Cyllin, who with Bran the Blessed, and his own son Lleurig, makes up a triad of promoters of Christianity in Britain.
We are scarcely sure of more than his existence; not quite that he left his name to Colchester, and far less that he is the father of the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine.
Col or Gall was the name of a companion of St. Columbanus, and, like him, one of the great missionary saints of Ireland, who finished the imperfect work of conversion of the Kelts, scattered in the borders of France, Germany, and Switzerland. His name of St. Gall is still attached to the great monastery near the Lake of Constance.
The prefix cu is, in its primary meaning, a dog, and is thus declined: cu (nom.), con (gen.), coin (dat.); thus showing its kindred with the Sanscrit çvan, Greek κυων (cyon), and Latin canis, the chien of France, and cane of Italy; hund and hound elsewhere. Only the land of the magnificent wolf-hound would have made his designation (elsewhere a term of scorn) into the title of the brave warrior, and thence into that of a chieftain. And so again it is the Kelts of Britain that transmuted the mungoose and snake of the Indian legend into the faithful dog and wild wolf of Bedgelert, the grave of the hound. Caleb, and an occasional Danish Hund, have alone elsewhere endured the name of the most faithful of animals; but in Gaelic it is a most favourite prefix. By the author of the Annals of Ulster, it is literally translated Canis, making us wonder whether, in the Scala family, Cane, so famous in Dante’s time, could have been a rendering of some ancient Celtic Cu.
Conn, when standing alone, as in the case of Conn of the Hundred Battles, means wisdom.
Several of the most distinguished Fenians have this prefix, and have handed it on to a great number of successors. Conghal would seem to have been the proper name of Finn’s father; and, in Macpherson’s poem, a Congal reigns over Ulster, as many a Congal assuredly did both before and after his time.
Connal, or Connel, a name sometimes said to mean friendship, is given to one of the Ossianic heroes, who makes a great figure in Macpherson’s epic, and is said to have named Tirconnel. The name continued in great favour, and the popular tales of the Highlands describe a certain ingenious Conall, whose adventures are a most curious mixture of those of Ulysses and Sindbad the Sailor, and are related in the same way as those of the Three Calenders and other worthies in the Arabian Nights. History says that Congal Claen, king of Ulster, slew Suibne, king of Ireland, but was then attacked and defeated by Domnall II., Suibne’s successor; that he then fled to Donald-brec, or the Freckled, king of the Scots, and brought him to Ireland to be defeated at Magrath, in 637. An Irish saint, called Congal, founded the Great Abbey of Ben-chor, in Ulster, answering to Ban-chor, in Wales, and thus formed the nursery of the great missions of the Irish Church in the sixth century.
Conan of small renown, as Macpherson calls him, was an unfortunate Fenian, who always served as the butt of the rest, and is called in other legends Conan Maol, the bald. He is in character a good deal like the Sir Kay of Arthur’s court. The M'Connans now have borrowed the English names of Kenyon and Canning. His name comes to light in the Cymric branch, in the person of the British Conan, or Kynan Meriadech, who is said to have led a migration of Britons to Armorica, and to be the patriarch of the Dukes of Brittany. Of him is told the pretty tale of the spotless ermine, that took refuge under his shield, and was spared by him, its skin thenceforth forming the cognizance of Brittany, with the motto, Malò mori quàm fœdari.
He is also said to have been the intended husband of St. Ursula; and, at any rate, suggested the name of many a Conan among the Breton princes, until the father of the unfortunate Constance, a name very possibly given as a supposed feminine to Conan, since Constantine has devoured all manner of varieties of cu and con, and thus occasions the numerous occurrences of this imperial designation as labels to the grim portraits in the hall at Holyrood, who, after all, look more like Roman Constantines than Caledonian Congals, Conaires, or Conchobars.
Connchobhar is also translated as Cornelius and Charles. Here conn means strength, and cobhair, aid, or if the spelling ought to be Conchobhar, it would be wolf-dog aid, and it is a word as variously rendered by those who wish to retain its native form as by those who try to change it into an ordinary name. Macpherson calls it Conachar, and thence we have the assumed name of the unfortunate young chieftain whom Sir Walter Scott placed in the deadly fight between Clan Chattan and Clan Kay, to exemplify the struggle between constitutional timidity and fear of shame. Conchabhar, who reigned in Scotland in 847, and Cunechat or Conquhare, who was Maormar of Angus in the tenth century, are both forms of Connchobhar, which in the North-East of Ireland is vulgarly called Crogher and Crohoore. The last is said to be the best representation of the spoken word; but Connor is the usual version, and much the most euphonious to English ears; but then it is said also to represent Connaire, one endowed with strength, aire being a word added to form an adjective, and Conmor, also in use in the days of the Fenians. Indeed, Ireland had many royal Connors, one dignified as the Great; but Conchobar. Conmor, and Connaire, are all confused in them.
Constantine is used in the Maguire family as a rendering of Cú Connacht, the hound of Connaught; Munster’s hound is Cú Mumhan; Cashel’s, Cú Chaisil. The river Shannon has Cú Sionnan; the mountain has Cú-sleibhe; and, strangest of all, there is Cugan-mathair, hound without a mother. Cú-Mhidhe, hound of Meath, is simply pronounced Cooey; but in the O'Kane family has been turned into Quentin, and it may be concluded that a similar process in Scotland changed the hound of Meath into the Latin fifth, and accounts for the various Quentins.
Meath Cuchullin is the name of the hero with which Macpherson’s epic opens: “Cuchullin sat by Tara’s wall, by the tree of the rustling leaf.” His name is explained in the note, to mean, the voice of Ullin or Ulster; Gath Ullin, voice of Ulster; but Ullin does not mean Ulster at all. It was not the hero’s original name; but when young he killed a wolf-hound belonging to Culain, the smith of Ulster. He answered the owner’s complaints by saying, “I will be your hound,” and thus obtained the nickname of Cú Culain, Culain’s dog. Cuchullin was a great hero, and a Gaelic proverb, “as strong as Cuchullin,” is still in use. To Cuchullin belongs the Keltic version of the story of the single combat between the unknown father and son, only recognized too late by the tokens left with the mother. In Persia and Ireland the son is killed; in Greece, the father; in Germany alone the conclusion is happy!
As to the MacCuinns, they have dignified themselves as MacQueen in Scotland, while their cousins in Ireland from O'Cuinn have become Quin.
Section V.—Diarmaid and Graine.
Of all the heroes of the Feen, Diarmaid, whose name means free man, was one of the most distinguished, and though not brought in by Macpherson, his legend bears the same sort of relation to the main cycle, as does the story of Orlando to the Court of Charlemagne, or that of Lancelot to the Round Table.
Grainne was the daughter of Cormac MacArt, king of the fifth part of Ulster, who built at Tara for her the Grianan of one pillar, or royal palace. She was a lady of extremely quick wit, and gained the heart of Fionn by her answers to a series of questions, which tradition still preserves.
Fionn met with the usual fate of uncles in romance, for his nephew, Diarmaid, fell in love with her too, and was the more irresistible, as he had a beauty spot, which made every woman who saw it fall in love with him. The young pair fled away together, and there is an extremely long poem on their adventures and mutual affection, but fate at length overtook Diarmaid. A great hunting took place, at which all the Feen were present; in the course of which they came on the track of a venomous boar, whose back was sixteen feet long, and soon after they found some shavings of wood made by Diarmaid in cutting out dishes with his knife. Having thus discovered his retreat, Fionn summoned his rival, and commanded him to join in the hunt, in hopes that he would thus meet his death; but Diarmaid killed the animal without receiving damage. Fionn then remembered that Diarmaid, like Achilles and Siegfried, had a fatal spot in his foot, and desired him to measure the boar by pacing it against the hair. One of the bristles went into the fatal spot, and Diarmaid fell dying; he asked for some water, and Fionn was bringing him some from the stream between his hands, when he thought on Grainne, and let it run through. Diarmaid died, and his corpse was brought home to his wife, whose lamentation is given as a separate poem. Diarmaid was also called Doun, the brown, and the clan descended from him were the O'Duine. The heiress of this line, Aoiffe or Eva, married Gillaspick Campbell, of an Anglo-Norman family, and Campbell has ever since been the Lowland surname of the great clan; but in the North they are still the sons of Diarmid; and their crest, the boar’s head, is in memory of the fatal hunting.
Diarmaid continued in use both in Scotland and Ireland; and in historical times it was Diarmaid, king of Leinster, who acted the part of Paris, and ruined his country by the abduction of Dervorgil of Meath; and then, when forced by the superior king to give up the lady, revenged himself by calling in Earl Strongbow and the English.
Diarmid, or, as it is commonly called, Dermot or Darby, is still common among the Irish. Where the saying about Darby and Joan arose, I cannot discover. Darby is the form of Diarmid in Limerick and Tipperary; Jeremiah, strange to say, is used for it in Cork and Kerry. Napoleon, in his enthusiasm for the Ossianic poems of Macpherson, named two of his heroes therefrom, but Diarmaid Murat died in childhood.
Grainne’s name has been equally popular with that of her lover. Ancient Irish ladies constantly use it; the most celebrated being Grainne O'Maille, a notable sailor chieftainess of the south-western coast, whence she once sallied forth to pay a friendly visit to Queen Elizabeth; and when the two high-spirited women were together, the semi-barbarian was more than a match for the civilized queen.
Graine was soon after translated into Grace; indeed, the piratess was also called Grace O'Malley; and ever since, Grace has been a favourite national name in Scotland and Ireland, wherever Graine has been used; it has been accepted for its English meaning and pleasant sound, and is now very frequent.
Section VI.—Cormac.
Cormac is a name that makes a great figure in the Ossianic poems, and perhaps the son of Corb, i. e., a chariot, that is, a charioteer. Cormac, king of Ulster, was the young ward of Cuchullin; and another Cormac, called Cairbar, or the strong, was the father of a lady called Morna, or more properly, Muirne, who when one lover returned from battle, announcing that he had slain his rival, demanded his sword stained with the blood, and then took revenge by plunging it into his breast, and finally killed herself with it. A still more misty Cormac figures in ancient pedigrees, as having been choked by the bone of an enchanted salmon; and Cormac Cas is a more remote ancestor of the O'Briens than the great Brien Boromhe himself.
Another Cormac is named in Irish calendars, as an abbot of eminent sanctity in the days of St. Columba. He is further thought to have visited Iona, and at home enjoys the credit of having endowed the sept of the Hy Muireadach with “prosperity of cattle, the gift of eloquence, success in fosterage, the gift of good counsel, and the headship of peace and protection.” His name has since been common in Ireland.
Cormac used to be barbarously spelt Cormick and Cormuck, and the MacCarthy family have substituted Charles for it. There is a long Icelandic poem on a hero named Kormak, who, though his parents and brothers have Norse names, evidently had Milesian blood as well as name, for he is described as having dark eyes and hair, with a fair skin. He was an admirable warrior and poet, but was the victim of hopeless love for a lady named Steingerda.
Cairbre, strong man, is likewise one of the Ossianic names, as well as a soubriquet of Cormac. Cairbre again is reckoned as the first of the Milesians to settle in Ulster; and another Cairbre, son of Niall of the Nine Hostages, bequeathed his name to the district now called Carbury.
Cairbre appears as the Irish sovereign who was the greatest foe of the Fenians, and commanded at the battle of Gabhra, in which their force was broken; and the son of Oisean, the grandson of Fionn, the beloved Osgar, was treacherously slain, by a thrust in the side, by Cairbre himself. The tears shed by the great Fionn were for his grandson Osgar, and for his faithful dog Bran; and a great quantity of poetry has clustered round the death of this young hero. Oscar Bernadotte, another of Napoleon’s Ossianic godsons, recently sat upon the Swedish throne, though amongst us, this, like others of the Fenian names, has descended to dogs. It is explained as the bounding warrior, and the MacOscars, in Ireland, have been turned into Cosgrove and Costello.
The like fate has befallen the object of Osgar’s love, Malvina, as Macpherson calls her. The name is a mere invention of his own, formed perhaps from Maol, a handmaid. It has been adopted by French women to such an extent, that Malvine is one of the regular Parisienne’s names, and it has further travelled to Germany. Thus Osgar and Malvina, though with few namesakes in their own country, are the only Fenians who have been commemorated in continental nomenclature.
Múirne means affection, and when Anglicized as Morna, is considered as a Highland name.
Section VII.—Cath.
Universal among the Kelts is Cath or Cad, a battle or defence, such a prefix that is sure to flourish in every war-like nation.
Cathuil, a derivative of Cath, is a great chieftain attended by three hundred followers; and Cathal, as the name became, continued in use among the O'Connors, who translate it as Charles. The favourite hero there was Cathal Crobhdearg, red-handed, who fought hard against the English invaders; and, therefore, was described by them as a blood-thirsty ruffian, and by native historians as pious and amiable, probably being both characters in turn. His name was probably the parent of the Scottish surname, Cadell; but a Welsh saint, named Cadell, a battle-defence or shield, lived in the twelfth century. He had been a fierce warrior, and a great enemy to the English; but during his recovery from some severe wounds, he repented, went to the Holy Land as a penitent, and finally became a monk, and the patron of many a Cadell besides.
Cathbarr means tumult of battle. Cathbarr was so renowned a chief, that to strike his shield with a spear was the summons to his clan to arm. The Welsh made great use of the same prefix. Cadwallon, apparently from cadw, to defend, has always been common among them. Cadwallon was the brother of the Madoc of Southey, and a much earlier Cadwallon was the father of Cadwaladyr, or battle-arranger, regarded by the two parties much as Cathal was; for by the Saxons, Ceadwalla, as they call him, the slayer of the good Edwin and Oswald, is regarded with unmixed horror, while his own Cymric countrymen revere him as a glorious patriotic prince, second only to Arthur, and worthy of saintly honours; indeed he was canonized by Pope Sergius in 688, and is surnamed the Blessed. Cadwaldr in Breton, and Cadwalladyr in Welsh, continue to the present day. Cadwallader is also used in the Highlands, though, perhaps, this may be a blunder for some Gaelic Cath.
Saints of this name were numerous. Among them was Cedd, as his adopted people called him, the Good Bishop, whose Keltic ecclesiastical habits were so distasteful to the fiery Wilfred of York, and who finally is revered at Lichfield as “good St. Chad,” a form in which his appellation lingered among the midland peasantry. The grandfather of Cadwalladyr was Cadvan, whose Latin epitaph calls him “Catamarus, rex sapientissimus,” and whose name means battlehorn. Another Caduan, or Cadvan, was a hermit who migrated from Brittany to live on the coast of Caernarvonshire, on the isle called Bardsey by the English, and Ynis Eolli, Isle of the Current, by the Welsh. It was reputed a place of so much sanctity, that it was called the Rome of Britain; and so many saints were buried there, that it was a saying of the bards—
“Twenty thousand saints of yore,
Came to lie on Bardsey’s shore.”
Cattwg, or Cadoc, was of princely blood, founded a monastery, and trained the veritable bard, Taliessin.
The Greek Adelphios was translated by the Welsh into Cadffrawd. Sir Cados is one of gentle Enid’s enemies, in the French romance of her constancy; but Cado, her son, in Welsh pedigree, swells the roll of saints. Cadfar, or stout in battle, is almost certainly one of the Armorican contributions to the Paladins of Charlemagne, in the shape of Sir Gadifer, the Don Gayferos of Spanish ballad and of Don Quixote.
Section VIII.—Fiachra.
Fiachra, or Fiaghra, is, as the Fiach is in Irish, a raven. Fiachere MacFhinn is a son of Fingal, who does his part among the traditions of the Fenians; and another Fiachra was the father of the last pagan king of Ireland, who, as Erse lore relates, reigned over Erin, Albin, and Britain, and as far as the mountains of the Alps. He succeeded his uncle Niall of the Nine Hostages, in 405, and went to the Alps to revenge his death. Being still a pagan, he demolished a tower of sods and stones sixty feet high, in which lived a saint, eleven feet from the light, and was accordingly cursed by the saint, and killed by a flash of lightning; but his servants put a lighted sponge in his mouth to imitate his breath, by way of concealing his death for some time.
Fiachra was the name of a hermit who left home to seek for solitude in France, and lived at Brenil, about two leagues from Meaux. He particularly applied himself to the cultivation of his little garden, and has ever since been considered as the patron of gardeners; and his austerity was such, that no woman was allowed to come within his precincts. He died about 670, and his relics began to obtain a miraculous reputation, which increased so much, that, though little known in his own country, France is full of churches dedicated to him.
Anne of Austria was particularly devoted to him; she thought the recovery of her husband, and the birth of the great Louis XIV. himself, were due to his intercessions; and she made a pilgrimage to his shrine, remembering so well his objections to womankind, that she never attempted to cross his threshold, but knelt before the door.
It does not appear, however, that the name of Fiacre was adopted by any one in deference to this devotion, except, perhaps, the Fiak of Brittany. All it did was to pass to the first hackney-coaches of Paris, which, from being used as a commodious mode of going on pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Fiacre, received the appellation they have had ever since. It is a whimsical concatenation that has named the fiacres of Paris after the misty raven of the race of Fingal.
Rín means a seal or sea-calf in Gaelic. Ronan is the derivative. He is a hero whose death is lamented in the Ossianic poetry, and his name was afterwards borne by a large number of Irish and Scottish saints, from whom came Ronan in Scotland, Ronayne in Ireland, once with the feminine Ronat.[[98]]
[98]. O'Donovan; Macpherson; Maitland, History of Scotland; Cosmo Innes; Saturday Review; Butler.
Section IX.—Names of Complexion.
Names of complexion were very frequent among the various branches of Kelts, often as mere affixed soubriquets, but growing from thence into absolute individual names. Dhu and ciar, the black; dorchaid, the dark; dearg and ruadh, red; don, brown; boid, yellow; finn, white; odhar, pale; flann and corcair, ruddy; lachtna and uaithne, green; glas, which is blue in Wales, green in Ireland, and grey in the Highlands; gorm, blue; liath, grey; riabhach, greyish, have all furnished their share of names and epithets.
Dougall and Dugald have been from time immemorial Highland names, and, together with Donald, serve as the national nickname of the Gael among the Lowlanders. Dowal is used in Ireland. Donald is the Anglicism of Donghal, brown stranger, an early Scottish and Irish name, and likewise of Domhnall, which is probably really the same, though the Irish glossographers translated it a proud chieftain, and now have turned it into Donat and Daniel, or Dan.
Donald is reckoned as the first Christian king of Scotland.
To Beath, life, may be referred Betha, an old hereditary English name, and the Latinism of Bega or Begga, for a saint, called otherwise Hien or Hayne. She was of Irish birth; but about 620, was imported by some of the Keltic missionaries of the North of England, and St. Aidan consecrated her at Whitby as the first nun in Northumbria. Leaving St. Hilda to govern there in her stead, she founded the abbey, known by her English name of St. Bees, and at present serving as a university. A French St. Begga, whose mother was Northumbrian, was wife to a man whose strange destiny was to be, first, Maire du Palais, then, Bishop of Metz, and lastly to be killed in the chace. After his death, she founded a monastery, which is considered by some to have been the germ of the admirable institution of béguines, who did the work of sisters of charity in the Netherlands long before the French order was established by St. Vincent de Paul. Some, however, deduce them from a priest at Liege, called Lambert le bégue, or the stammerer. Begga was probably imported by the Danes to Scandinavia, where it is still in use, though there it may be a contraction for either Bergljot or Brigitta. The Venerable Bede himself, the father of English history, called Beda in Latin, is referred to the Welsh Bedaws, another form of the word life; but it has been more usual to explain his name by reference to the Teuton verbs, meaning to bid or to pray. However, that several Keltic forms did prevail is certain, especially among the churchmen of the northern counties.
Macduff no doubt was so called from Dubhoda, Maormar of Fife. Another Duff had exchanged the Gaelic Maormar for the English Earl, in 1115, and Dubican was Maormar of Angus, in 939.
Among ladies the Irish had Dubhdeasa, dark beauty, Dubhchoblaith (pronounced Duvcovla), or black victory, and Dubhessa, or black nurse. Duvessa O'Farrell died in 1301; and this same appellation Spenser must afterwards have heard in Ireland, when, struck, no doubt, by the du at the commencement sounding like two, as did the other Irish name Una resemble one, he called his emblem of falsehood, or perhaps of the Church of Rome, the false Duessa, while he gave the title of Una to his lovely personation of the one truth, the one true undivided Church, the guide of the Red Cross Knight. Irish antiquaries assure us that Una means dearth or famine; but it hardly suits this etymology. Una is queen of the fairies in the county of Ormond, in which character she appears in one version of the story of the soldier billeted on a miser. The man was amazed at his hospitable reception and entertainment, as he thought, by the avaricious squire in question, until morning disclosed that the fairy queen Una had raised the mansion and provided the supper, but from the prime cow in the miser’s herd.
Una has continued in use among the Irish peasantry, though much corrupted, being often pronounced Oonagh, and Anglicized as Winny, the contraction of Winifred, the English version of the Welsh Gwenfrewi.
The female Christian name of Douglas, which belonged to one of the unfortunate wives of Queen Elizabeth’s Earl of Leicester, was either a free version of one of those varieties of ‘dark ladyes,’ or else was one of the first specimens of a surname converted into a Christian name, perhaps in compliment to Lady Margaret Douglas, the niece of Henry VIII. and mother of Lord Darnley. Douglas was, without doubt, a territorial designation from the dark vale and stream of Douglas; but the heralds and genealogists of the gallant lineage of the bleeding heart made out an ancestor, ‘Sholto Dhu Glas’ (see the dark grey man), and then Sholto was adopted as a name in the Douglas family, and crept from thence to others. I have found no instance of it before the seventeenth century in looking through the peerage of Scotland, and the probable derivation of the word would be sioltaich, a sower.
Duncan was either Donnachu, brown chief, or Donngal, brown stranger, both which names were rife among the Scots, and Duncan has so continued ever since. Duncan and Donald both occur as Keltic slaves in Iceland, in the Saga of Burnt Njal; and, perhaps, not only the Irish, but even the saintly Scottish David, may have been at first an Anglicized Domnhall.
Don stands alone as a name in Hanmer’s list of Finn’s warriors; Donnan was an Irish name, and Donchada became Donoghoe, sometimes even now baptismal, but best known as the O'Donoghoe, the great visionary horseman of Killarney.
The word is really the same as our dun, though that has now come to express a misty dark grey, while don evidently means brown-haired, as in the feminine Duinsech. Don, as it stands at the end of the name of ‘The O'Connor,’ simply shows that he is the head of the brown branch of that sept, which anciently split into brown and red—O'Connor Don and O'Connor Roe, like the black and red Douglases of Scotland.
Roe is the Anglicism for ruadh, the colour that goes by the same title in all our cognate tongues, from the Greek ροδος to the Gadhaelic ruadh, and Cymric rud, rhud. It plays the chief part in nomenclature in Ireland and Scotland, where the true undiluted Gaels are divided between the black and the red.
The Irish Ruadri, Ruadhan, Ruadhaic, the Scottish Ruaridh, and Welsh Rhydderch, have all alike disguised themselves as Roderick, which is in each case supposed to be the full name of those who in ordinary parlance call themselves Rory or Roy.
In Welsh myths we meet with Rhwddlwan Gawr, the red bony giant, and in Merddhyn’s time we come upon Rhydderch Hoel, or the liberal, the champion of the Christian faith, who was the friend of St. Columba, restored St. Kentigern to Glasgow, and was promised by the former that he should never fall into the hands of his enemies, but should die with his head on his pillow—a promise that a Saxon long after would have scorned. He was a discourager of Druidism, and is reviled by Merlin. His name may come from rhydez, the exalted.
Several less shadowy kings reigned in Wales, the most distinguished of whom united all the three principalities till the year 877, and was called Rydderch Mawr, or, as it is barbarously called in our histories, Roderick Maur; much resembling what has been done with Roderick Dhu.
Dearbhforgail, or Derforgal, is translated by the Four Masters, ‘purely fair daughter;’ but later critics make it ‘the true oath,’ from dearbh, an oath, and fior-glan, true.
Dearbhforghal was a very tough name for the genealogists, and they had a good deal of it, for it was very fashionable in the twelfth century both in Scotland and Ireland, and was turned into Dervorgilla and Dornadilla by the much tormented chroniclers.
Lachtnan, from the Erse lachtna, green, is less easily accountable, unless it meant fresh and flourishing. It is now turned, in Ireland, into Loughnan, and more often into Lucius. The Scottish name so like in sound Lachlan or Loughlan, is however more probably from laochail, warlike.
Glas, grey, blue, or green, changes its meaning wherever it goes; but Glasan, in Irish, is its only Christian name, though it was a great epithet in all its countries, and has resulted in many a surname of Glass, besides the Highland Maglashan.
Cearan, or Ceirin, from ciar, black, was the name of one of the twelve Irish bishops whom St. Patrick consecrated. He betook himself to solitude in a place surrounded with bogs in Ireland, called from him Saiger, or Sier Kieran; but a tribe of disciples followed him, and a monastery arose; so, in search of loneliness, he fled to Cornwall, where he lived in a cell, and taught the inhabitants so much, that they ascribed to him even their knowledge of mining; and the 5th of March, his day, was considered as the tinners' holiday, in honour of their patron saint. His name, however, following the rule of the Cymric p for a Gaelic k, has turned into Pirin, or Perran, and is, in this form, not yet lost among the Cornish miners. His cell had a church built over it, called St. Pierans in Sabulo, or in the sand, and now Peranzabuloe. And in the sand it is, for it was absolutely choked by drifting sands, and abandoned in favour of a new one. In 1835 it was disinterred, and found to be a very curious specimen of ancient architecture. Another Ceiran was the patron of the Scots who first came from Ireland; and left his name to many a Kilkeran on the west coast. He is sometimes called St. Queran.
Cear is the soubriquet of Caoinnach I. of Scotland, who was killed in 621, after a reign of three months. The meaning of the epithet is questioned in his case, some calling it ciar, black; others, cearr, left-handed. The king himself rejoices in many varieties of name,—Caoinnach, in Irish, Coinadh; then, again, Conchad, Connadh, Kinat, and Cinead; till, finally, it has settled into the national Scottish Christian name of Kenneth in the Lowlands, Caioneach, in the Gaelic, denoting a fair and comely, or mild-tempered or peaceable[peaceable] man.
Caoin and Caomh are closely related, and both mean kind or fair. Caoimghin was that Irish saint who is commonly known as Kevin, and owns one of the seven churches of Glendalough, as well as the cave, whence a very modern legend, versified by Moore, shows him rejecting Kathleen’s visit by hurling her into the lake.[[99]]
[99]. O'Donovan; Macpherson; Maitland, History of Scotland; Cosmo Innes; Scottish Surnames; Saturday Review; Butler; Highland Society’s Dictionary; Pugh; Crofton Croker; Irish Legends; Chalmers; Hayes, Irish Ballads.
Section X.—Feidlim, &c.
Feidlim was a very early Irish name, meaning the ever good, and Feidhlim Reachtmar, or the lawgiver, gained himself high reputation early in the second century, from which time Feidlim flourished in Ireland as Felimy or Felim, until a fashion arose of spelling it like a Greek word, Phelim, and then one Sir Phelim O'Neill, who was deeply implicated in the great Popish massacre of 1641, changed his name to Felix. He was seized by the English army and condemned, but was offered his life by Cromwell if he would inculpate King Charles, and on his gallant refusal, was executed. His new name caused the Irish poet M’Gee to exclaim—
“Why when that hero age you deify,
Why do you pass infelix Felix by?”
A later Phelim O'Neill, in the last century, who made the same change, and called himself Felix Neele, was indignantly addressed in a Latin epigram:—-
“Poor paltry skulker from thy noble race,
Infelix Felix, blush for thy disgrace.”
Felim once had a feminine Fedlimi, now either forgotten or transmuted into Felicia.
Tadhg is translated a poet, and was always a favourite in Ireland, where it has degenerated into Teague, Teige, or Thady, and then has been translated into Timothy, Thaddeus, Theodore, Theodosius, according to the fancy of the owner, though Tim is perhaps the most usual.
Mathew is in like manner the Anglicism of Mathghamhain, pronounced Mahoone, or Mahon, and meaning a bear.
Here again we meet with that universal Amal, as in the Roman Æmilii and Teutonic Amaler, and probably like them originally meaning work, though the direct meaning of Amuil in Gaelic is now, a hindrance, possibly as increasing labour. Amalgaid was a good deal in use in the elder times. The seven sons of Amalgith are said by Nennius to have been baptized by St. Patrick, and the race formed a sept called the Ui Amalghaid, who left their designation to the barony of Tir Awlay, in Ireland; while their Scottish cousins became the memorable clan Macaulay, the sons of labour. Awlay is the genuine Anglicism, not entirely disused in Scotland; but in Ireland, intercourse with the Danish conquerors led to the substitution of Amlaidh, as the Erse spelt the Danish Anlaff, ancestor’s relic, the same name as Olaf, and now this is likewise called Auley.[[100]]
[100]. O'Donovan; Macpherson; Nennius; Munch; Highland Society’s Dictionary.
Section XI.—Names of Majesty.
Foremost among these names of greatness must stand tighearn, a king, a word of most ancient lineage, recurring in the Greek tyrannos.
Tighearnach was an Irish saint, who flourished at the end of the fifth century, and whose dish is still preserved at Rappa Castle, in Tirawley, by the name of Mior Tigearnan, or the dish of St. Tiernan. Tigearnach became common among Irish princes, and even appears in English history, when Tigearnach O'Rourke was robbed of his wife. It was long in dying out among the Erse population, and remains as a surname in the form of Tiernay.
Tigern was also used by the Cymry. Vortigern, as has already been shown, was Gwrthigern, the excelling king, and his far braver and better son was Kentigern, head chief; whence he is sometimes called Categern, in modern Welsh, Cyndeyrn.
Kentigern in the North, Cyndeyrn in Wales, was the name of an early Pictish saint, who recalled his countrymen from Pelagianism, and is regarded as the apostle and patron of Glasgow. Persecution obliged him to take refuge in Wales, where he founded the church of Llandwy, being guided, as saith the legend, to the spot by a milk-white boar, which ran before him, and on arriving at the spot began to stamp and root up the ground with his tusks. Returning to Glasgow, the saint thence sent missionaries to Iceland, who no doubt were the teachers of the few inhabitants whose descendants were long after found there by the Norse settlers, and called by them Papa, from the title of their priests, a title still lingering in many a bay and islet of the Hebrides, attesting that there the Culdee clergy had been owned as the fathers of their flocks. After a custom that does not seem to have been uncommon among the Keltic saints, Kentigern used every night to sing through the whole Book of Psalms, standing up to his neck in water. He obtained for himself the epithet, Mwyngu, or Munghu, the amiable, by which he is best known in his own city, and which has named both it and a large number of the inhabitants and of his other countrymen, one of whom, namely, Mungo Park, has made it memorable.
Wales had a feminine St. Kentigern, perhaps named after him; perhaps derived from the Irish Caintigern, or fair lady.
Cean, head, the first syllable of the saint’s name, is found in all the Keltic tongues, forming many geographical terms, generally in the form of can or ken.
Either this or cian, vast, was the Irish name Cian or Kean, hereditary in the O'Hara family, but often supposed to be short for Cornelius. So common was it once that fifty Cians were killed in the battle of Magh Rath.
Tuathal, lordly, turned into Toole and O'Toole, are his descendants, and the feminine, Tuathflaith, is entirely lost. The ladies had several of these majestic names; Uallach, the proud; So-Domina, good lady, which must have had a Latin origin; Dunflaith, lady of the fort; besides Mor, which the Scots are pleased to translate by Sarah, and the Irish by Mary and Martha, though it really means a large woman. Morrigu had been the goddess of battle among the Tuath de Danan.
Martha, Maud, and Mabel, are employed to distinguish Meadhbh, Meave, or Mab, one of the very oldest and most famous of Irish names. It would be most satisfactory to take it from meadhail, joy; but this is far from certain, and it may come from an old comparative of mor, great. But Mirth is analogous with the meaning of Ainè, the other fairy queen; and mear, or merry, has furnished another Irish name, namely, the masculine Meaghar or Meara. Meadhbh was the daughter of Eochaid Freidhleach, king of Erin, as it is said, A.M. 3922, and was so brilliant a heroine of Irish romance, that Congal Claen bids the men of Connaught, her husband’s kingdom, to “Remember Meave in the battle.” Afterwards, like other favourite Irish heroines, she became queen of the fairies; and some of the Irish settlers must have carried tidings of her to England, when Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson made Queen Mab our own peculiar possession, if knowing how to make the best use of her establishes a claim. Meave, or Mab, has not entirely lost ground among the Irish peasantry, though generally it has an equivalent.
Toirdelvach, tall as a tower, or, more properly, tower-like, must have been taken from those riddles of Ireland, the mysterious towers, scattered throughout the island, and generally supposed to have been erected in the earliest period of Christian art, if art it may be called.
Toirdelvach was king of Connaught at the time that Dermot M'Morough carried off Devorgoil, and as supreme king of Ireland he punished the offender; nor was it till after his death that the invitation to Earl Strongbow was given. In English history, he is usually called Turlough, the later form of the name, which is still in some use, though more often turned into Terence, which has been oddly borrowed from the Latin dramatist to translate the tall Irishman.
Sealbh, cattle or possessions (for in Gaelic they are the same; just like pecus and pecunia, vieh and fee, cattel and chattels), is the origin of Sealbhach, pronounced Selvach, owned by two kings of the Scots, and of the feminine Sealbhflaith, lady of possessions, now become Sally.[[101]]
[101]. Diefenbach; O'Donovan; Davies; Jones, Welsh Sketches; Rees, Welsh Saints.
Section XII.—Devotional Names.
The early Gadhaelic Christians were too reverent to call themselves by the same name as the objects of their devotion, whether Divine or human. They were the servants, or at most the friends, of those to whom they thus looked up. They used in this manner the prefixes, Ceile, the companion or vassal; Cear, the friend; Cailleach, the handmaid; and far more frequently Giolla and Maol.
Giolla is the very same word as the Scottish vernacular gillie, a servant; and in Ireland, the giolla eachaid, or horse servant, resulted in the term gallowglass, which is so constantly used in English narratives of Irish wars.
The primary meaning of Maol, or Mael, is bald; thus it came to mean one who has received the tonsure, or a student of theology, and was given in the sense of a disciple.
Cealleach originally meant a devotee, one living in a cell, and was once perhaps a Druidess, but she afterwards was a female disciple, or nun, and finally in Scotland has become only an old woman.
It will be endless work to go through all the list of servants and disciples, and yet some of these present some of the most whimsical facts in the history of names.
Gilla is sometimes used alone, and not only in the two Gaelic languages, for we have it Latinized as Gildas, the doleful Welsh historian who rates all the contemporary princes so soundly. Culdee, the term for the first missionaries of Scotland, is also explained as Giolla De. This was in use, with Cealleach De, the handmaid of God, but are both now extinct; but not so either the servant or disciple of Jesus. Giolla Iosa was used in both countries, but sank in Scotland into the homely surname of Gillies, whilst in Ireland it was wildly transformed, in the person of the primate of Armagh, at the time of the conquest, into the Greek Gelasius, laughter; a curious specimen of the consequences of supposing that Greek must be better than their natural tongue. Maol Ioso grew into the Scottish Christian name of Malise, by which we know the Earl of Strathern at the battle of the Standard, and again, the bearer of the Fiery Cross in the Lady of the Lake. Nor has it ever become disused in the Highlands. Giolla Christ was a Christian name in many Scottish families of the old Keltic blood. In 1174, one Gilchrist was Earl of Angus, and another, Earl of Mar; it has not, even to the present day, fallen into disuse at baptism, and is a not uncommon surname. This may perhaps have been the origin of some of the Christians, and others may once have been Cealleach Christ.
The Archangel St. Michael was the subject of much devotion: Cara Michael has now become Carmichael; but Gilliemichael was more common, and turned into Gilmichal. The influence of the great Keltic mission at Lindisfarn, on the North of England, is visible as late as the Norman Conquest; for Domesday Book shows four northern proprietors, called respectively, Ghilemicel, Ghilander, Ghillepetair, and Ghilebrid.
Votaries of the Twelve Apostles are not, however, very common. Ireland shows Ceile Petair, and also, Mail Eoin; but what is remarkable, it has no servant, male or female, to the Blessed Virgin. In Scotland only was there Gilmory and Gilmour; both masculine, and now surnames. Maolmhuire was the daughter of King Kenneth M'Alpin of Scotland, and marrying into Ireland, was the mother of many kings.
Some persons were servants of all the saints, collectively; as Giolla-na-naomh, very frequent in Irish genealogies. In the Highlands it becomes Gille-ne-ohm, and thence has occasioned the modern surnames Niven and Macniven. They are, probably, all connected with the Welsh nen, sky.
This word, in Cymric, leads us to the name of Ninius, prince of Cumberland, who there established Christianity, and of Nennius the British historian; though these are too much disguised by the Latin to be easily recognized. St. Ninidh, the pious, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland, and left a hand bell, which is still preserved in the county of Fermanagh. Another bell, kept as a tenure of land, is still extant in Galloway, and is said to have belonged to St. Ninian, who is called by the Irish, Ringan, a prince of Cumbrian birth, who became a monk, in 412 built the first stone church between the Forth and Clyde, earned the title of Apostle of the Picts, and died in 432; leaving Ninian and Ringan both to be Christian names in Scotland.
The great object of Keltic veneration was, however, St. Patrick. Nobody ventured to be Patrick alone, but many were Giolla Phadraig, or Mael Phadraig, and the descendants were Mag Giolla Phadraig, whence arises the surname Fitzpatrick, translating the Mac, and omitting the Gillie. Others, again, were Killpatrick; but it is not easy to tell whether this Kil is the contraction of Gillie, or territorial, from the Cell or Church of St. Patrick. The first syllable of Cospatric, or Gospatrick, the Christian name of the Earls of Northumberland in the tenth and eleventh centuries, is less easily explained; but I believe (on Mr. Lower’s authority) it is the Gossoon, the boy of St. Patrick.
St. Patrick’s pupil, Bridget, had her votaries in large numbers, Giolla Brighde, Gilbrid, Maelbridh, all now lost but for the occasional surnames of Macbride and Kilbride, which last is sometimes the Church of Bride. Possibly, too, the Scottish Gilbert may have been taken up as an equivalent to Gilbrid.
The great St. Columba, who established the centre of his civilizing and Christianizing efforts at Iona, had many a grateful disciple, as Gillecolumb, or Maelcolum. The latter form rose to the throne of Scotland in 936, when the father, who had thus dedicated his son to the missionary saint, retired into a convent. The second Malcolm was the persecutor of Lady Macbeth’s family, the third was Duncan’s grandson, he of the Great Head, who, by the help of his sweet wife, St. Margaret, was the first to lift Scotland out of her barbarism, and begin that assimilation with the English which was in full progress at the time of the death of his great grandson, Malcolm the Maiden, and perhaps was the reason why no more kings were called by this Keltic name, so puzzling to Latinizers, that in utter oblivion of St. Columb, they call it Milcolumbus. However, the people of Scotland have kept it up, and in 1385, Sir Malcolm Drummond received 400 francs from France, and is designated in the conveyance as Matorme Dromod! Callum is considered in the Highlands as the form of Malcolm, and Cailein of Colin. Probably Kilian, one of the Keltic missionary saints, popular in Germany, is another pronunciation of the word.
Secundinus was another pupil of St. Patrick, whom the Irish first made into Seachnall, and then termed their children Mael-seachlain, as his pupils. The great Irish king, Malachy with the collar of gold, was thus rendered to suit the weak Saxon capacity.
Cailleach-Coeimlighin and Gilla Coeimghin are the votaries of St. Kevin, a very unpromising object of hero-worship, if we were to believe the legend with which Moore and other moderns have quite gratuitously favoured Glendalough. Cœimghin itself means fair offspring.
Giolla Cheallaigh was common in honour of Ceallach, a very local saint, of royal birth, who was educated by St. Kieran. On his father’s death, he was about to ascend the throne, when his tutor interfered, probably considering this an infraction of his vows, and on his persisting, laid him under a curse, after the usual fashion of Irish saints. He lost his kingdom, and became a bishop, but resigned his see for fear of his enemies, and retired to a hermitage on Lough Con, where, however, he was murdered by four ecclesiastical students, whose names all began with Maol. His corpse was hidden in a tree, where for once it did not show the incorruptibility supposed to be the property of sanctity. The murderers were all put to death on an eminence, called from them Ardna-maol, or hill of the shavelings, and his admirers have resulted in the surname O'Killy-kelly, or, for short, Kelly.
Scotland had several instances of bishop’s servant, Gillaspick in Scotland, or in Northern Ireland, Giolla Easbuig, the Keltic form of episcopus. Gillaspich Campbell, already Scotticized enough to have been christened by this Gaelic term, married Aioffe O'Duinne, the daughter of the line of Diarmid; and thenceforth Gillaspick, or Gillespie, was the hereditary Christian name in the family, till, in the twelfth century, his fourth descendant called himself Archibald, and thenceforth the heads of the house of Campbell have been Archibald to the Lowlands, to their own clan, Gillespik. It is a curious fact that Gillespie Grumach and his son, the two Covenanting Argyles, should thus have proclaimed themselves ‘Bishop’s gillies.’ Gillespie has become a frequent surname in Scotland.
Maelgwn, or Maelgwas, was his successor in Powys and Gwynned, and is desperately abused by the indignant Gildas for all manner of crimes; while even Taliessin, who praises his beauty, rebukes his licentiousness. Three centuries later, a bard alleges that he hid himself in a wood, waylaid and carried off the wife of King Arthur. In the twelfth century, Caradoc, abbot of Llancarven, adds that Arthur besieged him in his castle, and had challenged him to single combat, when the sage Gildas and the abbot of Glastonbury interposed, and obtained the lady’s restoration. Walter of Oxford adds that this Maelgwn reigned after King Arthur, and finally died of terror in a convent, having seen the Yellow Spectre, namely the plague, through the chinks of the church door. Dr. Owen Pugh further tells us, that Jack-in-the-Green, on May-day, was once a pageant representing Melva, or Melvas, king of the country now called Somersetshire, disguised in green boughs, as he lay in ambush to steal King Arthur’s wife as she went out hunting.
Maél-was, a servant boy, was translated into old Romance French as the former, by the word Ancel, or Ancelot, otherwise L'Ancelot; Villemarqué quotes a mention of the ‘fable Ancelot et Tristan,’ from the romance of Ogier, to show that in earlier days Mael, or Ancelot, was mentioned without the article, which has since become incorporated with it, so that Lancelot has grown to be the accepted name, and so universally supposed to mean a lance, that the Welsh themselves, re-importing his history, called him Palladr, a shivered lance. Ancelot and Ancelin were certainly early chivalrous names, the latter perhaps confused with the Ansir or Æsir of the Teutons. Ancilée and Anselote are feminine names in the register of Cambrai, of the dates of 1169 and 1304; and as there most of the feminines are changed from those of men, it is evident that Ancil and Anselot must once have existed there, either named from the hero of romance, or translated from some Walloon Mael; and thence no doubt the Asselin, Ascelin of our old Norman barons, and the Atscelina Fossard, mentioned in a curious old tract on female names, as having lived in the North of England. It is curious that even romance does not profess that Launcelot was the true name of the knight, thus formed from the Cambrian chieftain, though Galahad is there said to have been his proper name, afterwards given to his worthier son. Launcelot was bestowed on him by Vivian, the Lady of the Lake, who stole him in infancy from his father, King Ban, and brought him up under her crystal waves, till he was eighteen, when, as Sir Lancelot du Lac, he appeared at King Arthur’s court, and became the principal figure there, foremost in every feat of chivalry, the flower of knighthood; but in the noble severity of the English romance, he was withheld from counsels of perfection, by his guilty love for Gwenever, and lying spell-bound in a dull trance when the holy vision of the Sanc-greal past by. Finally, he broke with King Arthur, and opened the way to Mordred’s fatal rebellion by his defection, too late repenting, and after Arthur’s fall becoming a hermit and a penitent.
His story was told with deep warning in England, but in Italy it was ‘Lancilotto’ that Francesca di Rimini looked back to as the tale that had been the spark to awaken fatal passion.
He has ever since been regarded as the type of penitence for misdirected love and chivalrous prowess, and in consequence Lancelot, and its contraction Lance, have never been entirely out of use in England, though not universal.
CHAPTER IV.
NAMES OF CYMRIC ROMANCE.
Section I.—The Round Table.
It is a very remarkable fact, that the grand cycle of our national romance and poetry, has been made to centre round the hero of a people whom we have subdued, and were holding in our power with difficulty, at the very time that minstrels were singing the adventures of the leader who had for the longest time kept our forces in check.
Many a patriot has fought as boldly as Arthur, many a nation has held out as bravely as the remains of the Britons; but as the “battle is not to the strong,” so renown is not to the most able; and it was to a very peculiar concatenation of circumstances that the Britons owed it that their struggles in Somerset, Cornwall, and Strathclyde should have been magnified into victories over Rome and half Europe, and themselves metamorphosed from wild Cymry, with a little Roman polish and discipline, into ideal models of chivalry.
That they did fight there can be no doubt. If the dismal groans of the Britons were ever sent at all, it was but a small number who groaned. As to the Anglo-Saxons, they had been coming even before the Romans, and Carausius and his fleet held them in check for awhile; but there can be no doubt that they came in much greater numbers, and with more intent to settle, than in former times, in the decay of the empire. Moreover, the resistance evidently became more resolute and valid, as the tide flowed westward over the diagonally arranged strata of the island; the alluvial lands to the east have no traditions of battles, but at the chalk downs, the rounded hills have names and dim legends of fights and of camps, and cities begin to claim to be the scene of Arthur’s court.
Westward again, with the sandstone hill and smiling valley, the tales multiply spots where the court was held in perplexing multitude; river upon river puts forth its old Keltic name of Cam, the crooked, and calls itself the place of the last decisive fight. And when the moorland and mountain are actually reached, and the heather stretches wide over the granite moor, with the igneous peak of stone crowning the lofty crag, there the Briton is still free, and points to his rocky summits as his hero’s home.
To those fastnesses were the Cymry finally limited, if they would enjoy their native government; and though many remained as serfs, and some as clergy, in the open country, the national spirit was confined to those who dwelt in the strongholds of the West. There did their bards sing and tell tales, and compose Triads on the past glories of their race, with a natural tendency to magnify the exploits of their most able defender. At the same time, the Armoricans on the other side of the water, some of whom had, probably, according to their tradition, migrated from Britain, told their own legends, and sung their songs on the chief who had maintained the cause of their countrymen.
When the Normans settled in Neustria, their lively fancy caught up all that was imaginative among those around them. It is from their arrival that the first dawn of French literature dates, and it seems to have been they who first listened to the Breton lays, and brought them forward in the French tongue. At the central court of France, the Norman trouvère met the Provençal troubadour, and their repertory of tales was exchanged, the one giving his native Norse myths, tinctured with Keltic heroic tales, the other the Greco-Roman and Arabic stories that had travelled to him. And there, both sets of stories were steeped in that mysterious atmosphere of chivalry, which could dream of no court that was not based on the model of feudal France, no warrior without a horse and an esquire, a cone-shaped helmet, and kite-shaped shield.
That true knights were all equal, was a maxim held, though hardly carried out, in the eleventh century, and the floating notion of a table, where all were on an equality, was ready to fix itself on the golden age of chivalry. And when the Normans themselves became the owners of Britain, and brought with them a fair sprinkling of Bretons, no wonder they decided that the heroes, who, at least, were not Saxon, should be their own property. Siegfried and Brynhild had fallen into oblivion, and the British chiefs did veritably flourish on their native soil. Geoffrey of Monmouth pretended to hunt up their history in Wales and Brittany; Marie of France more faithfully reproduced her native lays in Norman-French; and as fresh tales were discovered or invented, metrical romances spread them far and wide, and began all to place their scene at the court of Arthur. Most noted among these, was the story of the San-grail, the cup of healing and lance of wounding, that may have been a shadow of a mighty truth, but which became myth in many countries, until, in the hands of the Cymry, they assumed to be the veritable original Cup of Blessing of the Last Supper, and the lance of the soldier at the Cross.
A relic-adoring age willingly believed, that to find these treasures was the great task of the knights it had invented. Thenceforth, English imagination beheld the glorious past as a feudal court, where all the good Knights of the Round Table, now an order of chivalry, had bound themselves to seek the holy relics, that could only be revealed to the perfectly pure and worthy. Mallory’s beautiful book preserves the main line of the allegory, though it is full of episodes, and it is the veritable prose epic of the Round Table.
France and Lombardy likewise believed in the Round Table, but not with the same national faith. As was natural, their poems centered about the great Frank emperor, and what they wrote or told of the British knights rather dealt in the less creditable adventures of individuals, than in the ennobling religious drift of the main story.
However, it is these Round Table names that are the most widely known and used of all the Keltic nomenclature, with a reputation almost entirely romantic, and very seldom saintly. Among the Arthurian names there is not one that is Teutonic; all are either genuine Cymric, or else such modifications of Latin nomina as citizenship was sure to leave to the Britons.
Section II.—Arthur.
No Keltic name approaches in renown to that of the central figure of the Round Table; yet, in the very dazzle of his brightness, his person has been so much lost, that, as the author of Welsh Sketches observes, “Whereas Peter Schlemihl lost his shadow, Arthur has lost his substance.”
To begin with his name. He may have been a Romanized Briton named from Arctus, “Arthur’s slow wain rolling his course round the pole,” and Arcturus, the bear’s-tail, far behind him in Boötes; and Arth, perhaps from them, does indeed mean a bear in British.
Ard, the consonant softening into th in composition, means high or noble, in all the Keltic tongues but Welsh, and had been a name from time immemorial in Ireland, as Scott knew when he made the Bertram family tree bear fruit of Arths in fabulous ages. Art, a Milesian, is said to have lived B.C. 233; Art MacCormac appears in the Ossianic legends, “Art Oge MacMorne kept Dundorme;” according to Hanmer’s catalogue of Finn MacCoul’s comrades, Art and Arth recur for ever in Erse Highland pedigree; and in the end of the fourteenth century, Art MacMorough was the great hero of Ireland, who slew Roger Mortimer, and sorely puzzled Richard II., reigned in Leinster for forty years, and cost the English treasury twelve million marcs; so that when he died,
“Since Brien’s death in Erin
Such a mourning had not been.”
Arthmael, bear’s servant or worshipper, was a Welsh prince, but here, as in Ireland, all the Arths are now merged in Arthur.
Ardghal, or Ardal, of high valour, is an Erse name, and was long used, though it has now been suppressed by the supposed Anglicism Arnold, eagle-power. It explains the name of Arthgallo, who, in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s legendary history, is the persecuting brother, whom Elidure’s untiring love and generosity finally won from his cruel courses to justice and mercy. Artegal and Elidure was one of the best ante-Shakesperian dramas; and Artegal was selected by Spenser as one of the best and noblest of his knights-errant, representing Arthur Lord Grey.
Ardrigh was an Erse term for the supreme monarch over their five lesser realms, and is still applied by the native Irish to the king of France,—much as the Greeks were wont to style the Persian monarch the Great King. This most probably accounts for the term Arviragus, which we picked up by the Romans, and applied to that son of Cymbeline who was really the brave Caradwg. Ardheer is another form of this same title of the highest chief, and the later critics tell us to consider this as the origin of our hero.
He is not, indeed, mentioned by Gildas, unless he be the “dragon of the island;” but his omission from that letter is only to his credit, and the individuality of Arthur stands on the testimony of Welsh bards up to his own date, and of universal tradition.
Arthur, or Arthwys, seems to have been the son of Uthyr, and Emrys, whom he succeeded, bearing the title of Pendragon in his own tongue, and of Imperator in Latin, which was the language of politics to the Britons. A Silurian like Caradwg, his spirit was the same, and his hereditary possessions would seem to have been on the Welsh border, with Caerleon on Uske for their capital; but he was born at Tintagel in Cornwall, and he was prompt in flying to the aid of the British cause in all quarters. The West Saxons were his chief enemies, and his battles, twelve in number, are almost all in the kingdom of Wessex; but he must also have been acknowledged by the northern Britons of the old province of Valentia, and have ruled over “fair Strathclyde and Reged wide” from his fortress at Carlisle. After a brave reign of forty years, he at length perished through the treachery of his nephew; but whether his last fatal battle was fought in Strathclyde, Cornwall, or in Somerset, it seems impossible to determine.
The Cymry mourned passionately. The Welsh bards made Triads, and the Armoricans sang songs.
Nennius mentions Arthur in the sixth century.
In 720, a person called Eremita Britannus, or the British hermit, is said to have written about King Arthur; the Welsh Mabinogion, or children’s tales, were all centering on him; and when, in the early part of the twelfth century, Geoffrey of Monmouth brought out his chronicle, it was translated all over Europe, even into Greek, and furnished myriads of romances, metrical and otherwise.
The outline of the Arthur of romance scarcely needs to be here traced; the prince, brought up in concealment, establishing his claim by pulling the sword out of the stone whence no one else could detach it; the Christian warrior, conquering all around, and extending his victories to Rome; the band of Knights; the vow and quest of the Holy Grail that breaks the earthly league; the fall and defection of the two most accomplished knights through unhallowed love, the death of one, and the rebellion of the other, the lover of Arthur’s own faithless wife,—all opening the way to the fatal treason of the nephew; and the last battle, when the wounded king causes his sword to be thrown into the river, as a signal to the fairies, who bear him away to their hidden isle. All this is our own peculiar insular heritage of romance, ennobled as it has been by old Mallory’s prose in the fifteenth century, and in the nineteenth by Tennyson’s poetry, the best of all the interpretations of the import of Arthur himself.
As to his name, it was not very common even in Wales. It only came forth as a matter of romance, and was given occasionally either from fancy or policy.
Constance of Brittany gave her little son this popular name, perhaps in the hope that in time British Arthur would be restored to England, and thenceforth Arzur, as the Bretons call it, was occasionally used in the duchy.
An old prophecy of Merlin was said to have declared that Richmond should come from Brittany to conquer England, and this prediction caused Henry V. to refuse all requests to allow Arthur, Comte de Richemont, son of the Duke of Brittany, to be ransomed when taken prisoner at Agincourt. His name of Arthur no doubt added to the danger, and Henry’s keen eyesight might have likewise detected in him the military skill which made him so formidable an enemy to the English on his own soil, not theirs.
When Richmond really came out of Brittany and conquered England, he named his first son Arthur, but that son never wore the British crown, nor did the infant Arthur of Scotland, so named by James V., survive to be known in history. Arthur, however, had become an occasional name; but it was reserved for the great Arthur Wellesley, whose name had perhaps more to do with the old Art of Erse times than with the king of the Round Table, to make it, as it is at present, one of the most universally popular of English names. Even the French use it, for its sound, it may be presumed, rather than for its recent distinction, and they have ceased to spell it in the old form, Artus, and adopted our own. The Italians know, but do not use, Arturo; however, the name changes so little that Madame Schopenhauer’s husband was justified in choosing it for his son as a useful name for a merchant, because it does not alter in being translated.
The English feminine Arthurine is occasionally used.
Section III.—Gwenever.
The staunchest supporters of Arthur’s existence give him three wives. One of them was she who was stolen by Maelwas, the origin of Lancelot, and she it is who is the dame of romance.
Gwen, the commencement of her name, is used in Welsh, in the double sense of the colour, white, and of a woman, perhaps for the same reason that ‘the fair’ so often stands for a lady in poetry. The word is closely related to the finn and ban, both meaning white in the other branch of the Keltic tongue, and, save for the fulness of interest belonging to both, all might have been treated of together. Gwen, the feminine of Gwyn, white, becomes wen in composition, and as such we have already met it at the end of words.
Gwendolen is made by the Brut, and by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the daughter of Corineus, Duke of Cornwall, and wife of Locrine, son of the original Brutus. He deserted her for the sake of Estrild, a fair German captive, and she made war upon him, in the course of which he was killed, and Estrild and her daughter Sabrina, or Avern, made prisoners; whereupon, the jealous and revengeful queen caused both to be drowned in the river, thenceforth called Sabrina or Severn; in Welsh, Hafreu, where we may hope that the damsel became the lovely nymph who “listened and saved” the lady from Comus and his crew. Estrild is Essylt (or Iseulte) in the Welsh which Geoffrey copied.
The Welsh saints give us St. Gwendolen or Gwen as the mother of Caradog Vreichfras, the excellent Sir Cradocke of the Round Table. In the Triads and the Mabinogion, Gwendolen is a beauty of Arthur’s court, and in the bardic enumeration of the thirteen wonders of Britain appears the gold chess-board of Gwendolen, on which, when the silver men were placed, they would play of themselves. Gwendolen, Gwen, and Gwyn have never been disused in Wales. The first was the daughter of the last native prince, and her name is increasingly in favour with the lovers of archaisms.
Gwenhwyfar is the swelling white wave; but the ocean names of the Britons are worth noting, when we remember that they also had Llyr, with Bronwen and Creirdydlydd, all certainly mythical.
Without consigning Queen Gwenhwyfar to the regions of Regan, it is likely that hers was a hereditary name descended from some part of the ancient faith. A Welsh couplet describes her as—
“Gwenhwyfar, daughter of Gogyrfan the Great,
Bad when little, worse when great.”
And the various early tales in the Mabinogion, as well as the metrical romances, always give the same character of the beautiful queen of light conduct. In the Morte d'Arthur, guilty love for her paralyzes Lancelot’s eyes when the San-grail passes before him, the same passion drives him to his rebellion, and finally the repentant queen takes refuge in the convent at Ambresbury, where Tennyson has described the parting between her and Arthur in the most noble and beautiful of all his poetry.
Guenever was her full English name, contracted into Ganivre, or Ganore, a form that occurs in old Welsh registers. Jennifer, as they have it in Cornwall, is still frequent there; but nowhere else in our island has the name been followed. Scotland has a tradition of her crimes that calls her Queen Wanders, or Vanora, and Boece actually imprisons her in the great old fort on Barra Hill, in Perthshire; but abroad she met with more favour, as Génièvre in France, and in Italy as Ginevra, or Zinevra.
Observing that the French call Gwenhwyfar, Génièvre, we can hardly doubt that either this, or Gwenfrewi, holy calm or fair peace, must have been the origin of their own Généviève, though the German etymologists try to construe her as gan, magic, vaips, a crown. But Généviève was a Gaul, born at Nanterre in 422, and could hardly have borne anything but either a Keltic or a Roman name; and the whole family of Gwens were, as has been shown, dear to the Cymric race, whose religion was the same in Gaul and Britain. A shepherd-maid, like Joan of Arc, Généviève anticipated her deeds of patriotism, though she wore no armour and carried no sword. When Paris was besieged by the Franks, she, unarmed, and strong only in her pious confidence, walked forth as the escort of the citizens in search of provisions, and when the city was taken, her heroic holiness so impressed the heathen Franks, Hlodwig and Hilderik, that her entreaties in behalf of their prisoners were always granted. When she died, in her 90th year, she was erected into the primary patron saint of Paris, and has so continued ever since, leaving Généviève in high esteem among Parisiennes of all degrees down from Anne Généviève de Bourbon, the sister of Condé. The numerous contractions testify to the popularity of the gentle patriot. Some of the German forms may, however, be ascribed to the apocryphal Saint Genovefa, of Brabant, to whom has attached the story, of suspicious universality, of the wife who was driven by malicious accusations to the woods, there to give birth to an infant, and to be nourished by a white doe until the final discovery of her innocence. From whatever cause the name is widely used on the Continent.
| English. | French. | Breton. | Italian. |
| Winifred | Généviève | Jenovefa | Genoveffa |
| Jennifer | Javotte | Fa-ik | |
| Genevion | |||
| Vevette | |||
| German. | Russian. | Illyrian. | |
| Genovefa | Zenevieva | Genovefa | |
| Vevay | Genovefica | ||
| Vefele | Veva |
Gwenfrewi was the Welsh nun whose head was cut off by a furious prince called Caradoc, because she refused his addresses; whereupon, in the usual fashion of Welsh saints, she caused a well to spring up on the spot of her martyrdom. But unlike other such wells, it is intermitting, and sufficiently impregnated with mineral substances to support its high character to miraculous powers, and, in addition, the stones are marked with red veins, which represent the blood of St. Wenefred, as our Anglo-Saxon tongues have long since made her. Such undoubted wonders made Winifred a most flourishing name in Wales, and it is occasionally found in England, though usually through a Welsh connection, and so spelt as to confuse it with the true Saxon masculine Winfrith, or friend of peace. The Irish take Winny as the equivalent of Una.
In Breton, Guennolé, also called Wingallok, in Cornish, Gunwallo, was a celebrated saint, and was the counsellor who saved King Gradlon in the inundation. Guennola is the feminine, and is used, very correctly, to translate the French Candide, as is Guennéan, the white spirit, for angel, both the being and the name.
Dwynwen, or the white wave, was invoked as the patroness of lovers, and became a Welsh name. It is just possible that an echo of this, on the other side of the water, may be Damhnait, or Devnet, Latinized as Dymphna, or Dympna, though the more obvious likeness in sound is damhna, a reason. An Irish princess, so called, was obliged, about the year 600, to fly from the persecutions of her father, protected by a priest, a jester, and his wife, until near Antwerp her father overtook her and cut off her head. Hanmer adds, “the Irish in the county of Lowth do honour her; belike her father dwelt there:” and Dympna, or Demmy, is not wholly extinct as a name.
This same wen, the poetical form of a woman, or fair one, enters into the composition of two other saintly Keltic names. The first, St. Mawdwen, or Modwen, was one of St. Patrick’s Irish nuns; and another later Modwen, also Irish, came to England in 840, educated Edith, daughter of King Ethelwolf, and founded an abbey at Polsworth. She was rather a favourite saint; her name is traceable in various places; and Modwenna continued in Cornwall. Perhaps it comes from modh, manners.
Cainwen is said to be Cain, the virgin. The first half means splendid or beautiful things or jewels, and is connected with the Latin Candalus. The Welsh declare that she was of princely birth; but being determined to live a holy life, she travelled on foot beyond the Severn, and there found a solitary place where no one had ever lived, because it was infested with snakes and vipers, which she forthwith, by her prayers, turned to stone, and they may still be picked up in a petrified state in the fields. Keynsham, in Somersetshire, is, in fact, famous for ammonites, which thus have given rise to another legend like those of St. Cuthbert and St. Hilda. Camden himself saw one of these stones, and was somewhat perplexed thereby.
She afterwards repaired to St. Michael’s Mount, in Cornwall, where she met her nephew, St. Cadoc, and there her name became attached to a well, in the parish of St. Neots, arched over by four trees—oak, ash, elm, and withy, all apparently growing from one root. The water was further supposed to endow whichever of a married pair first tasted it with the mastery for life. No one can forget that best of all Southey’s humorous ballads, where the Cornishman confesses,—
“I hastened, as soon as the wedding was done,
And left my wife in the porch;
But, i' faith, she had been wiser than I,
For she took a bottle to church.”
Cornishmen, apparently, never forgave St. Keyne for the properties of her well; for Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, terms her “no over holy saint;” and Norden thus vituperates her: “this Kayne is sayde to be a woman saynte, of whom it (the well) taketh name; but it better resembleth Kayne, the devil, who had the shape of a man, the name of an apostle, and the qualitie of a traitor.” Gwenllian, white linen, is still sometimes used.
Gwyn also signifies blessed or happy, and this gwynnedd is an epithet of some of the favourite kings. Gwynaeth, a state of bliss, is a female name still in use, and often written Gyneth, though it gets translated into Venetia, and, in the latter form, named the lady whom Sir Kenelm Digby rendered famous.
Section IV.—Gwalchmai, Sir Gawain, and Sir Owen.
No knight is more distinguished, either in the Triads or in romance, than Gwalchmai, perhaps from Gwalch, a hawk, and maedd, a blow.
In Welsh pedigrees, he is Arthur’s nephew, son of his sister Ernnos and of Llew, king of Lothian and Orkney. He probably had a real existence, for the Triads celebrate him as one of the three golden-tongued knights of Britain, one of the three learned ones of Britain, and one of the three most courteous men towards strangers. In a Welsh poem, he is represented as using his courteous tongue in behalf of his friend Trystan; and in the Mabinogion, in the ‘Lady of the Fountain,’ he takes such a prominent part, that the French romance is called that of Sir Yvaine and Sir Gawaine. Walganus and Walwyn had Latinized the Hawk of Battle, and have caused it to be confounded with the Teutonic Walwine, slaughter-lover; but the Gwalchmai of Wales can be identified with the Gawain, or Wawyn, of romance by his friendship with Trystan, his relationship to Arthur, and his title in the romances of the Flower of Courtesy.
It was Sir Gawaine who in the ballad boldly adventured himself to wed the “Loathly Lady,” and was rewarded by breaking the spell, and discovering her loveliness. Gawaine was the hero of the great battle with the giant Rhyence, and, though unsuccessful, was one of the foremost in the quest of the San-grail, until warned by a dream how the enterprise was to result. Finally, Sir Gawaine took his uncle’s side first in the war with Lancelot, then with Mordred, and died of the renewal of a wound received in battle with the former, writing on his death-bed a letter that brought Lancelot to repentance.
His name, whether as Walwyn, Gawain, or Gavin, was popular in England and Scotland in the middle ages; and in the last-mentioned shape named the high-spirited bishop of Dunkeld, the one son of old Bell the Cat, who could “pen a line,” and who did so to such good purpose when “he gave rude Scotland Virgil’s page.” Nor is Gavin by any means extinct in Scotland.
Sir Gawain is coupled in English romance with his intimate friend, Sir Ywaine, as in French with Sir Yvaine; and in the Welsh story, in the Mabinogion, he is Sir Owain. He there sets forth from court in search of adventures, and falls in with a knight in black armour, whom he conquers, and thereupon is conducted to a castle, where he becomes guardian of an enchanted fountain, and husband of a lady in yellow satin, with long yellow hair, and a hundred maids always embroidering satin. Of course, when Sir Gawain came in quest of him, and he was allowed to go back to King Arthur’s court, he forgot the whole affair, until at the end of three years, he was recalled by his lady’s confidential handmaid, Luned, and proceeded to atone for his unfaithfulness by another severe course of adventures, during which he delivered a black lion from a serpent, thus binding the faithful beast to his service for ever, and after a due slaughter of giants, rejoined his wife, and lived happy ever after. The French of the thirteenth century knew him as Sir Yueins, le Chevalier du Lion; and even the Scandinavians had his story in their Ivent Saga. In the Morte d'Arthur, he is Sir Gareth, and brother to Gawain; but he must have been his cousin, as he was the son of Urien, and of Arthur’s sister, Morgwen. In the Morte d'Arthur, Luned is Linet, and in the French romances she is Lunette. Her name seems to be derivable from llun, a shape or form, and if so, would mean the shapely; but the hagiologists identify it with that Elined, the daughter of Brychan, who suffered martyrdom on the hill of Penginger, and was canonized as St. Almedha, a name still to be seen on the sign of an inn at Knaresborough.
Owain, Oen in Brittany, continued popular in Wales, though, perhaps, rather more usual at a late than an early period. The notable Owen Glendower, as Shakespeare has taught us to call him, was really Owain ap Gruffydd of Glendfrdwy, his estate in Merionethshire, where he kept a grand household.
It was he who made Owen the most common of Welsh names, in honour of the last Welshman who lived and died free of the English yoke.
Owain is so like the word oen that in Welsh stands for a sheep or lamb, that it is generally so translated; but it is most likely that this is a case of an adaptation of a derivative from an obsolete word to a familiar one, and that Owen ought to be carried much further back to the same source as the Erse Eoghan, which comes from êoghunn, youth, from og, young, and is translated, young warrior. It has the feminine Eoghania, of course turned into Eugenia.
There were many Eoghans in Ireland. One of them, a king of Connaught, when dying of his wounds, commanded himself to be buried upright, with his red javelin in his hand, and his face turned towards Ulster, as though still fighting with his foes. As long as he thus remained, Connaught prevailed and Ulster lost; but the Ultonians discovered the spell, and re-buried him in an opposite direction, thereby changing the tide of success.
Eoghan, in Scotland, is pronounced Yō-hăn, and indiscriminately translated by Evan, Ewan, and Hugh. Several of the early kings, who are all numbered together in Scotland as Eugenius, were properly Eoghan, and Evan or Ewan is certainly the right Anglicism, though Hugh is made to do duty for these as well as for Aodh.
The same Eoghan seems in ăanother form to have supplied the Welsh Evan, or Evan may be intended for John. A certain Evan of Wales, claiming the blood of the Welsh princes, who became a mercenary under Charles V. of France, made a bold descent upon Guernsey, and was killed at the siege of Mortain-sur-mer, by what Froissart calls a short Spanish dagger, but his illuminator has made to look much more like a very large arrow. Welsh history takes no cognizance of him, but he is thought to be traceable in the national songs as Jevan Dovy.
Another translation of Owain is “apt to serve.” A British prince of Strathcluyd was called Uen or Hoen.[[102]]
[102]. Mabinogion; Morte d'Arthur; Tracts on Antiquities of the Northern Counties, by R. D. D.; Cambro-Briton; Jones, Welsh Sketches; Chalmers; Percy, Relics; Rees, Welsh Saints; O'Donovan; Hy Fiachrach; Owen Pugh; Highland Society’s Dictionary.
Section V.—Trystan and Ysolt.
The episode of Trystan is one of the most celebrated incidents of Arthur’s court, and has not failed to be treated by Davies as a magnificent emblematic myth.
The Triads begin by declaring that the three mighty swineherds of the Isle of Britain were Pryderi, Coll, and Trystan.
Another adds,—
The third swineherd was Trystan, son of Tallwch, who kept the swine of March, the son of Meirchion, while the swineherd was conveying a message to Essylt, to appoint an assignation with her.
Again, he is one of the three heralds of Britain, also one of the three diademed chiefs, also one of the three knights who had the conducting of mysteries.
Besides, the three unchaste matrons of Britain are Penarwen, Bun, and Esyllt Fingwen.
And the tale told by the Cymric race in Cambria and Armorica has resounded throughout southern Europe. There the mighty swineherd is the son of Roland and Blanchefleur, sister of Mark, king of Cornwall. Almost at the moment of his birth, she hears the tidings of his father’s death, and expires from the shock, calling her babe Tristan, or the sad. He grows up to be an accomplished knight, and after various adventures, is sent by his uncle, King Mark, to Ireland, to bring home the promised bride Ysolt the fair.
The mother of Ysolt gives her maid, Brengwain, a magic draught, which was to be administered to the pair on their bridal day, to secure their mutual affection. A storm rises on the voyage, and, intending to refresh her lady and the knight after his exertions and her alarm, Brengwain, in her confusion, gives them the fatal draught, and their passion for one another became the theme of the storytellers who preferred guilty love to high aspirations. Tristrem was married to another Ysolt called of the white hands, or of Brittany; he was dangerously wounded, and lay sick in her castle in Brittany. Nothing could cure him but the presence of Ysolt of Cornwall, and to her he sent his squire, with his ring, entreating, like the father of Theseus, that if she came to him the sails of the ship might be white, if she refused, the squire should hoist a black sail.
She came, but the wife, Ysolt of the white hands, falsely told the sick man that the sails were black; he sank back in despair and died, and Ysolt died of grief beside him.
Such is the story told by Thomas of Ercildoune, in the thirteenth century, as well as by hosts of romances.
Trust was really a Cymric name, and was called among the Picts Drust, or Drest. There is a Trust or Drust, MacTallaghi among the Pictish kings, who possibly may be the origin of Tristan, since many of the legends are common to Strath Clyde, Wales, and Cornwall. The Pictish Pendragon, who was elected at the time the Romans quitted Britain, was called by his countrymen Drust of the Hundred Battles, and many of his successors bore the same name, which means din, tumult, or loud noise, and thus may poetically be translated as a proclaimer or herald. Trwst ap Taran (tumult the son of thunder) was the poetical name of another of the line. The influence of Latin upon Welsh, however, made trist really mean sad, so that it was there accepted as suited to the melancholy circumstance of the hero’s birth; and Tristram, or sad face, became identified with the notion of sorrow; so that the child of St. Louis, born while his father was in captivity on the Nile, and his mother in danger at Damietta, was named Jean Tristan. Never would the cheerful Greeks have accepted such a name as Tristrem, Tristan, Tristano; but in Europe it regularly entered the ranks of the names of sorrow, and it was, no doubt, in allusion to it that Don Quixote accepted the soubriquet of the Knight of the Rueful Countenance. The earliest form of the name was Adsalutta, a Keltic goddess, whose name occurs in two inscriptions, one at Laybach and the other at Ratschöck in Istria. It is identified by the learned with Esyltt, and connected with Suraya, the Sungod of the Vedas.
Esyltt was the French Yseulte, or Ysoude, the Italian Isolta, and English Ysolte, Isolda, or Izolta, and in all these shapes was frequent in the families of the middle ages; recurring again and again in registers, down to the seventeenth century: indeed, within the last fifty years a person was alive who bore this romantic name in the form of Izod.
Tallwch is the torrent, and seems to have been translated into Roland, from the sound of rolling, when the Armorican bards laid claim to the great Paladin of Charlemagne’s court, on the score of his having been Warden of the Marches of Brittany, and wanted to make out that Roland was a name of their own. They had thus caused Rowland to be considered as a regular Cymric name.
King Mark himself was most probably a compromise between the Roman Marcus and the native march, which belongs to all the Kelts—nay, Pausanias tells us, meant a horse, in the dialect of the tribe who tried to take Delphi. Its fellow, mar, passed into Teutonic; named Marshalls, as Marskalk, or horse servant; and lives among us as our mare, in the feminine. Indeed, Marcus may itself be another instance of the Keltic element in Latin.
Marchell was the daughter of Tewdrig, king of North Wales, and, in 382, married Brychan, son of Cormac Mac Cairbre, one of the kings of Ireland.[Ireland.] Her name was, no doubt, a mixture of the Keltic March and the Latin Marcella; and it was she who must have rendered the name of Marcella so common in Ireland.
The more common Gadhaelic word is, however, each, first cousin to equus, aspa, and many another word for the gallant animal.
Each was the saint who spent his life in Boyne Water, and was said to have uttered the curse that caused the battle of Magh Rath, a libel disproved by his previous death.
Each, in combination, has formed sundry names,—Eachmarchach, a sort of reduplication; Eachmilidh, horse-warrior; Eachaid, horseman, the most famous of them belonging to many kings, and rendered into Latin—Eochodius, or Equitius, the last not so incorrect. Auhy, or Atty, were the usual ways of rendering it; but these have been confounded with Arthur, and the name is lost.
Several other Eochaids were kings of Scotland, but they are grievously confused by Latinity, and, with the owners of the following name, turned into Eugenius; Eochaidbuidhe, or the fair-haired, appearing as Eugenius Flavus; and Eochoid Rinne Mhail as Eugenius Crooked Nose!
Another Eochaid has, by the capricious fancy of Scotland, been transmitted to us as Achaius. He is said to have been an ally of Charlemagne, and begun the custom of lending auxiliaries to the French, numerous Scotsmen coming to honour and dignity for their assistance in their conquest of Saxony. Achaius is also said to have married the sister of the king of the Picts, and formed an alliance with him against the Anglo-Saxons. While marching against the English forces, the cross of St. Andrew suddenly appeared in the sky giving assurance of victory, and, in consequence, was adopted as the ensign of the Picts, and afterwards of the Scots.
The “double tressure, flory and counterflory,” that surrounds the field where “the ruddy lion ramps in gold,” is also said to have been “first by Achaius worn,” though he was probably innocent of all armorial bearings, as he died in 819.
Eachan is the most usual form of the Highland name, and has for many years been, by general consent, converted into Hector.
The feminine Eacha is an old Irish name.[[103]]
[103]. Chalmers; Villemarque; Mabinogion; O'Donovan; Pugh; Pitre; Chevalier; Sir W. Scott, Ed. of Sir Trestram.
Section VI.—Hoel and Ryence.
The romances of Arthur give him, among his many nephews, one named Hoel, Duke of Brittany, whose niece Helena was seized upon by the horrible giant Ritho, and devoured upon the top of Tombelaine.
This Hoel does not seem to have been a real character. His name Higuel, the lordly or conspicuous, was a common one in Wales and Brittany; and a prince so called seems really to have fled to Arthur for aid against the Franks, and to have returned with a fresh colony of Britons, by whose aid he became king of Armorica.
He reigned for thirty years, and died in 545, Other Hoels reigned after him, the third of whom is said to have been killed at Roncevalles.
In Wales, Hywel continued in favour, and Hywel-Dha, or the Good, who reigned in the tenth century, is famous for having gone to Rome to study law, by which he so profited as afterwards to draw up the famous code that has thrown so much light on the manners of the Cambrian mountaineers, the order of precedence in the king’s household, and even the price of animals. He signs King Athelstan’s charter as Hoel-Subregulus, or under king.
Hywel was a name in frequent use among the Welsh princes, and ‘highborn Hoel’s harp’ was frequently sounded, for various bards were so called.
Another Hoel was that unfortunate relative of Owen Glendower whom he was said to have killed and hidden in the blasted tree.
The giant Ritho is evidently a relation of Rhitta Gawr, who, in the Welsh stories, interfered to put a stop to a furious battle between two kings named Nynniaw and Peibiaw, who had quarrelled[quarrelled] about the moon and stars. Rhitta Gawr defeated them both, and cut off their beards, and afterwards the beards of seventy-eight more kings who collected to avenge them. Of these eighty beards he made a mantle that reached from his head to his heels, for he was the largest man in Britain, and wore it as a warning to all to maintain law and order.
The romances of Arthur turned Rhitta Gawr into a fierce monarch called Rhyence, king of North Wales, an aggressor instead of a defender of justice, who, however, had his scarlet mantle purfled with the moderate number of eleven royal beards, and politely demanded that of King Arthur to complete the trimming, with what consequences no one acquainted with King Arthur can doubt.
Whence come the names of Ryence and Rhittar? They connect themselves closely with the universal words for ruler, the Gadhaelic righ, Teuton rik, Latin rex, and the rajah of India. Rhys is, in Welsh, a rushing man or warrior, and most likely comes from the same source; and Rhesus, the chieftain, slain by Ulysses and Diomed, on the night of his arrival before Troy, probably was called from some extinct word of the same origin.
At any rate Rhys has ever since been a Welsh name, sometimes spelt in English according to its pronunciation as Reece, and sometimes as Rice. It has furnished the surnames of Rice, Rees.
In Brittany we meet a saint called by the diminutive of Rhys, Riok, or Rieuk. His legend begins with one of the allegories that arose from the prophecy, that the weaned child should put his hand on the cockatrice’s den, for when he was almost an infant he was employed by the holy knight Derrien, to lead away in a scarf a terrible basilisk, whom the saint had tamed by making the sign of the cross over him. His parents were heathens, but were convinced by this miracle; and he became, in after years, a great saint, living for forty-one years on a rock on the sea-coast, eating nothing but herbs and little fish, and wearing a plain garment which when it wore out was supplied by a certain ruddy moss growing all over his body. His name has continued in use in Brittany.[[104]]
[104]. Mabinogion; Pitre Chevalier, Bretagne; Mallory, Morte d'Arthur; Jones, Welsh Sketches.
Section VII.—Percival.
No name has had more derivations suggested for it than this. The Norman family so called came from Perche-val, the valley of the Perche; but as to the knight of romance, he was at first supposed to be Perce-val, pierce the valley, on the principle on which Percy was hatched out of Pierce-eye, and the story invented of the Piercie who thrust his spear with the keys dangling on it into the eye of Malcolm Ceanômor at Alnwick Castle. The romance of Perceforest was even named on the principle that it was as suitable to pierce the forest as the valley. Mr. Keightley derives the name from the Arabic Parse, or Parschfal, poor dummling, who appears to have been the hero of an Eastern tale of a wonderful cup, whence arose the mysterious allegory of the Holy Greal. A Provençal Troubadour, named Kyot, or Guiot, professes to have found at Toledo a book written in heathen characters by a magician, Saracen on the father’s side, but descended by his mother from Solomon. His book is lost, but two founded on it survive,—the German romance of Parzifal, by Wolfram von Eschenbach, and the Norman French, Sir Perceval, of Walter Mapes, Archdeacon of Oxford under Henry II.
Equally old, however, is a Welsh legend of Peredur, who is perhaps Pair-kedor, the warrior of the cauldron; Pair-cyfaill would then be champion of the cauldron, or bowl; Peredur was certainly a historical person, and may perhaps be the same as Perceval. Chrétien de Troyes has a long poem on the story of Perceval, and his adventures are almost identical with those of the Peredur of the Mabinogion.
The story of the orphan, stirred up to chivalry by the sight of the knight whom he took for an angel, the same as that of Mervyn les Breiz, here appears, and Perceval or Peredur shows some kindred with the dummling of Persia by his ignorance and dulness till he comes to the castle, where he sees the wounded king, the bleeding lance, and the Greal or bowl of pure gold, that are the great features in his history. Probably, the magic bowl was an Indo-European idea, but there seems to have been Druidic traditions about a magic bowl, which Bran the Blessed obtained from a great black man in Ireland, and which cured mortal wounds and raised the dead. It was one of the thirteen wonders of the Isle of Britain, and disappeared with Merddin in his glass vessel.
However, in the twelfth century, the ideas of this vessel had assumed a Christian form. It was the bowl used at the institution of the Holy Eucharist, and the lance was that of Longinus the centurion, brought to Bran by Joseph of Arimathea, and thenceforth its quest became the emblem of the Christian search for holiness through the world, only gratified by gleams here, but with full fruition hereafter. Perceval, once the companion and guard of the sacred Grail, gradually descended from his high estate, and became only a knight of the Round Table, high and pure of faith and spotless of life, but only on the same terms as the rest, and though not failing in the quest, still inferior to Galahad.
It is curious that his other name, Peredur, has by the sound been turned into Peter. One Robert de Barron tells, that from Bran, the Grail descended to Alan, and thence to Petrus his nephew; and a story of the Breton peasantry still gives the adventures of Perronik, like the original Peredur, an idiot at first, but sent to the Castle of Caerglas to fetch a diamond lance and golden cup, which would raise the dead by a touch.
The later French romances spoilt the nobleness and purity of Perceval’s character, but he is always one of the best of the knights, and succeeds in finding the Sanc-greal. But Galahad, the pure and virgin knight, son of Lancelot, and predestined to occupy the Siége Perilous at the Round Table, resist all temptation, conquer all peril, and finally obtain full fruition of the Greal, then, at his own desire, pass out of the world of sin and care, has, in England, taken the place once the right of Peredur or Perceval, though Wagner’s splendid ‘Parcifal’ has restored to him the chief place. I suspect him, as before said, to have been the separate produce of the story of Cattwg, first warrior, and afterwards hermit and saint, and that Galahad may have been an epithet from his starry purity.
In the Mabinogion, Perceval has a ladye love, whom, however, he only loves with distant chivalrous devotion, and who answers to his sister, who in Mallory’s beautiful story gave the blood from her own veins to heal a lady who could only be cured with the life-blood of a pure virgin.
In the Mabinogion her name is Angharad Law-eurag, or with the hand of gold, and Angharad, or the free from shame, the undisgraced (from angharz), was continued in Wales, but it is now generally considered as the equivalent of Anne, and thus accounts for Anna being universally called in romance the sister of Arthur, and mother of the traitor nephew Medrawd.
The Welsh Angharawd, probably the source of Ankaret, which occurs in the family of Le Strange in 1344, is generally supposed to mean an anchorite; but as it has no parallel on the Continent, it is much more likely to be the Welsh Angharad. Annan was, however, a separate name—for the three sprightly ladies of Britain are Annan, Angharad, and Perwyr.
Myfanwy is one of the unaccountable feminine Welsh names, not yet extinct among families of strong national feeling, though in general Fanny has been substituted for it. It may possibly be Mabanwy, child of the water, or else it may be My-manwy, my fine (or rare one).
The three primary bards of Britain were Plenydd, Alawn, and Gwron, whom Mr. Davies explains as light, harmony, and virtue. Plenydd, it is thought, is related to Belenus; and Alawn is erected by ardent Cymrians into the mythic Greek Olen, who is said to have been the first writer of hymns in hexameter, and whom the Delphic poetess, Boeo, calls a Hyperborean; this name is said to mean the flute-player. At any rate, I have found Alwn Aulerv in Welsh genealogies as brother of Bran the Blessed, and this must be the real origin of the Breton Alan. Elian and Hilarius were both used as its Latinisms.[[105]]
It is first found in early Breton history, then it came to England with Alan Fergéant, Count of Brittany, the companion of William the Conqueror, and first holder of the earldom of Richmond, in Yorkshire; and, indeed, one Alan, partly Breton, partly Norman, seems to have taken up his abode in our island before the Conquest, and four besides the count came after it. In the time of Henry I., one of these gentlemen, or his son, held Oswestry; and as these were the times when Anglo-Norman barons were fast flowing into Scotland, his son Walter married a lady, whom Douglas’s Peerage of Scotland calls Eschina, the heiress of Molla and Huntlaw, in Roxburghshire; and their son, another Alan, secured another heiress, Eva, the daughter of the Lord of Tippermuir; and, becoming high steward of Scotland, was both the progenitor of the race of Stuart, and the original of the hosts of Alans and Allens, who have ever since filled Scotland. That country has taken much more kindly to this Breton name than has England, in spite of Allen-a-dale, and of a few families where Allen has been kept up; but as a surname, spelt various ways, it is still common.
Like mare in Latin, and meer in Teuton, the Gaelic muir, Welsh môr, and Breton mor, are close kindred, and watery names derived from them abound.
King Arthur’s sister, Morgana, or Morgaine, Morgue la Fée, or La Fata Morgana, as she is variously termed in different tongues, was Morgan Maritime—the derivative from sea. From her, or from some lingering old Keltic notion in ancient Italy, the Sicilian fisherman connects the towers and palaces painted on the surface of the Mediterranean with La Fata Morgana, the lady of the sea.
Morgwn was the native name of the heresiarch, who called himself by the Greek equivalent Pelagius, and thus named the Pelagian heresy. Some writers say that sundry heretic names lingered about the Spanish Visigoths after their union with the Church, and instance both Ario, a distinguished author, and Pelayo, the Asturian Robert Bruce, as instances of names so borne. However this may be, Morgan has continued, even to the present day, to be very common in Wales.
Morvryn may be sea-king. “Morolt with the iron mace,” as romance calls him, the brother of Yseulte, who was killed by Sir Trystan, is called Morogh by his own countrymen in Ireland. It is the contraction of Muireadhach, or sea protector, a favourite Irish name, though, after degenerating into Morogh, it was usually rendered into Morgan, and so continues in modern Ireland. It is perhaps the same with Meriadek, or Meiriadwg, the title of Conan, the chieftain who is said to have colonized Brittany, and also with the Welsh Meredith, both as a Christian and a surname. In Ireland, the sons of Morogh became O'Muireadaig, and then contracted into Murray. Muredach is said to have reigned over the Scots from 733 to 736, and is transformed into Murdach, Murochat, Muirtec, Mordacus. It must have become mixed with Muircheartach, from ceart (a right), which has produced Moriertagh, Murtagh, or Morty, as a Christian name in Ireland; but it is now made into Mortimer. It is Murdoch in Scotland, once very common, and not yet extinct, and the North, adopting it with other Keltic names, calls it Kjartan.
Muirgis, once common in Ireland, is rendered by Maurice, or Morris, and Murchada has become Murphy.
And there is a name, still very common in the North of England, that I cannot help connecting with some of these, namely Marmaduke, which appeared among the chivalry of England about the thirteenth century, and has never become extinct. It is most likely a corruption of one or other of the sea names, in fact, it is not far from Muireadach; or it may be the offspring of the Scottish title, Maormar, from maor, a steward or officer, and mor, great, thus meaning the great officer of the crown, the term which prevailed before the Saxon Thegn or Danish Earl displaced it.[[106]]
[105]. Villemarqué; Cambro-Britain; Mabinogion; Mallory, Morte d'Arthur.
[106]. Villemarque; Davies; Ellis; Cambro-Briton; Geoffrey of Monmouth; O'Donovan; Chalmers; Munch.
Section VIII.—Llew.
We find Llew, lion, naming Lleurwg ab Coel ab Cyllyn, also called Llewfer Mawr, the great light, and correctly translated by the Latin Lucius, the king who is said to have sent messengers to Rome to bring home Christianity, though some think Lucius a mere figment of Roman writers accepted by the bards.
Llew is the name given in Welsh genealogies to the king of the Orkneys, who married King Arthur’s sister, and was the father of Gwalchmai.
Llewel, lion-like, formed Llewelyn, which is not very early in Wales, unless the Sir Lionel of romance be intended to represent it. A Welsh Llewelyn seems to have come over to Ireland with Richard Strongbow, and his descendants, after passing through the stage of MacUighilins, are now the Quillinans.
The English have broken it down into Leoline. Llewelyn the Great of Wales was a contemporary of King John, and from this time the name has been much in use, partly from affection to the last native prince, Llewelyn ap Gruffyd, who perished at Piercefield. It is now usually Anglicized as Lewis for a Christian, Lewin for a family, name.
The old records of Brittany give a most graceful story of the saint who made Hervé a favourite in the duchy.
Hyvernion, a British bard, was warned by an angel in a dream to come to Armorica in quest of his wife. Near the fountain of Rivannon, he met a beautiful maiden drawing water, who, when he accosted her, sang “Though I am but a poor flower by the wayside, men call me the little queen of the fountain.” Perceiving that she was the damsel of his vision, he married her, and they had one child, who was born blind, and was named by his parents in their sorrow, Houerf, or bitter. His worm-eaten oaken cradle is still shown in the parish of Treflaouenan, as a relic, for the blind child became both monk and poet, and according to his maxim, ‘It is better to instruct a child than to gather wealth for him,’ he composed numerous simple and religious poems, which have been sung by the Breton peasantry through the twelve hundred years that have passed since the death of the blind bard; one of them, on the duties of a Christian child, is exceedingly beautiful. Arianwen, Silver woman, was another Welsh saint, whose name has continued in use.
Houerv, or Hervé, is not accepted in the Roman Calendar, but he was enthusiastically beloved in the country for which he had “made ballads,” and Hervé has been the name of peer and peasant there ever since his time. Hervé came over to us among the many adventurers who “came out of Brittany.” Two landowners so called are mentioned in Domesday Book, and the widely-spread surname of Harvey can hardly be taken from anything else, though some derive it from Heriwig, army war, a Teutonic word.
Here let us mention a Breton name, Tanneguy. There was a saint so called who founded an abbey at Finisterre, and who is claimed as a relation by the family of Du Chastel. It is curious to find Sir Tanneguy Du Chastel figuring among the heroes of Froissart, and making his old Christian name renowned.
But the local saints of the Kelts are far past enumeration, such as St. Monacella, or Melangell, whose Welsh name perhaps means honey-coloured or yellow. She was a little nun, who saved a hare hunted by Brocmael, prince of Powys, and is buried at Pennant Melangle. Also there was St. Sativola, or Sidwell, as she is called at Exeter, whose head was cut off by a mower with a scythe, and who had a well marking the spot, till the railway made away with it; but at least she appears in her own church, with her head in one hand and a scythe in the other, and she has a window in the cathedral. Once she had namesakes, but they are all gone now.
Einion is said to signify an anvil, in Welsh, though the word most like it in Dr. Owen Pugh’s dictionary is einioes, life. St. Einion was one of the early saints of the Cymry, after whom is named a spring at Llanvareth in Radnorshire. Another Einion was grandson of Howell Dha. The name is sometimes rendered by Æneas.
PART VI.
Teutonic Names.
CHAPTER I.
THE TEUTON RACE.
Section I.—Ground occupied by the Teutons.
The great mass of modern European nomenclature springs from the class of languages which it is convenient collectively to call Teutonic.
Nothing shows the identity of the entire Teutonic race more than the resemblance of the names in each of the branches. Many are found in each of the stems—Gothic, Scandinavian, and High and Low German—the same in sense, and with mere dialectic changes in sound, proving themselves to have sprung from a name, or from words, current in the original tribe before the various families parted from it. Others are found in some branches and not in others; but there are comparatively very few belonging to a single tongue, and the analyzation of one into its component words is never safe till the same name has been sought for in the cognate languages. All the more popular of these personal names have gone on a little in the rear of the spoken language of the country, undergoing changes, though somewhat more slowly. Then, perhaps, some famous character has, as it were, crystallized his name for ever in the form in which he bore it, and it has been so continued, ever after, in his own country, as well as imitated by others, who often have adopted it in addition to their own original national form of the very same.
The Teutonic names were almost all compounds of two words. Sometimes a single word was used, but this was comparatively rare. For the most part, families were distinguished by each person bearing the same first syllable, with other words added to it to mark the individual, much in the same way as we have seen was the custom of the Greeks. Some families, like the royal line of Wessex, would alternate between Æthel and Ead; others between Os and Sieg and the like. The original compounds forming names were expressive and well chosen; but it seems as if when once certain words had come into use as component parts of names, they were apt to be put together without much heed to their appropriateness or signification, sometimes with rather droll results. Their names were individual, but every man was also called the son, every woman the daughter, of the father; a custom that has not passed away from some parts of Norway, the Hebrides, or even the remoter parts of Lancashire, where, practically, the people use no surnames. A family was further collectively spoken of by the ancestor’s or father’s name, with the addition of ing, the derivative or patronymic; as, in France, the sons of Meervig were the Meerwingen; the sons of Karl, the Karlingen; not Merovingians and Carlovingians, as Latinization has barbarously made them. Remarkable features, or distinguished actions, often attached soubriquets to individuals, and these passed on, marking off families in the genealogical songs of the Scallds; and from these derivations, as well as from the fertile source of territorial terms, have most of our modern surnames arisen.
The words whence names were compounded were usually the names of deities and those of animals, together with epithets, or terms of office, generally conveying good auguries. They were usually connected with some great hero belonging to the various cycles of myth, in which the Teuton imagination revelled, and which, for the most part, under Christian influence, descended from the divine to the heroic, and then to the fairy tale.
These Teutonic centres of legend may be considered as threefold. There is the great Scandinavian mythological system, as elaborate and as poetical as that of the Greeks, and which belonged in part, at least, to the Goths, Franks, and Saxons, though their early conversion deprived it of five hundred years of development; and Louis le Debonnaire unfortunately destroyed the poetry that would have shown us what it had been among them.
Next, there is the cycle of Romance, represented in Scandinavia by the latter part of the elder Edda and by the Volsunga Saga, in Denmark by the Vilkina Saga, and in the centre of Europe by the Nibelungenlied, where old myths have become heroic tales that have hung themselves round the names of Attila the Hun and Theodoric of Verona, who in Germany is the centre of a great number of ancient legends, once doubtless of deified ancestors.
Thirdly, we have the grand poetical world, in which Charlemagne has been adopted as the sovereign, and Roland as the hero—the world of French romance, Spanish ballad, and Italian poetry, which is to continental chivalry what the Round Table is to our own.
CHAPTER II.
NAMES FROM TEUTON MYTHOLOGY.
Section I.—Guth.
It is hard to class this first class of names under those of mythology, for they bear in them our own honoured word for the Deity; and though some arose when the race were worshippers of false divinities, yet under the same head are included many given in a Christian spirit.
Some philologists tell us, though they are not unanimous in the explanation, that this name is from the same source as the Sanscrit Svadáta, self-given or uncreate, and as the Zend Quadata, Persian Khoda, and our own Teuton term for Deity—the Northern Gud and Gothic Guth, whence the High German Cot and low German God. Others explain it as the creating or all-pervading. Others, again, derive it from od, possession, and in early Christian times there was a distinction between God (mas.) and the neuter god, an idol. It is equally doubtful whether this divine word be the origin of the adjective, guth, gut, cuot, gode. Whether they are only cognate, or whether they are absolutely alien, and the adjective be related to the Greek ἀγαθός—wherever they come from, the names derived from either God or good are so much alike, as to be inextricably mixed, so that they must be treated of together.
The North is the great region of these names; but they are not very easy to distinguish from the very large class beginning with gund, war, as in pronunciation, and latterly in spelling, the distinctive letters, n and u, get confounded or dropped.
It is probable, however, that among those from Gud we may place Gudhr, which was owned by one of the Valkyrier, the battle maids of northern belief, and must, with her, have meant the brave, or the goddess; Guda was known in Scandinavia; and Germany used the name, till it was translated into Bona or Bonne, and thus passed away.[away.]
In the northern version of the Nibelungen, the second heroine is Gudruna. The last syllable means wisdom, or counsel; it is the same as rune, the old northern writing, and alludes to the wisdom that Odin won at so dear a rate. Gudruna may then be translated divine wisdom, a name well suited to the inspired priestesses, so highly regarded by the Teutons. It was very common in the North; eighteen ladies so called appear in the Icelandic Landnama; and it was so universal there, that Johann and Gudruna there stand for man and woman, like our N. or M. In Norway, likewise, Gudruna is common; and, near Trondjem, is contracted into Guru; about Bergen, into Gern or Gero. High German tongues rendered it Kutrun.
The Landnama-bok, which gives all the pedigrees of the free inhabitants of Iceland for about four hundred years, namely, from the migration to the twelfth century, gives us Gudbrand, divine staff, now commonly called Gulbrand; Gudbiorg, divine protection; Gudiskalkr, God’s servant, or scholar, which is the very same as Godeskalk, the name assumed by the first Christian prince of the Wends of Mecklenburg, who was martyred by his heathen subjects, and thus rendered Gottschalk a German Christian name; in Illyrian, Gocalak; and known even in Italy as Godiscalco, just like Gildas or Theodoulos. Gudleif is feminine, Gudleifr masculine, for a divine relic; and this last coming to England with the Danes, turned into a surname as Gulleiv, then shortened into Gulley, and lengthened into Gulliver—a veritable though quaint surname for the Lemuel Gulliver whom Swift conducts through Laputa and Brobdignag, with coolness worthy of northern forefathers.
Gudleik, divine service, is, perhaps, repeated by our St. Guthlac; but both these may come from gund. Gudmund contracts into Gulmund, divine protection. Five ladies called Gudny appear, which latter termination is a common feminine form, and comes from the same word as our new. If an adjective, it would mean young and pretty; if a noun, it stands for the new moon, a very graceful name for a woman. Guni is the contraction used in the North.
Gudfinn and Gudfinna must be reminiscences of Finn, whom we shall often meet in the North. Gudrid and Gudridur mean the divine shock or passion, from the word hrid or hrith, one that is constantly to be met with as a termination in northern names, and which has sometimes been taken for the same as frid, with the aspirate instead of the f. Guri is the contraction.
Gudveig’s latter syllable would naturally connect itself with the wig, war, that is found in all the Gothic tongues; but Professor Munch translates it as liquid—divine liquor—the same meaning as Gudlaug and the masculine Gudlaugr; laug, from la, liquor, or the sea. Divine sea, would be a noble meaning for the Gulla or Gollaa to which Gudlaug is commonly reduced in Norway.
Gudvar is divine prudence or caution, the last part being our word ware; in fact, every combination of the more dignified words was used with this prefix in the North, and it was probably the Danes who introduced this commencement into England, for we do not find such in pedigrees before the great irruption in Ethelred I.’s time.
In spite of the romantic story of Earl Godwine’s rise into honour from acting as a guide to a Danish chief, it is certain that he was of an honourable family, of Danish connection, and thus he probably obtained his name, which would mean God’s beloved, and thus translate Theophilos. Few are recorded in history as bearing the same; but there must have been some to transmit the frequent surname of Godwin and Goodwin, the latter connected to our minds with the Goodwin Sands, which were really once the estate of the ambitious earl. Godin is the remains of the same in French. It is found at Cambrai, in 1065, belonging to the “Echanson d'Ostrevant.” The old French word godeau meant a cup, and, as Godin soon became a surname of a family which carried a cup in their arms, there might have been a double allusion to the office of the ancestor and to the sound of the name. Godine and Godinette were also in use there, but were considered as feminines to Goderic—a very old word, which, strange to say, was, at Cambrai, equivalent to fainéant, or ‘ne’er do weel,’ it must be supposed in allusion to some particularly discreditable Goderic, as everywhere else it signifies divine ruler. Our own St. Goderic was an Anglo-Saxon abbot, and the name, which means divine rule, grew so common among the English, that the Norman nobles called Henry I. and his Queen, Godric and Godiva, in derision of the lady’s English blood. Goderic does, indeed, swarm in Domesday Book, and has left the surname Goodrich.
“The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl who ruled
At Coventry,”
really existed, and was probably Godgifu, the gift of God, like Dorothea, as ive or eva was the Norman rendering of gifu. Her namesakes are in multitudes in Domesday, and, in 1070, one lived in Terouenne, a pious lady, tormented, and at last murdered, by her husband, on which account she was canonized as St. Godeleva.
The High Germans, however, made far more use of this commencement, and won for it the chief honour. The elder forms are according to the harsh old German sounds—Cotahelm, divine helmet, Cotahramn, divine raven, Cotalint, divine serpent! But the more universal spelling prevailed, as Frankish or Allemannic saints came into honour. Gotthard, bishop of Hildesheim, was one of these. His name, which may be rendered divine resolution, or, perhaps, firm through God, was also borne by Godard, abbot of Rouen, and has adhered to the great mountain-pass of the Alps, as well as to families of Godard in France, Goddard in England. In Germany it is still used as a Christian name; and in Lithuania is Gattinsch, Gedderts, or Kodders.
Gottfrid, divine peace, was abbot of St. Quentin early in the eleventh century, and named two godsons, the canonized bishop of Amiens, and the far more famous Gottfried of Lorraine, who might well, as leader of the crusading camp, bequeath his name to all the nations whose representatives fought under him, and thus we find it everywhere. In Florence it has become Giotto, to distinguish the artist who gave us Dante’s face; in Germany, cut down into Goetz, it distinguished the terrible, though simple-hearted, champion with the iron hand, then, falling into a surname, belonged to Göthe. We received our Godfrey from the conqueror of Jerusalem, but previously the Gottfried had been taken up by the French, and was much used by the Angevin counts in the Gallicized form of Geoffroi. In alternation with Foulques, the name continued among the Angevins till they came to the English throne; and then Jaffrez, as the Bretons called the young husband of their duchess Constance, was excited to rebellion by the Provençals as Jaffré. Geoffrey spread among the English, and the Latinizers made it into Galdfridus, which misled Camden into translating it into Glad-peace.
| English. | Breton. | French. | Italian. |
| Godfrey | Jaffrez | Godefroi | Goffredo |
| Geoffrey | Godafrey | Godofredo | |
| Jeffrey | Geoffroi | Giotto | |
| Jeff | Jeoffroi | ||
| Spanish. | German. | Polish. | Lusatian. |
| Godofredo | Gottfried | Godfrid | Frido |
| Gofredo | Götz | Dutch. | Fridko |
| Gödel | Govert |
Besides these, Germany has Godegisel, divine pledge; Godebert and Godeberta, divine brightness; and Gottwald, divine power: repeated in Provence by Jaubert.
Germany also has a Gottleip, the same with the old Anglo-Saxon Guthlaf, meaning the leavings of God, or remains of Divinity, but which has been made in modern German into Gottlieb, or love, and contracted in Lower Lusatia into Lipo; in Dantzic, into Lipp. There are several of these modern devotional German names, such as Gottlob, the very same in meaning as belonged to the Speaker of the Rump, Praise God Barebones, but has been continued as Lopo, or Lopko, in Lusatia. In fact, the Moravians use these appellations, and thus we have the modern coinage of Gottgetreu, Gotthilf, and Gotthilfe, and even of Gottsei-mit-dir, much like the Diotisalvi of Italy, and not without parallel among the early Christians.
The Spanish Goths left behind them Guzman, once either divine might (magen), or Man of God. Guzman el Bueno was an admirable early Spaniard, who beheld his own son beheaded rather than surrender the town committed to his keeping. It became a surname, and it may be remembered how Queen Elizabeth played with that of Philip II.’s envoy, when she declared that if the king of Spain had sent her a gooseman, she had sent him a man-goose.
Another old form taken by this word was Geata, or Gautr. It was used as an epithet of Odin, and has been explained by some to mean the keeper, and be derived from geata, to keep; but it is far more likely that it is only another pronunciation of the same term for the All-pervader or Creator.
Gautr is sometimes a forefather, sometimes a son of Odin; and there is a supposed name-father, Gaut, for the Goths of Sweden, whether they are the same as the Goths of Italy and Spain or not.
In this form, Gaut had its own brood of derivatives, chiefly in Sweden, but with a few straying into Germany; such as Gosswin, divine friend, and Gossbert, in Provençal Joubert, Gossfried, which may be the right source of Geoffrey.
The most noted of all is, however, Gotzstaf, or Gozstaf, meaning either the divine staff, or the staff of the Goths. Twice has it been endeared to the Swedes; first by Gustaf Vasa, the brave man who delivered the country from the bondage of the union of Calmar, and whose adventures in Dalecarlia, like those of Bruce in Scotland, were more endearing than even his success. Him the country calls affectionately “Gamle Kong Gosta” and no less was its love and pride in his noble descendant, Gustaf Adolf, “the Lion of the North, the bulwark of the Protestant faith,” who casts the only gleam of brightness over the dull waste of the Thirty Years' War. Thus it is no wonder that so many bear his name, Gustav, Gosta, Gjosta, that it is considered in the North as the national nickname of a Swede; and it has the feminine Gustava.
| English. | French. | Italian. | Swedish. |
| Gustavus | Gustave | Gustavo | Gozstav |
| Gustav | |||
| Gosta | |||
| Gjosta | |||
| German. | Lett. | Esthonian. | |
| Gustaf | Gustavs | Kustav | |
| Gusts | Kustas |
Section II.—The Aasir.
Tacitus tells us that the supreme god of the Germans was called Esus or Hesus, and though some have thought he meant the Keltic Hu, it is far more likely that he had heard the word As or Æs, the favourite Teutonic term for their divinities.
The word is known in all the Teutonic languages: it is As, Aasir in the North, Os, Es in Anglo-Saxon, and Anseis or Ensi in Gothic and High German. Jornandes tells us that the Goths called their deified ancestors anses, but it is only in the North that the literature of the Pantheon of the race was so developed that we can follow it out.
The Aasir are in northern myth a family like the Olympian gods of Greece; they inhabit Valhalla, and there receive the spirits of the worthy dead, to feast and hunt with them till the general battle and final ruin of all things, when a new and perfect world shall arise.
Blended with this notion there is a grand allegory of the contention between the seasons. The Aasir, or summer gods, are always struggling with the Hrimthusir, or frost powers, and winning the victory over them.
And further, the tradition of a migration from the warmer East, and of the battles with the northern aborigines, is mixed up in the legends, and the Aasir are a band of heroic settlers from Asgard or Asia, who fix themselves in Europe, and become the ancestors of all the various races of Teutons.
So speak the Edda and the various sagas of the North; and though the poetry and legends of the other nations have not come down to us, their use of the names formed from as, os, ans, testifies to their regard for the term as conveying the idea of deity.
To begin with the North, where the pronunciation is the purest, the word in the singular is aas, in the plural, aasir or æsir, and the older form of these names began with the aa, though usually spelt with a single a in Norsk and Icelandic, with an e in Danish. And let it be remembered throughout, that the Northern aa is pronounced like our o.
The Low Germans change the aas into os, and in this way most of the Anglo-Saxon and continental German names commence.
Ans, the High German and Gothic form, occurs in the Frank, Lombardic, and Gothic names. Asgaut or, as the Saxons call it, Osgod, and Asgrim, are both reduplications of divinity.
Asa appears in the Landnama-bok, and Aasir, the collective term for the gods, is used in Norway as a name corrupted into Asser, or Ozer. It is probably the same with Esa, the ancestor of the Bernician kings, who may have used ‘Os’ in compliment to him. Aasketyl is the divine kettle or cauldron, probably connected with creation. It was usually called in the North Askjell, and has the feminine Askatla. [Oscetyl], as the Anglo-Saxons spelt it, was used by them in Danish times, when a so-called marauder terribly tormented them; but Frank pronunciation so affected the Normans, that they brought in the name as Ansketil; and a person so called was settled at Winchester in 1148.
Aasbjorn, divine bear, is a queer compound, and so is Aasolfr, or divine wolf; but as will be shown when we come to the beasts themselves, a certain divinity did hedge about these formidable animals in the days of name-coining in the North. The first Asolfr with whom I have met was a Christian, who, with twelve companions, was wrecked upon the shores of Iceland in the interval between its settlement and conversion. They erected buildings, resolutely refused all commerce with the heathen, and lived solely on the produce of their fishing. A church has since been built where they settled. The name has fallen into Asulf in the North, and was paralleled by Osulf in England. As to the divine bear, he had a wider fame, for Asbiorn came among the Northmen to Neustria, and was there Frenchified. An Osborn was the seneschal who was murdered in the sleeping chamber of William in the stormy days of the minority of the future conqueror; and his son, William Fitzosborn, was the chief friend and confidant of the stern victor of Hastings. Osborn figures in Domesday, and has now become a common English surname, which used to be translated house-born, before comparison with the other tongues had shown the true relations of the word. Asbera is the northern feminine.
Esbern Snare, or the swift, the Danish noble, whose heart and eyes were to have furnished Finn’s child with amusement, was really a powerful earl at the end of the twelfth century, and his still more celebrated twin brother, Bishop Absalom, was a great statesman and warrior, and prompted Saxo Grammaticus to write his chronicle of Norway. Bishop Absalom is believed to have, like his brother, received at baptism one of the derivatives from the old gods of Denmark, namely, Aslak, the divine sport or reward, a name which in Denmark and Sweden is always called Axel, in which shape it belonged to Oxenstjerna, the beloved minister of Gustavus Adolphus, and has ever since been a favourite national name. Aslak is in the North pronounced Atlak, and sometimes taken for the original Atli in the Volsunga Saga; but this is far more probably the Tartar Attalik. We had a Bernician Aslak of the like meaning. Never were there a more noted pair of twins than these brothers, of the bear and the sport. Well might their birth be first announced to their absent father, on his return to the isle of Soro, by twin church steeples, built by the mother to greet his eyes over the sea. His name, Askar, or Ansgjerr, divine spear, was so common that sixteen appear in the Iceland roll, and the word Osgar gets confused with the Keltic Oscar, son of Ossian; nay, it may perhaps have been his proper name. A Frank Ansgar, born in Picardy about the year 800, was the apostle of Denmark, and afterwards bishop of Hamburgh and Bremen; he was canonized as Anscharius, and is popularly called in his bishopric St. Scharies, by which title the collegiate church of Bremen is called. It is curious to find the Ansbrando of ancient Lombardy reflected by the Asbrandr, divine sword, of Iceland. Lombardy had likewise Anshelm, the divine helmet, softened down into Anselmo or Antelmo, the name of that mild-natured Lombardic Archbishop of ours, whose constancy cost him so dear in his contention with the furious Rufus and politic Beauclerc. That firmness, however, together with his deep theological writings, won him the honours of sanctity, though it is only on the Continent that his name took root: England had no national love for her Anselm; and he chiefly appears in Italy, France, and Germany, where he has been cut short as Anso, endeared as Ensilo, has a feminine Ansa, and is called by the Jews Anschel.
Of other terms which, like helm, give the idea of protection, there are many; the feminine Asbjorg or Asburg, divine fort, is reflected by the Anglo-Saxon Asburgha. Asgardr, divine guard, may be most probably an allusion to the abode of the gods, Asgard, the abode to which the rainbow-arch Bifrost was the access, trod, according to the grand death song of Eirikr Blodaxe, by the spirits of the courageous dead on their way to feast in the hall of Odin. As men’s names appear the Norwegian Asgard, and Ansgard, a Winchester householder in Stephen’s time; but the Northern feminine Asgerdur is the divine maiden, in honour of the goddess Gerda. Asmundr is the northern form of a favourite name, giving the idea of protecting with the hand. It is called Ansmunt in old German, Osmund in Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French, and in this form was most popular, at first perhaps, from Osmond de Centeville, the brave Norman, who fled from Laon with the young Richard Sans Peur, but afterwards for the sake of a Norman Osmond, who was canonized as Bishop of Salisbury, whence this form in England and Osmont in France have continued. Aasvalldr, divine power, was in Germany Ansvalt, and has modernized as Asvald; but the Anglo-Saxon Oswald was the glory of the name in the Northumbrian monarch, “free of hand,” as even his Welsh foes called him, who has left Oswald to be an English name. Asvor and Asvora express divine prudence.
“Aslaug, dottur Sigurdur Fafnisbana,” is recorded in the Landnama-bok in sober earnest as having married Ragnar Lodbrog.
Divine legacy, or relic, appears in Asleif, the English Oslaf. The northern Aasny, with Ashildur, has always been a favourite. Osthryth, divine threatener, came out of the house of Bernicia into Mercia, where she was murdered by the Danes, and revered as St. Osyth with a priory in her honour.
Thoroughly English are likewise Osmod, divine mood or wrath; Osfrith, divine peace; Osred, divine council; Osgifu, divine gift; Oswine, divine friend, the third of the admirable but short-lived kings of Bernicia; Oswiu, who overthrew him, was probably named from a word meaning sacred, of which more in its place. Osbeorht we share with Germany, which calls it Osbert, and has the feminine Osberta. In fact, most of these names were in use there, beginning with os or ans, according to the dialect in which they were used. Ansgisel was one of the Frankish forms, that section of the race always making much use of gisel, a pledge.[[107]]
[107]. Grimm; Turner; Munch; Lappenberg; Mallet; Landnama-bok; Domesday; Michaelis; Hermann Luning, Edda; Hist. of Scandinavia; Marryat, Jutland.
Section III.—Odin, or Grîmr.
The head of the Aasir was Odin, as we have learned to call him from the North, which worshipped him long after we had forgotten our Wuotan, except in the title of his day of the week. There are various opinions as to the meaning of his name, some making it come from the word for rage in the North, odhr; in A. S., wod; and still wuth in German; and the adjective wud in Scottish. It thus may allude to Odin being the god of storm and tempest. Others take the name from O. G., watan, N., vatha, to pervade, the title of the Divinity, as being through all things. This is, in fact, the same as God.
However this may be, Odin, in the higher myths, is the All-father, standing at the head of Asgard, as Zeus does of Olympus. He governs all things, and knows all things. He obtained this mighty influence, says the Edda, by hanging for nine nights on the world-tree, Yggdrasil, without food or drink, transfixed with a spear, as a self-sacrifice. Then he looked down into the depth, and sank from the tree into it; but in the abyss beneath he drank the costly poet-mead, and learnt powerful songs, obtaining the Runes, the beginning of wisdom, by which he could compel to his will all nature: wind, sea, and fire, hate and love!
Coupled with this entirely divine Odin, there was the abiding notion of ancestry beginning with a god; and no one, of any nobility, was content without having Odin for his forefather. Even when Christianity dethroned Odin from his place in Heaven, he was still retained as a heroic ancestor; and somewhat grotesquely, the old chroniclers, after carrying up their kings to him, brought him down from Noah, and he became reduced to be the leader of the great migration from Asia, while the gods were made his human sons.
We do not find Odin itself forming part of any personal name; it seems to have been avoided as Zeus was in Greece, and, to a greater degree, Jupiter in Rome. But he had no less than forty-nine epithets, all of which are rehearsed in the prose Edda, and his votaries were called by one or other of these.
Finn has been spoken of already as one of these; also Gautr, as one of the forms of divinity. Grîmr is another, coming from the old Norse word grîma, a mask or helmet. Odin was called Grimr, meaning the concealed, or possibly the helmeted; and the names beginning with Grim may generally be referred to the hidden god.
Grîmhild, or in High German, Krimhild, was originally one of the Valkyrier, or choosers of the slain, who was so called, as being endowed with a helmet of terror. Hidden battle-maid, or helmeted battle-maid, would be her fittest translation. In the northern version of the Nibelungenlied, Grimhild is the witch-mother of Sigurd’s wife, Gudrun, and performs a part like that of the Oda, or Uta, in the German and Danish versions, in which the heroine herself is called Kriemhild, or Chriemhild, and does her fatal part in wreaking revenge for the murder of her husband. Grimhhildur was somewhat used in the North, but nothing was so fashionable as Grim, who occurs twenty-nine times in the Landnama-bok, and with equal frequency in Domesday; besides that one of these Danish settlers left his name to Grimsby, in Lincolnshire.
Grim has, of course, his kettle, in the North, Grimketyl, or Grimkjell; in Domesday, Grimchel; an allusion, probably, to creation, quaint as is the sound to our ears. Grimperaht, or helmeted splendour, first was turned into Grimbert, then into the common German surname of Grimmert. Grimar in the North was Grimheri in Germany. Grim was in greater favour as a prefix in the High German dialects than in the North, and chiefly in the Frankish regions.
Grimbald, helmeted prince, was a monk of St. Omer, transplanted by King Alfred to Oxford, in the hope of promoting learning, and he thus became a Saxon saint. Grimvald, helmeted ruler, was a maire du palais in the Faineant times of the Franks; and in Spanish balled el Conde Grimaltos, a knight at the court of Charlemagne, was slandered and driven away with his wife to the mountains, where the lady gives birth to a son, who was baptized Montesinos, from the place of his birth, and educated in all chivalry till he was old enough to go to Charlemagne’s court, refute the slander by the ordeal of battle, and restore his family to favour. Grimaldo was a name borne by the Lombard kings, and left remains in the great Grimaldi family of Genoa.
Most of our English Grims were importations, and there are few of them, though we have Grimulf in Domesday, probably a Dane.
Section IV.—Frey.
Every false religion preserves in some form or other the perception of a Divine Trinity, and the Teutonic Triad consisted of Odin, Frey, and Thor, whose images always occupied the place of honour in the temples, and who owned the three midmost days of the week.
The history of the word freyr is very curious. The root is found in pri, Skt., to love or rejoice, the Zend frî, the Greek φίλος. To be glad was also to be free; so freon or frigon means to free and to love, and thence free in all its forms (N. fri; Goth, frige; H. G. frei; L. G. freoh). Thus, again, the Germans came by froh, and we by fresh. Fro was both glad and dear; and as in Gothic frowida was joy, so is freude in modern German; and we exult in frolics and freaks. He who loved was known by the present participle, frigonds, the friend of modern English, the same in all our Teutonic tongues; and as the effect of love is peace, the term was fred or fried, our Saxon frith, which we have lost in the French-Latin word. To be free was to be noble, so the free noble was Frauja, the name by which Ulfilas always translates Κύριος, in the New Testament, by a beautiful analogy, showing, indeed, that our Lord is our Friend and our Redeemer, loving us, and setting us free.
Frauja, or free, was the lord and master, so his wife was likewise frea, both the beloved and the free woman; the northern frue, German frau, and Dutch vrowe, all, as donna had done in Italy, becoming the generic term for woman.
Out of all the derivatives of this fertile and beautiful term, there were large contributions to mythology, and a great number of names.
Freyr, lord, lover, was once a god of very high rank, lord of sun and moon, hermaphrodite, and regulating the seasons, blessing marriage, and guarding purity: and this was probably a universal idea brought from Asia.
As old notions formed into mythic tales, and the gods grew human, the wife of Odin was invented, and what could she be but the frau, the lady of Asgard, Frigga? Again, Freyr was brought down from his mysterious vagueness, and turned into a nephew of Odin, with the moon to take care of, and, moreover, was disintegrated into a brother and sister, called Freyr and Freya.
The sixth day of the week had probably originally belonged to Freyr, but Frigga got possession of it; and, in right of her presiding over love and marriage, she was considered to be Venus; and in France and Italy her day is still Vendredi and Venerdì, while we have it as Friday, the Germans as Freitag, the North as Fredag.
Freya is also a goddess of love, and drives over every battle-field with her car drawn by cats (once, perhaps, panthers, like those of Bacchus, whom her brother is thought to resemble), and chooses half the slain, whom she marshals to their seats at the banquet of Valhalla. Her husband, Othur or Odhr, curiously repeats Odin’s name, as she does Frigga’s. She weeps continually drops of gold when he is absent, and the metal is poetically called Freya’s tears.
Her brother, Freyr, was always a chaste, dignified, beneficent personage, a sort of severe Bacchus, or grave Apollo. In the great final battle, he is to be destroyed by Surti. He is the tutelary god of Sweden, as was Odin of the Saxons.
There are hosts of names connected with these deities, or the words sprung from their source. Frith in Saxon, frey or freya in the North, fried in German, falling in France into froi, was a favourite termination generally masculine, and so probably in honour of Freyr; and though it is safe to translate it peace, it probably also meant freedom.
Old Spanish has Froila, or Fruela, among the kings of the Asturias, and this may be translated lord, and compared with the Freavine, or Frowin, free darling, now become Frewen. Franta, too, was a king of the Spanish Suevi.
Fritigern, king of the Visigoths, who first fixed himself on the Danube, bore the name afterwards Frideger (spear of peace), in Germany, a compound much resembling that borne by that Jezebel of the Meerwings, Fredegunt, or Frédégonde, as she is called by French historians. Freygerdur of[of] the North, as found in the Landnama-bok, serving four men and two women, is there explained either as freedom-preserver, or peace-keeper.
But what is to be said of Fridthjof, or Frithjof, the renowned hero of the Frithjofsaga, being no better than peace-thief? Northern pirates thought no scorn of being thieves, and we shall fall on plenty more of them; but the compound is certainly startling.
Fridulf, or Fridolf, peace wolf, is nearly as bad; but it seems to have contracted into Friedel in Germany, and expanded into Fridolin, probably in imitation of Fedlim, or some such Erse name, since the saint thus recorded in the calendar is one of the many Scottish missionaries of the fifth century, who preached to the Burgundians. He is the titular patron of the Swiss canton of Glarus, whose shield bears his figure in the Benedictine dress he never wore. Thence Schiller took the name of the youth in his ballad on the strange adventure of Isabel de la Paz of Portugal, which is best known through Retzch’s illustrations. The German Friedel must be short for this, as Frider is for Fridheri, peace-warrior. In fact, Germany is the great land of this commencement, and has fostered the best known of the whole. There was indeed a Fridrikr in the Landnama-bok, and a Fredreg, or Frederic, in Domesday, but these would have been forgotten but for an old Frisian bishop, Freodhoric, who, in the time of Louis le Debonnaire, had been murdered while praying in his chapel, and being canonized, was a patron saint of the Swabian house. Friedrich with the red beard, or Barbarossa, a Ghibelline hero, caused Federigo to be popular among that party in Italy; and when his Neapolitan grandson’s claims to the kingdom of the Two Sicilies had been transmitted, through Manfred’s daughter, to the Aragonese monarchs, Fadrique became usual in Spain. Friedrich had grown national in Germany, and not a king of Prussia till the present has reigned without being so called, in compliment to their hero, who, while the soldiers called him Old Fritz, thought it graceful to write himself Frédéric, having with his French tastes, taken a dislike to the sound of his own name, even in the softened spelling of his adopted language. It was from the father of this monarch that the son of George II. was called Frederick, a name we have twice had next in succession to the crown. The Danes obtained the name from their German connections, and make it alternate on the throne with Christiern. The feminine is a late invention in Germany, very common there but barely recognized elsewhere.
| English. | French. | Breton. | Spanish. |
| Frederick | Frédéric | Fêidrik | Fadrique |
| Fred | Ferry | ||
| Portuguese. | Italian. | German. | Dutch. |
| Frederico | Federigo | Fridrich | Frederik |
| Federico | Fritz | Freerik | |
| Frisian. | Swedish. | Danish. | Swiss. |
| Frerk | Fredrik | Frederik | Fredli |
| Frek | Fridli | ||
| Friko | |||
| Russian. | Polish. | Slovak. | Bohemia. |
| Fridrich | Fryderyk | Friderik | Bedrich |
| Fryc | |||
| Lusatian. | Lettish. | Lithuanian. | Finn. |
| Fidrich | Sprizzis | Prydas | Rietu |
| Bedrich | Prizzis Wrizzis Wrizzis | Prydikis Priczus | Wettrikki Wetu Wetukka |
| Hungarian. | Greek | ||
| Fridrik | Φρεσδερικος | ||
| FEMININE. | |||
| English. | French. | Portuguese | Italian. |
| Frederica | Frédérigue | Frederica | Federica |
| Freddie | Feriga | ||
| German. | Swiss. | Polish. | Bohemian. |
| Fridrike | Fredrika | Frydryka | Bedriska |
| Fritze | Greek. | ||
| Fritzinn | Φρεδερική | ||
| Rike | |||
| Rikchen | |||
Probably this popular Frederick has devoured all the other forms with the same commencement; for after the middle ages had fairly begun, we hardly ever hear of the German Fridrad, Fridrada, Fridhelm, Fridrun, Fridbald, Fridbert, Fridburg, Fridgard, Fridilind. Fridmund, peace protection, Fridwald, peace-power, has been preserved in Friesland as Fredewolt, Fredo, or Freddo. Fridleifr in the North has fallen into Friedlieb in Germany: it is the same as the Frithlaf whom our Saxon chroniclers bestowed on Wuotan by way of ancestor.
Our own Saxon saint, Frithswith, strong in peace, was the daughter of the Lord of Oxford, in the eighth century. She lived in a little cell at Thornbury, had various legendary adventures, which may be seen portrayed in a modern window of the cathedral at Oxford, and became the saintly patroness of the University and Cathedral, where, by the name of St. Fridiswid, she reigned over Alma Mater, till Wolsey laid hold of the church and its chapter for his own splendid foundation of Christchurch. Frethesantha Paynell was wife of Geoffrey Lutterell, about the fourteenth century; and Fridiswid is by no means uncommon in the old genealogies of Essex and the northern counties. Alban Butler gives Frewissa as the contraction; but in Ireland, according to Mr. Britton’s capital story of The Election, it is Fiddy.
From frei, free, modern Germany has taken Freimund, by which they mean Freemouth, though it ought to be free protection, Freimuth, free courage, Freidank, free thought. But the older word for free plays a far more important part in modern nomenclature, namely, Frang, the High German form of free lord.
The nation called Cherusci by Tacitus denominated themselves Frangen when they warred on northern Gaul, overspread it, and termed it for themselves Frankreich. As their primary energy decayed their dominion divided; Frankenland, under the Latinism of Franconia, became leagued with the lands of the Swabians, Allemanni, and Saxons, and thus became part of Deutschland and of the Holy Roman Empire, while Frankreich was leavened by the Gallo-Romans, who worked up through their Frank lords, and made their clipped Latin, or Langue d’oui[[108]] (the tongue of aye), the national language, and yet called themselves Les Français, and the country France. And as the most enthusiastic and versatile of the European commonwealth, they so contrived to lead other nations, and impress their fashions on them, that the Eastern races regarded all Europeans as Franks, called their country Franghistan, and the patois spoken by them in the Levant became Lingua Franca.
Franc, or Franco, was the archbishop of Rouen who made terms with Rollo; but the name of real fame arose otherwise.
Long before the emperor Charles V. had pronounced French to be the language for men, an Italian merchant of Assisi caused his son, Giovanni, to be instructed in it as a preparation for commerce. The boy’s proficiency caused him to be called ‘il Francesco,’ the Frenchman, until the baptismal Giovanni was absolutely forgotten; and as Francesco he lived his ascetic, enthusiastic life; as Franciscus was canonized; and the mendicant order, humbly termed by him fratres minores, lesser brethren, were known as Franciscans throughout the Western Church.
Many a little Italian of either sex was christened by his soubriquet, and though one of the first feminines on record was the unhappy lady whose fall and doom Dante made famous, yet the sweet renown of the devout housewife, Santa Francesca di Roma, assisted its popularity; there was a Françoise at Cambrai even in 1300, and Cecarella is the peasant mother of a damsel in the Pentamerone.
San Francesco di Nola reformed the Franciscans into a new order, called the Minimi, or least, as the former ones were the Minores. It is to him that the spread of the name beyond the Alps is chiefly owing, for Louise of Savoy was so devoted to him, that she made him sponsor and name-father to her passionately loved son, and sewed his winding-sheet with her own hands.
The name was not absolutely new to France, for that of the grandson of the first Montfort, Duke of Brittany, had been Fransez, and so had been that of the father of the Duchess Anne, who carried her old Keltic inheritance to the crown of France; but it was her daughter’s husband, François I., the godson of the saint of Nola, who was the representative Frenchman, the type of showy and degenerate chivalry; and thus spread François and Françoise universally among the French nobility, where they held sway almost exclusively till the memories of the House of Valois had become detestable; but by that time the populace were making great use of it, and at the present time it is considered as so vulgar that a French servant in England was scandalized that a child of the family should be called Francis.
Franz von Sickingen is an instance that already Germany knew the name; but it did not take root there at once. The grandchildren of François I., intermarrying with the house of Lorraine, rendered his namesakes plentiful, both in the blood-stained younger branch of Guise, and in the dull direct stem, the continuation of the Karlingen, who at length, by the marriage with Maria Theresa, were restored to the throne of Charlemagne, in the person of him whom the classicalizing Germans termed Franciskus I. This cumbrous form is still official, but Franz is the real name in universal use in the German parts of the Austrian Empire, though the Slavonic portions generally use the other end of the word, as Zesk.
It was the same gay French monarch who sent us our forms of the name. Mary Tudor, either in gratitude for his kindness, or in memory of her brief queenship of France, christened her first child Frances—that Lady Frances Brandon whose royal blood was so sore a misfortune to her daughters, and who had numerous namesakes among the maidens of the Tudor court; but they do not seem to have then made the distinction of letter that now marks the feminine, and they used what is now the masculine contraction. “Frank, Frank, how long is it since thou wast married to Prannel?” was the rebuke of the Duke of Richmond to his Howard lady when he was pleased to take down her inordinate pride, by reminding her of her youthful elopement with a vintner.
The modern Fanny is apparently of the days of Anne, coming into notice with the beautiful Lady Fanny Shirley, who made it a great favourite, and almost a proverb for prettiness and simplicity, so that the wits of George II.’s time called John, Lord Hervey, ‘Lord Fanny,’ for his effeminacy. Fanny, like Frank, is often given at baptism instead of the full word; and, by an odd caprice, it has lately been adopted in both France and Germany instead of their national contractions.
The masculine came in at the same time, and burst into eminence in the Elizabethan cluster of worthies—Drake, Walsingham, Bacon; but it did not take a thorough hold of the nation, and was much left to the Roman Catholics. It was not till Frank had been restricted to men that it took hold of the popular mind, so as to become prevalent.
The original saint of Assisi made devout Spaniards use Francisco and Francisca, before the fresh honour won for the first by two early Jesuits—the Duke of Gandia, the friend and guide of Charles V., and Xavier, the self-devoted apostle of the Indies. His surname has thrown out another stock. It is in itself Moorish, coming from the Arabic Ga’afar, splendid, the same as that of our old friend, the Giaffar of the Arabian Nights, the Jaffier of old historians. Wherever Jesuits have been, there it is; Savero in Italy, Xavier in France, Xaverie in Wallachia, Xavery in Poland, Saverij in Illyria; Xaveria for the feminine in Roman Catholic Germany, marking the course of the counter-Reformation. Even Ireland deals in Saverius, or Savy, though when English sailors meet a Spanish negro called Xaver, they call him Shaver! Savary de Bohnn, whom Dugdale places under Henry I., was probably a form of Sigeheri, or Saher, which may have been absorbed by Xaver in Roman Catholic lands.
| English. | Erse. | Breton. | French. |
| Francis | Fromsais | Franse | François |
| Frank | |||
| Spanish. | Portuguese. | Italian. | Wallachian. |
| Francisco | Francisco | Francesco | Francisk |
| Francilo | Francisquinho | Franco | |
| Cecco | |||
| German. | Dutch. | Scotch. | Swedish. |
| Franciskus | Frenz | Francie | Frans |
| Franz | |||
| Frank | |||
| Polish. | Bohemian. | Slovak. | Lettish. |
| Franciszek | Frantisek | Francisek | Spranzis |
| Franck | Franc | ||
| Franjo | |||
| Zesk | |||
| Lithuanian. | Finn. | Hungarian. | Greek. |
| Prancas | Ranssu | Ferencz | Φραγκίσκος |
| Ferko | |||
| FEMININE. | |||
| English. | Breton. | French. | Span. and Por. |
| Frances | Franseza | Françoise | Francisca |
| Fanny | Fantik | Francisque | |
| Fanchette | |||
| Fanchon | |||
| Italian. | German. | Dutch. | Polish |
| Francesca | Franziske | Francyntje | Franciszka |
| Cecca | Franze | Francina | Franulka |
| Ceccina | Sprinzchen | Fransje | Franusia |
| Ceccarella | (Lower German.) | ||
| Bohemian. | Slovak. | Hungarian. | Greek. |
| Frantiska | Franciska | Francziska | Φραγκίσκη[[109]] |
| Franika | |||
| Franja | |||
[108]. ‘We-we’ is the name now given by the South Sea Islanders to the French.
[109]. Grimm; Munch; Munter; Michaelis; Alban Butler; Mrs. Rusk, German Empire; Dugdale; Ellis, Domesday.
Section V.—Thor.
The third in the Teutonic Triad is the mighty Thor, whose image stood on the other side of that of Odin, in the northern temples, whose day followed Odin’s, and who was the special deity of the Norsemen, as Wuotan was of the Saxons, and Freyr of the Swedes.
The most awful phenomenon to which, in Northern Europe, human ears are accustomed—the great electric sound from heaven, could not fail to be connected with divinity, by nature, as well as by the lingering reminiscence of the revelations, when it accompanied the Voice of the Most High.
If the classic nations knew the mighty roll as the bolts of Zeus or Jupiter, they called it βροντή (brontè) and tonitru, names corresponding to those divinities wherewith the other Aryans connected the sound—the Perun of the Slavonians, the Taran of the Cymry, the Thunnr, Donnar, or Thor of the Teuton. The Indra of the Hindu, came from udra or eidan, water, as god of the waters of the sky, while the Teutonic title was probably an imitation of the deep rolling sound, and the god must have been called after it.
In the northern myths Thor is the eldest son of Odin, mightiest of all the Aasir, partly in right of his belt of strength, which doubles his force, and of the iron gauntlets which he wields whenever he throws his mighty hammer—Mjolner, the crusher (from the word that named Milo, also mills and meal)—which, like a boomerang, always returns to him when he has hurled it. He has a palace called Thrudheim, or Thrudvangr, the abode of courage, resting on five hundred and forty pillars, which seems like a tradition of some many-columned Indian edifice. It was he who was foremost in the fight with the powers of evil; he bound Lok, the destroyer, and banished him to Utgard, where the famous visit was made that so curiously reflects Indian and Persian myths, and has dwindled into the tricks of our Giant-killer and the German schneiderlein. He has more adventures than any other single deity in northern story, and continues champion of the gods till the final consummation, when, after having destroyed many of the enemies, he is finally stifled by the flood of poison emitted by the Midgard snake.
Thord seems to have been a contraction of the old Low German Donarad, which has vanished; but in fact Thor, though regnant in the North, was not very popular elsewhere, and almost all the names he commences are Scandinavian; though the old Spanish Goths had a king Thorismundo, Thor’s protection, the same as our Norman Tormund. They had also an Asturian bishop, Toribio, who long after was followed by a sainted namesake in Spanish South America.
Every possible change that could be rung on Thor seems to have been in use among the Northmen. The simplest masculine, Thordr, comes seventy times in the Landnama-bok, Thorer forty-seven times, after the early settler Thorer the silent, and the feminine Thora twenty-two, and she still flourishes in Iceland and Norway.
Thor had his elf, Thoralfr, his household spirit Thordis, his bear and his wolf. His bear, Thorbjorn, is fifty-one times in the Iceland roll, and was not without a she-bear, Thorbera; and the ‘Torbern,’ in Domesday, was doubtless the father of the family of Thorburn. Indeed, though Thor’s hammer was not an artistic one, he has had other artist namesakes by inheritance, namely, the Flemish Terburg, an offshoot from the northern Thorbergr, with its feminine Thorbjorg, or Thorberga, and the great Danish Thorwaldsen, the son of Thorvalldr, Thor’s power, or maybe of thunder-welder, the Thorwald of Germany, and Thorold or Turold of the Norman Conquest. Readers of Andersen may remember his story of the boy-sculptor mortified by the consequential little girl declaring that no one whose name ended in sen was worth speaking to. Thorwald, too, was one of the old Icelandic discoverers of America.
As to Thor’s wolf, Thorolf, it is contracted into Tolv in Norway, and thus may be the origin of that curious Danish superstition that at noon-day (twelve being tolv in Danish) Kong Tolv, a terrific and mysterious personage, drives by in his chariot, invisible except to maidens inadvertently left in solitude, when they are borne off by him to his domains for seven years, which pass like a single day.
Forty-two Thorarinns, as well as a Thorarna for a feminine, assisted to people Iceland, and of course Thor’s sword, spear, and kettle were there too; Thorbrandr six times over. The spear and kettle figure again in the story of Croyland Abbey, as told by Ingulf. Turgar, the little child who escaped the destruction, is no doubt Thorgeir, and it may be feared thus betrays a Norman invention; but Turcetyl, the good man who re-built it, was really Ethelstane’s chancellor, and no doubt took his name from some of the invading Danes, who called the Thorketyl or Thorkjell of the North, Thurkil or Trukill, of which we have some traces remaining in the name Thurkell. Thorkatla was the Icelandic feminine.
It is an evidence how greatly our population was leavened by the Danes, that though Thor names are very rare in Anglo-Saxon history, we have many among our surnames, such as Thurlow from Thorleik, Thor’s sport, Tunstall and Tunstan from Thurstan, the Danish Thorstein, the proper form of Thor’s stone, who is thus the ‘stainless Tunstall,’ whose ‘banner white’ waved in Flodden Field, just as long before Tostain the white had been the foremost knight at Hastings, and left his name to the northern peasantry to be confounded with Toussaint, the popular reading of All Saints' day, and thus to pass to the negro champion of Hayti, Toussaint L'Ouverture.
Thorgils, Thor’s pledge, also runs into Thurkil or Trokil, and cuts down to Troels; but coming to the Western Isles has there continued in the form of Torquil, and has been mixed up with the idea of the Latin torques, a neck chain. The Swedes call it Thyrgils, and the feminine is Thorgisla. It is Torchil in Domesday.
White Thors were Thorfinn and Thorfinna; Thorvid, or Thor’s wood, is in Denmark Truvid, Truid, Trudt, probably our Truefit. Besides these were used—
- Thorbert, Thor’s splendour (Torbertus in Domesday).
- Thorgautr, Thor the good (or Goth).
- Thorgerdur, Thor’s protection (thirty-seven in Landnama-bok).
- Thorgestur, Thor’s guest.
- Thorgrim, Thor the helmeted.
- Thorgunna, Thor’s war.
- Thorhildr, Thor’s battle-maid.
- Thorleif, Thor’s relic.
- Thormod, Thor’s mood.
- Thorhalla, Thor’s stone.
- Thorlaug, Thor’s liquor.[[110]]
[110]. Landnama-bok; Thierry, Conquête d'Angleterre; Ellis, Domesday; Munch; Mallet.
Section VI.—Baldur and Hodur.
Most beautiful of all the gods was Baldur, the fair white god, mild, beautiful, and eloquent,—beloved but fore-doomed to death. His story is well known. His mother, Frigga, vainly took an oath of all created things not to be the instrument of his fate,—she omitted the mistletoe; and Lok, the destroyer, having, in the guise of a sympathetic old woman, beguiled her into betraying her omission, placed a shaft of the magic plant in the hands of the blind god, Hodr, when all the Aasir were in sport directing their harmless weapons against the breast of their favourite. Baldur was slain, and his beautiful wife, Nanna, died of grief for his loss. Even then Hela would have relented, and have given him back, provided every living thing would have wept for him; but one stern giantess among the rocks refused her tears, and Baldur remains in the realms of death, until after all his brethren shall have perished in the last great conflict, when with them he shall be revivified in the times of the restitution of all things, so remarkably promised in these ancient myths.
As to the source of his name, authorities are not agreed. Baldr is a prince in several Teutonic languages, and the royal family of the Visigoths were the Balten. Balths, bald, bold, is also a word among them; but Grimm deduces the god’s title from bjel, or baltas, the word that is the first syllable of the Slavonic Belisarius, and thus would make the Anglian Baldœg mean bright as day. It is the word that lies at the root of bellus, pretty, whose derivations are now so universal in Romanized Europe. Others turn the name over to the Bel, or Beli, of the Kelts, or the Eastern Belus; but on the whole, the derivation Baldr, a prince, is the least unsatisfactory.
The legend seems to have been unknown to the German races, or, at least, no trace of it has been found, and the names that constantly occur beginning and ending with bald or pald, are supposed merely to mean prince, and not to refer to the god. As an end it is more common than as a beginning, and it is peculiar to the Anglian races, our own Anglo-Saxons, the inhabitants of the Low Countries, and continental Saxons. The names that have become universal all emanated from one or other of these sources.
Baldric, or prince ruler, was Anglo-Saxon; but the Swedes learned it as Balderik, the Poles as Balderyk, the French as Baudri. Baldred, an English-named saint, was bishop of Glasgow; thence, too, the early French took Baldramn, prince raven, which they made Baudrand, and confused with Baldrand, prince of the house, also Baldemar, famous prince, unless this is a confusion with Waldemar.
The most general of these was, however, Baldwine, princely friend, who was very early a feudatory of the empire in Flanders, and the name continued in his family, so as to take strong hold of the population, and to spread into the adjoining lands. Baldwin was the father of William the Conqueror’s Matilda, and the one Baldwinus before the Conquest has very considerably multiplied after it, so that to us Baldwin has all the associations of a Norman name. Its European celebrity was owing to the two knights of Lorraine and Bourg, who reigned successively at Jerusalem after the first Crusade, and left this to be considered as the appropriate Christian name in their short-lived dynasty; and again, it was borne by the unfortunate count who was thrust into the old Byzantine throne only to be demolished by the Bulgarians, or if indeed he ever returned, to be disowned as an impostor by his daughter.
| English. | French. | German. | Dutch. | Italian. |
| Baldwin | Baudouin | Balduin | Boudewijn | Baldovino |
| Baudoin | Balduino |
The Germans have Baldo, the French Baud, both contractions from either Baldwin or Balderich, and there are a good many surnames therefrom in England, France, and Germany.
Examples of Baldegisel, prince pledge, Baldbrecht, Baldemund, Baldeflede, Baldetrude, have also been found, but nowhere are any such forms prevalent.
Baldur’s wife, Nanna, probably comes from nanthjan, in Gothic, to be courageous. There are a few Frisians called Nanno, Nanne, Nonne; but it is very probable that this old goddess may have contributed to furnish some of the inherited names now all absorbed in Anne.
Baldur’s unfortunate murderer has, strange to say, many more namesakes. He was Nanna’s brother, blind, and of amazing strength, and is supposed to typify unheeding rashness and violence, in opposition to prudent valour. His name is in Gothic Hathus, in old German Hadu, and in Anglo-Saxon Headho, and is said to come from headho, an attack or fight, so that the right way to translate it in the compounds would be by fierce when it begins the name—war when it forms the conclusion.
It has a great many different forms. The old northern Hedinn is believed to be one, belonging first to a semi-fabulous sea-king of the mythic ages, who tried to elope with the Valkyr Hildur. From him the sea was poetically called, in the strange affected versification of the North, the road of Hedinn’s horses. There were eight Hedinns in the Landnama-bok, and the word sometimes occurred at the end of the name, as with Skarphedinn, the fierce but generous son of Njal, who dies singing to the last in the flame, with his faithful axe driven deep into the wall that the fire might not spoil its edge.
Tacitus mentions two chiefs whom he calls Catumer and Catualda, and who are supposed to be by interpretation Hadumar, or fierce fame, and Hadupald, or Haduwald, each of which would be fierce prince. Hadumar has lingered in southern France, where it has become Azimar, or Adhémar, the last, the well-known surname of the Grignan family. Hadubrand, fierce sword, is one of the heroes of the most ancient existing poem in Low German. Heddo is to be found as a name of some Frisians, contracted either from this, or from Hadubert, or one of the other compounds. Even ladies were named by this affix, as Haduburg, war protection; Hadulint, war serpent; Haduwig, which the old German name-writer, Luther, makes war refuge.
This last is the only usual form, owing to the saintly fame of a daughter of the Markgraf of Meranie. While one daughter, Agnes, was the victim of Philippe Auguste’s irregular marriage, the happier Haduwig married a duke of Silesia, and shared his elevation to the throne of Poland, where she evinced such piety as to be canonized; and the name she left was borne by a Polish lady in the next century, who converted her husband, the Duke of Lithuania. Thus doubly sainted, all eastern Germany delighted in it, and the French sent it to us; they calling it Hedvige; we took it as Hawoyse, and, descending into Avice, or Avis, it was at one time very common here, and is to be found in almost every old register.
| English. | French. | German. | Polish. |
| Havoise | Hedvige | Hedwig | Jadviga |
| Hawoyse | Italian. | Hedda | |
| Havoisia | Edvige | ||
| Avice | |||
| Avicia | |||
| Avis | |||
| Lusatian. | Esth. | Lett. | Hungarian. |
| Hada | Eddo | Edde | Hedviga |
| Edo |
The Spanish Goths, too, had their compounds of Hadu. The Lady Adosinda, whom Southey has placed collecting the corpses of her family in the ruins of the city destroyed by the Moors, is Haduswinth, or fierce strength; and the Portuguese Affonso is from Hadufuns. This last syllable, namely funs, means vehemence, and is, in fact, no other than our own undignified fuss; Affonso, Afonso, thus mean fierce fuss, though for more euphony, this lofty name of kings may be made into warlike impetuosity.
Section VII.—Tyr.
In Northern mythology Tyr is another son of Odin, and god of strength and victory. When, in the great fight with the powers of evil, the terrible Fenris, the wolf of the abyss, was to be bound with a fetter, slender, but which no power could break, he was only induced to stand still by Tyr’s volunteering to put his right hand into the monster’s mouth, as a pledge of the good faith of Asgard. Finding himself chained, the wolf at once closed his jaws, and bit off Tyr’s hand; nevertheless, the [Runic letter Λ] (thorn, the sound of dh), which was left-handed, like the god, and therefore his sign, was esteemed the mark of truth and treaties.
Tyr has few namesakes. Tyre and Thyra, in the North, are the only direct ones; but it sometimes finishes a word, as in the case of Angantyr, favourite of Tyr, the warrior who obtained the terrible sword, Tyrfing, forged by the dwarfs, which did, indeed, always give victory, but which would never go back into its scabbard till it had been fed with, at least, one human life. The dio, or thius, of the old Gothic and German names thus arose, such as Alathius, the Latinized Halltyr, and the like.
Niörd was god of the sea, almost equal in rank to Odin himself. He was a very ancient deity, known to the German nations as Nairthus, and probably, like Freyr, male and female. The goddess Nerthus, mentioned by Tacitus, has been supposed by Grimm to mean Niörd; but Hermann Luning makes it Törd, a wife of Odin, and one of the three titles of the earth: at any rate, out of this mention has been made a goddess—Hertha, who has not been without namesakes.
Many derivations have been suggested for his name. Finn Magnusson thought it might be cognate with the Greek νηρὸς (neros), wet; Grimm, that it might be connected with the North, though he declines to speak positively; and Hermann Luning deduces it from nairan, to join, because the sea joins the land together.
Niörd’s direct derivatives seem to be Nordhilda and Nordbert; the last fashionable in Germany, from a youth of imperial family, who was, at the end of the eleventh century, brought to serious thoughts by having his horse struck by lightning under him, when, like St. Paul, he cried out “What wouldst Thou have me to do?” He became a monk, and was afterwards archbishop of Magdeburg, and founder of the Præmonstratensian Order; and Norbert became known and used after he was canonized.
Niörd is used in the North; and thence too, perhaps, comes Norman, which was in use, both in France and England, at the time of the Conquest. It is puzzling to find in Domesday Book sixteen Normans possessing land in England before the Conquest, and only eight after it—one of whom, Norman d'Arcie, at least, was a Norman born. Afterwards, during the friendly thirteenth century, English nobles carried Norman to Scotland, where it was adopted in the Leslie family, and, like Nigel, became exclusively Scottish. The Highlanders called it Tormaid, which is considered to be really its Gaelic form, not an equivalent. The last Englishman I have found so called was Norman de Verdun, under Edward I.
The story of Niörd’s marriage is one of the wildest tales of later Norse mythology. Iduna, the wife of Bragi, god of poetry, kept the apples of gold which renewed the youth of the gods. However, Loki, having fallen into the clutches of the great frost giant, Thiassi, in the form of an eagle, only effected his release by promising to bring Iduna and her apples to Jotunheim. He beguiled her into a forest, under pretence that he had found finer apples than her own, and there Thiassi flew away with her. The gods began to grow old without their apples, and insisted that Loki should bring her back. He arrayed himself as a falcon, and, flying to Jotunheim, turned Iduna into a sparrow and flew home with her, pursued by Thiassi. The Aasir, seeing her danger, lighted a fire with chips on the walls of Asgard, which flamed up and singed Thiassi’s wings, so that he fell down among them and was slain. Afterwards, his daughter, Skadi, came to avenge his death, but was mollified by being allowed to choose a husband from the Aasir, however was only allowed the sight of the feet to select from; and thus, hoping she had taken Baldur, she obtained Niörd. Thiassi’s eyes are said to have become stars; but, as usual, the northern astronomy has been ruined by the classical, and no one knows which they are.
Bragi was followed as an Icelandic name. Its etymology is uncertain; some make it cognate with Brahma; others with braga, to shine; others with brain. Braga was poetry, and thence, from the manner of recital, noun, has formed the uncomplimentary verb, to brag, and the braggart.
Iduna, or more properly, Idhuna, Ithuna, is a myth of spring reft away by winter, who dies of the warmth of the flame of the summer gods. Her name does not seem to have been adopted in the North; but it is almost certainly the origin of Idonea, which is very common in old English pedigrees. Idonea de Camville lived under Henry III.; Idonea de Vetriponte, Vieuxpont, or Oldbridge, is cited in the curious tracts on Northern curiosities, put forth some years back in Durham, which say the name is very common; and though it might be the feminine of the Latin idoneus (fit), its absence in the Romance countries may be taken as an indication that it was a mere classicalizing of the northern goddess of the apples of youth.
The word itself is translated by Luning in the most satisfactory manner as ‘she who works incessantly,’ and by Munch, as ‘she who renovates incessantly.’ Idja is to work, unna, love, so that others make her one who loves work. The word unna, however, though derived from the verb an unna, to love, has come to mean only a woman, and as such is frequently used as a termination, as well as now and then standing alone as a female name, Unna, of whom there are three in the Landnama-bok, and several in the Saga of Burnt Njal.
Una is likewise used in both Ireland and the North; but in the former it is said to mean famine; in the North it is most probably from that word vin, win, or wine, a friend, which we shall often meet with again, and which lies most likely at the root of unna.
The word idja, to work, the first syllable of Iduna’s name, formed deisi, activity, and thence the person who ought to be active, the old German itis, and Anglo-Saxon ides, a woman, in the North, deis or dis. The idea of the active sprite was divided between womankind and certain household spirits, like the Roman genii, only feminine and possibly another name for the Nornir, as each man had his own, and they were sometimes visible as animals suiting with the character of their protégés: powerful chiefs had bears or bulls, crafty ones foxes; and even on the introduction of Christianity, faith in the Disir was not abandoned, though there were no more sacrifices at their Disir salen, or temples. Sometimes a family would have various disir at war with one another, some for the old faith, some for the new. While Iceland was still in suspense between heathenism and Christianity, a young chieftain one night heard three knocks at his door, and despite the warnings of a seer, went forth to see the cause. He beheld nine women in black riding from the North, and nine from the South, the disir of his family, the black for heathendom, the white for Christianity. The black ones, knowing that they must vanish from the land, seized his life as their last tribute, and wounded him so that he returned a dying man to tell his tale. Probably these disir are either the cause or the effect of those strange phantoms which, whether of doves, dogs, heads, children, or women, portend death in certain families. They may likewise account for some of the family bearings in the form of animals.
Disa is a Norwegian and Icelandic name, now nearly disused: it is also a very frequent termination, such as in Thordis, Alfdis, Freydis, &c., and it may be most fitly translated as the sprite giving the idea of the guardian protecting spirit that woman should be. In the German names it appears as the termination itis or idis, as Adelidis, one that appears at first sight like a mere Latinism.[[111]]
Section VIII.—Heimdall.
The porter of Valhall is Heimdall, the son of nine sisters, who watches at the further end of the rainbow-bridge Bifrost to guard the Æsir from the giants. He sleeps more lightly than a bird, can see a hundred leagues by day or night, and can hear the grass growing in the fields, and the wool on the sheep’s backs. He bears in one hand a sword, in the other a trumpet, the sound of which resounds throughout the universe.
When the powers of evil break loose, Heimdall will rouse the gods to their last conflict by a blast of his trumpet, and in the struggle will kill and be killed by Loki.
His name is explained by heim, home, and dallr, powerful. The latter half is in Anglo-Saxon deall, in old High German tello, and in the old Norse dallr, whence Dalla is found as a name in the Landnama-bok.
Heim is in Ulfilas both a field and a village, and the Anglo-Saxons use the word dhăm for an enclosure, and hām for a village; ham in a similar manner, as is still shown in the diminutive, hamlet, for a small village, as well as in the ham that concludes many local names. At the same time, the word, slightly altered, assumed that closer, dearer, warmer sense which is expressed by the terms, heim, hiemme, hjem, hame, and home, in all the faithful-hearted Teutonic race, yet which is so little comprehended by our southern relatives, that they absolutely have no power of expressing such an idea as “It’s hame, and it’s hame, and it’s hame.”
Even in their heathenism “true to the kindred points of heaven and home,” the guardian of the dwelling of the brave spirits of the dead was made by the Northmen no grim Cerberus nor gloomy Charon, but the Home ruler.
And though Heimdall nowhere occurs as a name, yet the old German Heimirich is almost identical with it; though it should be observed that heim is a commencement peculiar to the Germans; we never find a name with this first syllable originating either with the Northmen or the English.
Where Heimirich first began does not appear, but it sprung into fame with the Saxon emperor called the Fowler, and his descendant won the honours of a saint, whence this became a special favourite in Germany, where it was borne by six emperors, by princes innumerable, and by so many others that the contraction Heintz had already passed to cats when Reinecke Fuchs was written.
It is from the endearment, Heinz, that, the handsome and unfortunate son of Frederick II, who, after his brief royalty in Sardinia, spent the rest of his life in a Genoese prison, was known to Italy as Enzio, and to history as Enzius.
From the Kaisers, the third Capetian king of France was christened Henri, a form always frequent there, though only four times on the throne. Its popularity culminated during the religious wars, when Henri de Valois, Henri de Bourbon, and Henri de Guise were fighting the war of the three Henris; but in spite of the French love and pride in le grand monarque, the growing devotion to St. Louis, from whom the Bourbon rights to the throne were derived, set Henri aside from being the royal name, until the birth of him whom legitimists still call Henri V.
There are but three instances of ‘Henricus,’ even after the Conquest, in Domesday; and it must have been from the reigning French monarch that William the Conqueror took Henry for his youngest son, from whom the first Plantagenet King received and transmitted it to his ungracious son, his feeble grandson, and through him to the elder House of Lancaster, then to the younger, who for three generations wore it on the throne, and for whose sake it was revived in the House of Tudor. Its right native shape is Harry; the other form is only an imitation of French spelling. It was ‘Harry of Winchester’ who cried out for help at Evesham; Harry of Bolingbroke who rode triumphant into London, and who died worn out in the Jerusalem chamber; Harry Hotspur whose spur was cold at Shrewsbury; Harry of Monmouth who was Hal in his haunts at Eastcheap, and jested with Fluellen on the eve of Agincourt; Harry of Windsor who foretold the exaltation of Harry Tudor when “Richmond was a little peevish boy,” and Harry VIII., or bluff King Hal, who lives in the popular mind as an English Blue Beard; perhaps connected in some cases with the popular soubriquet of the devil.
An early Swedish bishop bore the name, and so did a bishop of Iceland before the twelfth century; but these must have been foreigners, for there are no other instances in the North in early times, though the general fusion of European names brought in Hendrik, to the loss of the native Heidrick, just as Heinrich seems to have in Germany destroyed an independent Haginrich.
| English. | French. | Spanish. | Italian. |
| Henry | Henri | Enrique | Enrico |
| Harry | Henriot | Arrigo | |
| Hal | Breton. | Portuguese. | Enzio |
| Halkin | Hery | Enrique | Arriguccio |
| Hawkin | Arrigozzo | ||
| Guccio | |||
| German. | Dutch. | Danish. | Frisian. |
| Heimirich | Hendrik | Hendrik | Enrik |
| Heinrich | Hendricus | Swedish. | Polish. |
| Hein | Heintje | Henrik | Henryk |
| Heine | |||
| Heinz | |||
| Heinecke | |||
| Henke | |||
| Henning | |||
| Bohemian. | Lett. | Lithuanian. | |
| Jindrich | Indrikis | Endrikis | |
| Indes | Endruttis | ||
| Induls | |||
| FEMININE. | |||
| English. | French. | Spanish. | Swedish. |
| Henrietta | Henriette | Enriqueta | Henrika |
| Harriet | Italian. | Portuguese. | German. |
| Harriot | Enrichetta | Henriqueta | Henriette |
| Harty | Jette | ||
| Hatty | |||
| Etta | |||
| Hetty | |||
The founder of the Portuguese kingdom was a Henri from Burgundy; but the name did not greatly flourish in the Peninsula till Enrique of Trastamare climbed to the Castilian throne, and his namesakes, alternating with Juan, threw out the old national Alfonso and Fernando.
On the whole this is one of the most universal of Teutonic names, and one of the most English in use, although not Anglian in origin. The feminine seems to have been invented in the sixteenth century, probably in France, for Henriet Stuart appears in the House of Stuart d'Aubigné in 1588, and there were some Henriettes to match the Henris at the court of Catherine de Medicis. England received the name from the daughter of Henri IV., Henriette Marie, whom the Prayer Book called Queen Mary, though her godchildren were always Henrietta, so Latinized by their pedigrees, though in real life they went by the queen’s French appellation, as well as English lips could frame it, so that Hawyot was formerly the universal pronunciation of Harriet, and is still occasionally used.
Heimo, or Hamo, is another old German form, becoming in French Hamon, Haymon, Aymon; and Amone in Italian. Les Quatre Filz Aymon were notable freebooters in Karling romance, and in Italy were i Quattro Figli d'Amone. Early Norman times gave us Hamo, Hamelin, and Fitzaymon; but except for an occasional Hamlyn in an old pedigree, they have disappeared.
Germany had Heimrod, Heimbert, and Heimfred; but these are not easy to disentangle from the derivatives of the word hun, which are much more in use.[[112]]
[111]. Grimm; Luning; Munter; Munch; Blackwell, Mallet; Ellis, Domesday; Dugdale.
[112]. Michaelis; Pott; Edda.
Section IX.—Will.
This section has thus been headed because the Will was one of the ideas most strongly expressed in various forms in the religion of the high-spirited North.
The word to will is of all tongues; the Greek βουλή, Latin velle or volo, Gothic viljan, Keltic iouli, all show a common origin, and every Teuton language has the derivatives of will, just as the Romance have of volo.
But it is the Teuton who brings the Will into his mythology. When the creation began, the cow Audumbla licked out of the stones a man named Bur, who was the grandfather of the three primeval gods, Odin, Wili, and Vê, the All-pervading, the Will, the Holy; and it was these who together animated the first human pair. We hear no more of Vili or Hœmir, as he is also called after he thus infused feeling and will into the first man; but we meet the word will again forming valjan, to choose, velja in the North.
Thence the home where Odin welcomed his brave descendants was Valhall, the hall of the chosen; and the maidens who chose the happy who were there to dwell, were the Valkyrier, or Walcyrge, the last syllable from kjöra, or curen, to choose, the word whence an electoral prince is called in German, Kürfurst. But the passport to the hall of the chosen was a glorious death on the battle-field; and thus it was that val, vali, wali, belonged to the carnage of the fight, since slaughter did but seal the marks of the Valkyr upon the brave, whose spirits were passing over the rainbow-arch, while the comets marked the course of the chariot which glanced across the sky with weapons forged for their sport in battle and chase.
So the Hall of the Chosen became the Hall of Carnage, the abode of the slain; and it is remarkable that no Christian writer transfers the term to Paradise, although the epithet Schildburg, the castle of shields, is once applied to Heaven as the home of the victors. Indeed, Valhall was not eternal; the warrior there admitted had yet to fight his last fight by Odin’s side, perish with him and his sons, and share with them the renovation of the universe. So deeply interwoven in the ideas of the North was a violent death with the hope of bliss, that crags in Norway affording scope for a desperate leap, were called the vestibule of Valhall, and the preference for a death on the battle-field lingered into Christian days, so that not only did fierce Earl Siward bemoan his fate in dying of sickness, albeit he rose upon his feet to draw his last breath, but even the Chevalier Bayard mourned angrily over the fever that had nearly caused him to pass away like a sick girl in his bed.
Well then might the Valkyrier be the favoured messengers of Odin, sent forth to select the champions who should become the guests of their mighty forefather, himself called Valfreyr, or Slaughter Lord. They hovered over the camp in armour with swan wings, marked those who were to fall, and wove the web of slaughter ere the battle began. Their number varies in different sagas, and so do their names, although Hildur is always the chief. Their last appearance was when the islander of Caithness beheld the twelve weaving their grisly web in a loom of lances, the weights of men’s heads, on the eve of the Good Friday of the battle of Clontarf, between King Sigtrygg and Brian Boromhe, singing the weird song that Gray translated long before Teutonic antiquities were revived:
“Horror covers all the heath,
Clouds of carnage blot the sun:
Sisters, weave the web of death;
Sisters, cease, the work is done.”
The work done, the web was torn in sunder, and divided between the Valkyrier, who flew off, half to the North, half to the South, denoting the rending of the ancient faith.
In fact, in later sagas, the Valkyrier lose their wild mystery and divinity, and fall into mere magic maidens, sometimes with extraordinary strength, sometimes with swan wings, and, at the very last gasp of the supernatural, with goose feet, which at their next step become merely large feet. The mother of Charlemagne absolutely makes the transition from Bertha the goose-footed, to Berthe aux grands pieds.
To this source probably may be referred Wala or wise woman, the inspired priestess, also called in ancient German the Velleda. Cæsar tells us that the matrons among the Germans cast lots, and prophesied the issue of battle, and thus Wala may have been the wise or inspired woman. The great prophetic song of the fate of the Aasir is Voluspa, either the wise woman’s spae, or the inspired spae or prophecy; for vola or volur means inspired in ancient German (no doubt from the wala or prophetess), and by a very small transition, mad. Probably the Kelts borrowed it, for fol was inspired or mad; and Folia of Ariminium is mentioned by Horace as a magician. Our fool is thus traceable to vola, inspired, but probably through the Keltic and French medium.
Vili, though his myths have been forgotten, still stands as a great ancestor. From him in Germany, either directly or through a renewal of him as a forefather, must have been named the great race of the Billingen, the first dynasty of the continental Sachsen, who gave emperors to Germany.
Billing is the son of Wili, or Will; and so again is, in the North, Vilkin, the father of the famous smith Volundr, whose name is probably from this original root, will or mind, though its immediate source is thought to be vel, art or cunning, cognate with our own guile, and probably the participle of a lost verb, to devise. Some connect it with Vulcan, from the name and character of Volundr. He was the son of a sea maiden, and of Vidja the Vilkin; and he and his two brothers each married a Valkyr, who, at the end of a stated period, had to be absent for nine years, giving to each husband magic gifts and precious stones that dimmed when disaster was about to befall them. Volundr was the fortunate brother of the three, and was the mighty smith to whom all good weapons are ascribed. From him the early part of the Norse poem ending with the slaying of Fafner is called the Volsunga Saga, as, from his father, the Danish version is the Wilkina Saga; for the hero himself is his descendant, a Wælsing, or Vilking, and fights with his redoubted weapons. Weland again makes the impenetrable corslet of Beowulf, “the twisted breastnet which protected his life against point and edge;” he is the Wiolent, Velint, or Wieland of Germany, and Galando of Italy, the Galant of France, who forged their Joyeuse, the sword of Charlemagne, and Cortana, that of Ogier. A skilful Weland is mentioned in an old Anglo-Saxon MS. found at Exeter, and in King Alfred’s translation of Boëthius he renders the line,
“Ubi nunc fidelis ossa Fabricii jacent?”
(meaning, of course, an artificer, the sense of the name,) “Where are now the bones of the wise Weland, the goldsmith who was most famed?” A workman is still called in Iceland, Völundrinjarn, and a labyrinth is Volundrhus. This famous armourer took possession of a Druidical cromlech in the midst of the battle-grounds between the Danes and Saxons on the Berkshire downs, and there drove his shadowy trade as Wayland Smith, close to King Alfred’s own birthplace, Wantage. He was spared from oblivion by being embalmed in Kenilworth, where the only blunder is in making Lancelot Wayland the real name of the estimable mountebank, who personated the mythical smith. Though Wieland is a German surname, the coincidence of an English Wayland was too much for probability; and, in fact, Scott does not seem to have known how very ancient Wayland Smith had really been.
Names in Wal are chiefly Northern, those in Wil mostly Saxon. Ullr, or Ull, another Northern form, has been much used in Iceland; and among the Northern isles of Scotland, where it may be remembered that Ulla Troil was the real name of Norna. Ullr was the stepson of Thor, son of Sif, and renowned as a great bow-bearer.
Wil is almost always a commencement. The Frank queen Bilichilde was, of course, Willihilda, resolute battle. Our earnest but turbulent Wilfrith, the Yorkshire bishop, hardly deserved to be called resolute peace; but as patron of Ripon, his name has continued in the North, Wilfroy being very frequent in older registers in the neighbourhood of Ripon, though of late fashion has adopted it in the form of Wilfred.
In the seventh century, we sent Germany two missionaries with this prefix, Willibrord and Willihold; also Willibald, resolute prince, went on pilgrimage with his father, St. Richard of Wessex, in 721, and finished his career as bishop of Aichstadt, leaving his name to take root in various forms.
| English. | French. | Portuguese. | Dutch. | Bavarian. |
| Willibald | Guillibaud | Guilbaldo | Willebald | Willibald |
| Wibald | Vilibaldo | Waldl | ||
| Waltl |
Native to Germany is Williburg, which has a northern fac-simile Vilbjorg, and Vilgerd, the same in meaning, resolute protection; Willrich, resolute ruler; Willehad, resolute violence; Willeram, resolute raven; Willihard, reduplicating firmness; Willigis, willing pledge, or pledge of the will; Willimar, resolute fame, making our surname Wilmer. Williheri, resolute warrior, is the source of the German Willer, the English Weller, the French Villiers and Villars, which, with their aristocratic sound, betray little of their kindred to Sam Weller.
Where the most popular of all the Wills was invented it is not easy to discover, but Germany is its most likely region, since helm is a specially Germanic termination, and the Billings favoured the commencement; besides which the pronunciation in that language leaves the words their natural meanings, Will-helm, resolute helmet, or, perhaps, helmet of resolution. The native northern name would be Vilhjalm, but this is never used, it being only imported bodily as Wilhelm into Denmark from Germany, just as our Ethelbert is superseded by Albert.
The cause of its adoption in Normandy cannot have been one of the eight saints in the Roman calendar who bear it; for not one is anterior to the son of Rollo, the second Duke of Normandy, from whom William descended to the Conqueror, and became one of the most national of English names.
| English. | Welsh. | Breton. | French. |
| William | Guillim | Guillern | Guillaume |
| Will | Guillarn | Guillemot | |
| Willie | |||
| Bill | |||
| Wilkin | |||
| Old French. | Spanish. | Portuguese. | Italian. |
| Willelme | Guillermo | Guilhermo | Guglielmo |
| Willeaulme | Guillen | ||
| German. | Dutch. | Swiss. | Frisian. |
| Wilhelm | Willem | Wilhelm | Willo |
| Wilm | Wim | Wille | |
| Polish. | Bohemian. | Lett. | Greek. |
| Vilhelm | Vilem | Willums | Goulielmos |
| Wille | Bilelmos | ||
| FEMININE. | |||
| English. | French. | Spanish. | Italian. |
| Wilhelmina | Guillerume | Guillemma | Guglielma |
| Wilmett | Guillemette | Portuguese. | Swedish. |
| Wilmot | Minette | Guilhermma | Vilhelmine |
| Mina | Mimi | ||
| Minella | Guillette | ||
| German. | Swiss. | Lithuanian. | Dutch. |
| Wilhelmine | Mimmoli | Myne | Willemyn |
| Helmine | Mimmeli | Mynette | Willempje |
| Mine | Polish. | ||
| Minchen | Minka | ||
| Minna | |||
Old Camden’s account of it is too quaint not to be here inserted: “William, gerne. For sweeter sound drawn from Wilhelm[Wilhelm], which is interpreted by Luther much defence, or defence to many; as Wiliwald, ruling many; Wildred, much reverent fear, or awful; Wilfred, much peace; Wilibert, much brightness. So the French, that cannot pronounce W, have turned it into Philli, as Philibert for Wilibert, much brightnesse. Many names wherein we have Will seem translated from the Greek names composed of πολύς; as Polydamas, Polybius, Polyxenes, &c. Helm yet remained with us, and Villi, Willi, and Billi yet with the German for many. Others term William willing defender, and so it answereth the Roman Titus, if it come from tuendo, as some learned will have it. The Italians that liked the name but could not pronounce the W, if we may believe Gesner, turned it into Galeazzo, retaining the sense in part for helm; but the Italians report that Galeazzo, the first viscount of Millain, was so called for the many cocks that krew lustily at his birth. This name hath been most common in England since William the Conqueror, insomuch that on a festival day in the court of King Henry II., when Sir William St. John and Sir William Fitzhamon, especial officers, had commanded that none but the name of William should dine with them in the great chamber, they were accompanied with one hundred and twenty Williams, all knights, as Robert Montensis recordeth, anno 1173.”
Camden’s authority is not Martin Luther, but one Mr. Luther Dasipodius, by whom he sets great store, and whose ‘German villi or billi, many,’ must have been the word now called viel. Verstegan’s history of William is still droller, namely, that any German who killed a Roman assumed the golden head-piece of the slain, and was thence called Gildhelm, which would of course be inconsistent with the old German form of Wilihelm. Be it observed that our surname Wilmot descends from a name to be found in German as Wilmod, resolute mood; but the feminine Wilmett, which is to be found continually in old Devon and Cornwall registers, is no doubt the same as the old French Guillemette, and it is a pity it has been discarded for the cumbrous German Wilhelmina, or the Williamina that is of no language at all.
Camden is probably right in taking Filiberto from Wiliberaht, or Wilibert, resolute splendour, though Germans refer it to viel, the same as our full, and the Greek polys. The founder of the name in the sixth century was a Frank Willibert, who founded the abbey of Jumièges, which the Normans first desolated and then restored, their Frenchified tongues bringing the patron’s name to England as Fulbert, which is still occasionally found in old families. The ninth grand master of St. John meantime bore the French form, which historians wrote as Philibert; and the old counts of Savoy alternated Filiberto with Amê, until they blossomed out into double names, as Vittore Amadeo or Filiberto Emanuele.
The Val of choice, or slaughter, is not, Professor Munch tells us, to be confounded with another Val, taken from the word waleh, or waalh, a stranger, which, as has been already said, named Wales. Our own Waltheof, being spelt in his native tongue Wealtheof, thus removes himself and an Icelandic Valtheof from being slaughter-thieves to being foreign-thieves; a change not much for the better. There were fierce Danish ancestors, however, to account for this predatory appellation lighting upon the earl, whom the Conqueror executed at Winchester, and the English revered as a saint; then from him it descended to his grandson, Waltheof de St. Lys, the stepson of St. David of Scotland, companion of the excellent prince Henry, and, finally, abbot of Melross, where he was canonized as St. Walthenius, or Walen, and thus accounts for the surname of Wathen.
Walmer is, in old German, Walahmar, and thus shows itself to be foreign fame; Walager is also foreign war, and became Valgeir in the North, Gaucher in France; and thence, too, by corruption, Valgard, the evil genius of the Njal Saga.
Walaraban, or Walram, seems appropriate as slaughter-raven, but is uncertain. The French made it Gauteran; and in the form of Waleran it was used in the House of Luxembourg, Counts of St. Pol; it is Galerano in Italy.
Walabert, a monk who died at Luxen, in 625, is the same as the northern Valbjart; and another Valbert, or Vaubert, as he is called in France, had a daughter Valtrud, canonized as St. Vautrude, or Vaudru. From Walamund, the French take Valmont; and Walarik, an Auvergne hermit, was Latinized as Valaricus, and Frenchified into St. Valery, a territorial surname.
The Gothic king Wallia is left in possession of the battle-field; and so are the northern Valdis and Valbiorg, both thorough Valkyr names, not yet disused. Valtrude, an early saint, must certainly be named from a slaughter-maiden. So probably was Walburh, slaughter-pledge, one of the English missionary ladies employed by St. Boniface in Mainz. She was a very popular saint, and is called Valpurgis, Vaubone, Vaubourg. Her English church is Wembury, in Devon. Part of her relics were translated from Eichstadt to Furnes, near Ostend, in 1109, on the 1st of May, when one of her festivals is kept. Then is supposed to follow the Valpurgis Nacht, the Witches' Sabbath, on the Brocken. Surely this strange connection with the saintly abbess must be due to some old observance in honour of a Valkyr Valburg. Valasquita, an old name found among the ladies of the Asturias, Navarre, and Biscay, was probably from this source.[[113]]
[113]. Junius; Grimm; Luning; Blackwell, Mallet; Lappenberg; Dasent; Munter; Alban Butler; Camden; Verstegann; Pott; Köppen; Michaelis; Howitt, Literature of the North.
Section X.—Hilda.
Chief among the Valkyrier was Hildur, Hild, or Hiltia, who is never wanting in any enumeration of these warlike spirits. The word, in its original sense, means battle, and has thus attached itself to the principal war-maiden; nay, it has passed from her to be a poetical term for any maiden, and is one of the very commonest terminations to feminine names throughout the Teutonic world, and is likewise often found at the beginning of men’s names, predominating perhaps in Germany.
Alone, it was only used in the North and in England, where the Deiran princess Hildur became the holy abbess Hilda of Whitby, succeeding St. Begga, and leaving a reputation for sanctity enhanced, by the sight of
“The very form of Hilda fair
Hovering upon the sunny air;”
a vision which, though Clara de Clare could not see it, is to be beheld under certain conditions of light, in the windows of Whitby church to the present day; as well as the ammonites, believed, as usual, to have been serpents turned to stone at the prayer of the saint. In honour of her, Hilda is still used as a name about Whitby.
The mother of Rolf Gangr, progenitress of our royalty, who vainly besought Harald Harfagre not to banish her sons from Norway, was named Hildr; and the name still survives in Scandinavia and Iceland, where the Landnama-bok shows it to have been very plentiful, seventeen ladies being recorded as bearing it. There, too, occurs Hildiridur, battle hastener, a thorough Valkyr name, but not very suitable to Fouqué’s sweet Lady Minnetröst, of the moonlight brown eyes.
Hildelildis, Battle Spirit, is an Anglo-Norman lady’s name.
The true Frank form of the aspirate was, however, exceedingly harsh, amounting to the Greek χ, and therefore, usually set down in its transitions through Latin and French as a ch. So we meet, among the Meerwings, with Childebert, who by translation is Hildebert, battle-splendour, and Childebrand, or battle-sword.
These two last names, in their Low German form of Hiltibrant and Hiltibraht, occur again in the old poem, already referred to, of Hiltibrant and Hadubrant, both meaning battle-swords, which goes through a dispute about Hadubrand’s father, and, finally, leaves them in the middle of a single combat.
Hildebrand is, as we know from old German and Danish poems, the companion and friend of Dietrich of Bern. He had, like some hero in every cycle of story, married and deserted a young wife; and after assisting his master in many adventures, and much dragon killing, and being the sole survivor of all Dietrich’s men in the great massacre of the Nibelung, he encountered, without knowing him, his young son, Alebrand. In a single combat, where both do their devoir, the old knight is wounded, the younger overthrown. Then they discover each other, by the tokens that Hildebrand had left with the mother, and
“Up rose the youthful Alebrand,
And into Bern they ride;
What bears he on his helmet?
A little cross of gold.
And what on his right hand bears he?
His dearest father old.”
So, recommended by fame, Hildebrand continued a knightly name in England and Germany for many ages, and belonged to that battle-sword of the Church, who, on his election to the papacy, was called Gregory VII., though we still continue to think of him as Pope Hildebrand; and the eccentric Dr. Wolff tells us that one of the dreams of his youth was to wear the tiara by the name of Hildebrand! In Italy, pronunciation turned it into Aldobrando, then into Aldrovando, and then Latin made Aldrovandus.
Hildegunnr, battle-maid of war, was another northern name, and is the same as the German Hildegund, which was rather a favourite. It is Aldegonde in the Cambrai register, and the territorial surname of St. Aldegonde is memorable in the revolt of the Low Countries. Hildegard, in honour of an abbess in the Palatinate, who died in 1004, is still a very common name among German ladies, and going to Denmark, has been corrupted into Ollegaard. It is exactly the same in meaning with the northern Hildebjorg. So again are Hildewig and Hildegar, and among the Gothic queens of Spain is found Hilduara, or battle prudence.
St. Hiltrude of Liessies, revered in Poitou and Hainault, unites two Valkyr titles—Hildur and Thrudr; for Thrûdr is generally enumerated among the Valkyr. The word once meant, in the North, fortitude, or firmness, and is possibly connected with truth; but in all the Teuton languages it signifies maiden, or virgin. Perhaps, in connection with the Valkyrer, Hildur might have been the patroness of courage, and Thrudr of fortitude; but, unfortunately, perhaps from the spells used by the women in soothsaying before a battle, Thrudr sank down from its high estate, and drude, or drut, means a witch, and in German, also, an evil spirit. Thrudvangr, or Constancy’s abode, was one of the names of Valhall. Thrud, trud, tru, is, in Scandinavia and Germany, as favourite a feminine termination as Hilda, and, no doubt, with the same meaning, though its owners would fain translate it by truth; but it cannot be brought nearer than constancy, or fortitude. Sometimes it stands alone. Drot, as it has become by pronunciation, figures in the Heimskringla; and the Danes must have brought it to England, for in Bishop-Middleham, in the county of Durham, we meet, in 1683, with Troth Bradshau, who is again Trouth, or Troath, in the old spelling. Trott also several times occurs; and we are thus led to the conclusion that the dear old Dame Trot of the nursery bears the respected name of the Valkyr of fortitude. Truth is, perhaps, the same, originally coaxed by Puritan invention.
Cyndrida, or Quendrida, as the histories call her, the wife of Offa, is suspected by Mr. Kemble to have been mixed up with her namesake, Thrudr, the Valkyr. She was said to be a Frankish princess, who came floating over the waters, having been exposed in a boat for some unknown crime. Her beauty fascinated Offa, king of Mercia; he married her, and she was the only old English queen who caused her image to be stamped on her coins. She treacherously murdered her son-in-law, and was put to death by being thrown down a well. Some part of this is history; other parts are thought to be taken from an Anglian myth of an elder fabulous Offa, whose wife was almost certainly a Valkyr, and, on her marriage, lost her supernatural strength. Cyne, or Cwen, a woman, only appears again with Cwenburh, another Saxon queen, and may have been merely an affix.
Other German masculine forms are Hildeman, or Hilman; Hildemund, or Hilmund; Hildewart—in Friesland, Hilwert; Hildefrid, or Hilfrid; Hildebold; Hilding; Hildrad, the Hildert, or Hillert, of Friesland; Hilram, the contraction of Hilda’s raven.
Gothic Spain coined, however, the most noted form of the name when Hildefuns, or battle vehemence, came on the Latin lips of her people to be Ildefonso, or Illefonso, as the great bishop of Toledo, of the seventh century, was called. Then, shortening into Alfonso, and again into Alonzo, the same came to the second gallant king of the Asturias, husband of Pelayo’s daughter, and became the most national of all the Peninsular names, belonging to eleven Castillian kings and nine Aragonese, and to the present king of Spain; but never passing beyond the Peninsula as a royal name, save to the Aragonese dynasty in Sicily and Naples. In England we nearly had it, for one of the sons of Edward I. and the Castillian Eleanor was so baptized; but his early death saved our lips from the necessity of framing themselves to its southern flow. Alphonse has been a favourite French name. The Portuguese Affonso, though often used as its equivalent, is Hadufuns, very similar in meaning, but rather meaning war vehemence than battle vehemence. The feminine is the Spanish Alfonsina, and the French Alphonsine.[[114]]
| English. | German. | French. | Spanish. | Italian. |
| Alphonso | Alfons | Alphonse | Ildefonso | Alfonso |
| Alonzo | Alfonso | |||
| Alonso |
[114]. Grimm; Luning; Munter; Blackwell, Mallet; Munch; Landnama-bok; White, Walking Tour; Roscoe, Int. to Boiardo; Thierry, Récits des Temps Merovingiens; Weber and Jamieson, Northern Romance; Michaelis; Pott; Surtees; Butler.
Section XI.—Ve.
The third deity who, with Odin and Wili, gave life to man, was Ve, who bestowed blood and colour.
Ve is thought to be connected with the Persian word veh, pure, and to lie at the root of veihan, to consecrate, in Mæso-Gothic; weihan, in German; whence Christmas is Weihnacht, holy night.
Ve was the god in ancient German, vear the plural for gods; but, moreover, ve, as a plural, meant sacred regions, and these, among the Teutons, were groves; wih, a grove in old German, a temple in old Saxon. Thence the northern vid, German wald, English wood, all passing from the sense of the consecrated forest to be merely the trees, and, in our language, the actual timber of which they are composed.
Ve appears no more; but Vidar (Vithar), a son of Odin, explained by Luning to signify the inexhaustible force of nature, is, in the final conflict, to set his foot on the Fenris wolf, and rend him asunder, and with Vali, the chosen, to pass unscathed through fire and flood, and behold the renovation of all things.
Ve and Vid do their part in names. Vadi, Wade, or Wato, is a giant ancestor in the Vilkinga Saga; and the father of Volundr is, in the North, Vidja or Vudga; in Germany, Wittege or Wittich, a name mentioned by Jornandes as Vidigoja. The son of Volundr also bears the same name, Vedja or Wilken, and kills the giant Etgeir, called in the Danish ballad, Langbeen Riser, or long-legged giant. The grave and the oven of the giant are still shown in Zeeland.
It is the Vitiges whom the Byzantine writers mention among their Gothic foes in Italy, and the Vitiza of the latter Visigoths in Spain, and may fairly be rendered a dweller in a wood, though, in effect, it conveyed the sense of consecration.
Thence, too, the Widukind, or Witukind, of Saxony, the fierce old chieftain subdued by Charlemagne, whose name Scott gave to old ‘Witikind, the waster,’ but erroneously, for a Dane would have begun his name with Ved. Before comparison had cleared up the history of names, Witikind used, however, to be translated white child.
Germany has many of such grove names, the forest wolf and raven, as Witolf and Witram; the forest prince, as Witrich, and his fame as Witmar; also Witpald, Witperaht, and Witheri, the like of which last is found in Domesday Book before the Conquest, as Wither, in company with Witlac, Witgar, and Wit, and Witgils is high up in the Anglo-Saxon genealogy.
It is tempting to refer such names as these to wit and wise, both from vidjan, to know, and to think of the vedas; but the wood and its spirit of consecration is the real source of all these, as of Vebiorn, Vebrandr, Vedis, Vedornn, Vegeir, Velaug, Vemundr, Vedny, Vedhelm, Vedhild, Vestan, all names of the North. Verena, the gentle mother of Sintram, may, perhaps, be meant for Vedrun, which would mean sacred wisdom, or for Vedrid, sacred eagerness; just as Sigrid has formed Siri and Serena.
The only cases where wise or vit has produced a name, were Vitgeir of Iceland, who received that prefix for his magic powers, and Robert d'Hauteville, surnamed Guiscard, wise heart, or wizard, the Norman conqueror of Apulia, from whose soubriquet Guiscard was afterwards used as a name in France, whence Sir Guiscard d'Angle appears in Froissart.
Ve, or verr, is common at the end of northern names, as in Raadve or Randverr, and stood as vih at the end of the old Frankish names, where it is apt to get confused with wig, war. Vid, the forest or tree, is a favourate Norsk termination, apt to be taken for hvit, white.[[115]]
[115]. Blackwell; Grimm; Munch; Domesday Book; Landnama-bok; Le Beau; Mariane; Weber and Jamieson, Northern Romance.
Section XII.—Gerda.
Freyr’s beautiful wife, whose loveliness was reflected by land and sea, was Gerda, a word coming from gerdhi or gerthi, to gird round, and thus denoting the enclosed cornfield, the emblem of peace and blessing.
And, on the other hand, gerd was sometimes poetically used for the entire girding or harness of a warrior prepared for battle, and in both these senses, as well as of the dedication to the goddess, Gerdur was a favourite feminine in the North; and Gerda has still continued in use in Norway and Iceland, besides supplying a great many terminations, chiefly to Germany, in Ermengard, Hildegard, &c.
Its original source is exceedingly old, and conveys the idea of turning round, as in γῦρος (gyros), curvus, &c., and all their derivatives in the classical languages.
In the northern tongues arose gjorde (Nor.), gyrden (A. S.), whence all the varieties of girth and gird. Thence came the Danish Gyrthr, which, when borne by the best and most faithful of the sons of Earl Godwin, was rendered into modern English as Gurth, and thus was bestowed by Scott upon the honest thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood. This name, then, properly means the warrior girt for battle.
Gard is part of a man’s name in the North; e.g., Gardar, who was the Swede who first sailed round Iceland, came from Gardhar, house-warrior, or perhaps patriot; Gardmund and Gardbrand, one the hand, another the sword of the country, are also found; but, in general, this is a termination, as with Finngard, Thorgard, Valgard.
Other names of men ending with gerd are generally corruptions of words from geir.[[116]]
Section XIII.—Œgir.
When the Aasir took up their abode in Asgard, they there found the Jotun, or giants, of whom the chief was Fornioti, a word meaning the aged. He had three sons, Hler, Logi, and Kari, ruling sea, flame, and wind. After a long contest they seem to have been promoted to the privileges of Aasir, and remained allies, if not friends, till the treason of Logi or Loki brought about the death of Baldur, after which the destroyer Loki and his children, the Fenris wolf (the wolf of the fen or abyss), Hel, or death, and the Midgard serpent, were bound till the last outbreak shall take place.
Kari and Hler appear to have retained their privileges as gods or demi-gods of wind and wave. Kari is called Fasolt in Germany, but his name of Kaari or Kari has continued in use in Norway and Iceland, and belonged to the generous avenger of Burnt Njal and his sons.
Hler is evidently the Keltic Lyr, but on his promotion to rank with the Aasir, he took the northern name of Agir, Ygg, or Œgir. He was on very friendly terms with the Aasir, gave them banquets, visited them at Asgard, and heard Bragi tell stories of their deeds; but his usual occupation was to raise his hoary head above the water when he meant evil to vessels; and when he raised storms, his wife Ran (from rœina, to spoil,) sat fishing for sailors, whose spirits she imprisoned like a water Hela, so that drowned men were said to be gone to Ran, before Davy Jones superseded her in nautical language. His daughter, Unna, was the wave rising as in human shape. All these images evidently arose from the wild, heaped, confused masses of waves in the North Sea, which, instead of forming the even sweep of ridge and furrow of the Atlantic, are in tumbling masses, suggesting the human form. Unna is said to come from the same root as unda, the Latin wave; but the word also means love, and thence a woman, and there is a curious similitude in it to Aine, the granddaughter of Lyr, in Irish legend. In Germany, Œgir was Ecke, but was reduced to fresh water and rivers.
The root of the name of Œgir is, in fact, og or uok, the same as our awe. Thence come many words, such as the Frank ega, cunning; the Saxon ege, fear; also the verb eggan, to incite, still common in the North; while we have to egg on.
It has been extremely fertile in names, in many different forms, the simplest being the Frank Ega, a maire du palais. Our own two kings, Ecgfrith and Ecgberht, are probably thus derived, though some explain their first syllable by edge; but they are far more probably the same with the awe of the North. Egbert continues in Friesland as Ebbert.
Aug is the oldest form in the North, as in Augmund, which, however, was soon turned into Ogmund, Agmund, and Amund, a shape in which it is common in the North, while in the Low Countries it gave the title of Egmont to the victim of Alva. Ogwald has run something the same course in the North, and become Avald; Œgunn and Œgulv are also there; and in Germany Egiheri once existed, and gave us the surnames of Agar and Eggar; Eggerich makes the Frisian Eggert, Iggerick, and Eggo.
The most famous German hero connected with the name is der treue Eckhardt, who is well named awful firmness, warns travellers from the tempting mountain of fatal delights, the Venusberg, once belonging to Hela herself. Eckhard is chiefly Frisian in the present day, and there it forms into Eggo, Ike, and Edzard.
It is identically the same name as Eginhard, the contemporary chronicler of Charlemagne. The n being used in declining the leading noun, is retained in the pronunciation of the name. Friesland, however, separates the two, and shortens Eginhard into Eino, Aynnert, Aynt.
Thus again is formed the original northern Aginhar, awful warrior, who fell down into Agnar and Agne. Einar, of which there were twenty-two in the Landnama-bok, looks very much like another contraction of Aginhar; but analogy is against it; and Professor Munch decides that the first syllable, both of Einar and Eindride, a rather popular old Norsk feminine, is ein, one, in the sense of chief or superior; so that Einar would be chief warrior, Eindride, Endride, or Indride, as it is also used, superior rider.
The dative form of Ag is Agli, whence Egils, or Eigils, has come to be a favourite northern name, and in this shape it is a very frequent prefix. Egilona was the unfortunate wife of Rodrigo, the last of the Goths, and afterwards of the Moorish prince, his conqueror, whom she forced to do homage to the Cross, by having the door of her room opposite to it made so low that he could not enter without stooping. Agilo was a Frank nobleman, and in Domesday we fall upon an undoubted Agilward and Egelmar, and on what are probably their contractions, Aylward and Aylmer, afterwards Aymar; but both these are contractions of other names, and cannot always be referred to the awful god of the sea. Agilard, Agilulf, and Agilbert were Frank forms, the last Eilbert in German; Egilhart is Eilert, or Eilo, in German; Eilert, Ayelt, or Ayldo, in Frisian. And the Spanish Gothic Egica is another of the progeny of the old sea giant. Oht is a word also meaning terror.[[117]]
[116]. Luning; Munch; Grimm; Tooke; Liddell and Scott; Landnama-bok.
[117]. Grimm; Munch; Blackwell; Luning; Michaelis.
Section XIV.—Ing—Seaxnot.
Leaving the comparatively clear and consistent regions of Scandinavian mythology, we pass to the divinities and forefathers of whom we know far less, those of our own Anglian ancestors; some accepted by them in common with the High Germans, others exclusively their own, and some apparently known to the North, though not admitted into the system of the Edda.
The northern cosmogony tells us of the first man, Buri, whom the cow Audumbla licked out of the stone, and whose grandson Odin was. It also tells us of the primeval man and woman, Ask and Embla, whom Odin, Vili, and Ve, animated.
On the other hand, Tacitus, writing of the ancient Germans, makes them start from an earth-born god, Tuisco, whose son was Mannus; and again, Mannus’s three sons were Ingus, Iscus, and Hermius, Ing, Esc, and Ed, from whom descended the Ingævones, Iscævones, and Hermiones.
Tuisco is Tiu, or, more properly, the divine word in another form. He represents the original stock of Teutonism, and also the human sense of a divine origin, for Mannus, of course, is man.
Esk, or Ask, has scarcely formed any names, but Ing, or Yngve, was looked on as the ancestor of the Swedish kings, who thence were called the Ynglinga; and the history which rationalizes Odin is thence termed the Ynglinga Saga, as it makes Yngve his son, and deduces the line from him. Ing, the son of Tuisco, is, however, a far more universal forefather, being almost without a doubt the name-father of that great race that we have called Angeln, Anglo-Saxons, and English.
Seaxnot, or Sahsnot, was probably another name for Ing. The word means stone comrade, and he was supposed to be the ancestor of the Sachsen, or Saxons, but he has not numerous namesakes. In the East Saxon pedigree, we find Seaxbeohrt and Seaxbald, and in the East Anglian Seaxburh or Sexburga; and in Scandinavia Sakse remained as a name; and the historian of the twelfth century, who enlightened us so much on Danish history, is Latinized as Saxo Grammaticus.
Ing was a great deal more popular, though not among the Angles, either insular or continental. The only trace of him in Germany is in the old name of Hinkmar, or Hinko; and our Anglo-Saxon kings enumerated Ingvi, Ingebrand, and Ingegeat as connecting links between themselves and Wuotan. The Goths, Burgundians, and Vandals also claimed descent from Ingvja, and their princes were called Ingvineones.
Ingve, or Ingvar, was a royal name in Scandinavia, and so travelled with the sons of Rurik to Russia; where Igor, as he was there called, led an army to strike terror into Constantinople, and the name has since become confused with Egor, or George. Ingulf was the secretary of William the Conqueror, and we would fain believe in the history of Croyland that goes by his name. Ingebjorg found her way into an old Saga as a demi-goddess directing wind and rain; but her historical interest is connected with the unfortunate Danish princess, whom Philippe Auguste married only to repudiate, and whom French historians translate into Ingeberge, English ones into Ingoberga. Hers is the most common female name in Norway.
The North has likewise Ingegerdur, Ingeleif, Ingemundr, Ingeridur, Ingiallur, Ingvilldur, Ingjard, and Ingrim. Ingvilhild has become Engelke, or Engel, and is, in fact, now merged in the idea of the Greek Angel. The same fate has befallen other names in Germany and France, where that best of all puns, as far as results were concerned, that of St. Gregory between Angeli and Angli, has been constantly repeated in nomenclature. The Eng, Ing, or Engel, named from a forgotten tradition after Ing, was well pleased to be dedicated to an angel; Ingram, once Ing’s raven, became Engelram, and thought he was of angelic purity, in name if not in nature; and either he or Engelhard passed into France as Enguerraud, the chief Christian name of the brave house whose proud saying was—
“Je suis ni roi, ni comte aussi,
Je suis le Sire de Coucy;”
and the English called it Ingeltram, when Isabel, the daughter of Edward III., made her love match with the brave Lord de Coucy, whose loyalty was so sorely perplexed by his connection with her family.
Engelfrid, Engelschalk, Engelberga, and Engelbert, are probably originally German angels in connection with peace, discipleship, protection, and splendour; and Professor Munch thinks the northern Ingobert an instinctive attempt to nationalize the last. On the other hand, he leaves to Ing, Angilbald, Angiltrud, Angelrich; as, in fact, may be always done with every name of the kind that can be traced to an owner prior to the time when angels were popular ideas among our northern ancestors.
Ingvar was a terrible name to our Saxon ancestors, when the Danish viking, so called, carried terror to our coasts; but Ivar is not the short for it, but is from yr; German, eibe; Dutch, ibe; English, yew; and har, a warrior, so that Ivar is the Yew warrior, the bow-bearer, or archer. He is Iver in Danish, and in Scotland and Ireland MacIvor has been adopted as a rendering of one of the old hereditary Keltic names. Ivbald and Ivbert have also been used and cut down to Ibald and Ibert. Ireland had a St. Ivor, or Ivory, who was considered to have prayed away from Fernegenall the mures maiores qui vulgariter Rati vocantur so completely that none survived; but whether he was named by Dane or Kelt does not appear. At any rate, St. Ivory was deemed good to invoke against rats.
It is probable that Ivhar is the real origin of Ives, the saint who named the town in Huntingdonshire; but legend strangely makes him a Persian bishop, who chose that locality for a hermitage, in the seventh century, and whose body was discovered uncorrupt in the year 1001, thus providing a patron for many an Ivar of Danish or Norman extraction, who became Yvon, or Ivone, in France; and Ivo in the chroniclers. Ivo de Taillebois is the villain of the story of Hereward and his camp of refuge; and the name is common with the Normans and Bretons, all the more for the sake of St. Ivo de Chartres, who was imprisoned for his resistance to the adultery of Philip I. and Bertrade of Anjou, and St. Ives of Brittany, the good lawyer, called the advocate of the poor. These Breton Ivons may, however, be from Sir Ywain, or Owen, the same as Eoghan.[[118]]
[118]. Grimm; Munch; Luning; Kemble; O'Donovan; Butler.
Section XV.—Eormen.
The third son of Mannus was said to be Er, a word, perhaps, connected with Tyr on one side, and Ares on the other; for Ertag is the Tuesday of Southern Germany, and Eresburg, now Mersburg, was the centre of the worship of the continental Saxons. The day was, however, also called, in Bavaria and Austria, Ermintag, or Irminstag; and the deity worshipped at Eresburg was Irman, or Ermin; and perhaps the word should be considered as Er-man in conjunction. From him the Herminiones of Tacitus are said to be descended, being chiefly the old Germans and the Franks.
At Eresburg, even up to the eighth century, there stood a great central temple, containing a marble column on which stood an armed warrior, holding, in one hand, a banner bearing a rose, in the other a balance. The crest on the helmet was a cock, on the breastplate was a bear, on the shield that hung from the shoulders was a lion in a field of flowers. Around lived a college of priests, who exercised judgment and made biennial offerings. Before going out to war, the host, in full armour, galloped round the figure, brandishing their spears and praying for victory. Lesser images were carried with the army, and, on its return, captives and cowards were slain, as offerings to the great idol.
This temple was destroyed by Charlemagne, who buried the idol where afterwards stood the abbey of Corbye. In his son’s reign it was dug up, and carried off by the French as a trophy, when the Saxons rose to rescue it and a battle took place, after which it was thrown into the river Innen, but was fished out, exorcised, purified, and made to serve as a candelabrum in the church of Hillesheim.
The battle was called Armansula, and the image Irmansul; whence many have fancied that Irmansul was the chief German god.
Sul, or saul, is, however, a pillar; and it is a very curious fact that two sacred columns were the penates of every Teuton’s hearth and city. When a migration was decided on by the Scandinavians, a solemn feast was held, the master of the house seated between his two sulur, or columns, which he uprooted and carried with him, and, on his approach to his intended home, he threw them overboard, and followed them with his ship, landing wherever they were cast up. It was thus that the situation of Reijkjavik, in Iceland, was determined. Such columns, down to a very late period, stood at the gates of the elder towns in Germany, and were called Ermensaulen, or, sometimes, one the Rolandsaul, the other the Ermensaul.
Eormon, in the Anglian of Beowulf, means universal; eormoncyn, the whole of mankind; in old Norse, jormün is the world, and Jormungandr is another name of the Midgard snake which encircles the world. Most likely, the Irmansul thus signified the universal column, the pillar adored by all men; just as the Anglo-Saxons called the great Roman road Eormenstreot, or Ermingstreet, the public road. Er, then, would be the divinity, man the human word, and Erman would thus express something revered by all; and thence, the name of the tribes of the Hermiones and Hermunduri, both meaning all the people. Later, the word jormün, or eorman, came to mean only very large; and, probably, the Saxons of Thuringia had forgotten the original signification of their columns when they gave the single one of Irmansul such an exclusive prominence. Some have tried to explain one pillar as Heermansaul, pillar of the army man, and the other as Raginholdsaul, pillar of firm judgment, as emblems of military and civil power; but though this meaning may have later been bestowed on them, the signification of Eormon is decidedly adverse to this explanation, and it is safest to translate it, when it occurs in names, as public, or general.
| English. | French. | Spanish. | Italian. |
| Armyn | Armand | Armando | Arminio |
| Armine | Armanno | ||
| German. | Swedish. | Dutch. | Swiss. |
| Hermann | Hermann | Hermanus | Herma |
| Herman | Hermeli | ||
| Manus | |||
| Slovak. | Lettish. | Esth. | Lithuanian. |
| Jerman | Ermannis | Herm | Ermas |
| Ermonas |
When the Cheruschi, themselves Herminiones, broke the heart of Augustus by cutting off the legions of Quinctilius Varus, their leader was Arminius, probably Irman or Eorman, though after-generations explained it as Heerman or Armyman. So that the hosts of Hermans, named when national feeling was roused by French invasion, are in his honour; previously, the Dutch Jacob Hermannsen had rendered himself into Latin as Arminius. From Holland the Norfolk name of Armyn must have been imported.
The Germans use, as the feminine, Hermine and Herminie, which properly belong to the Latin Herminius; and the French have made their own form of Armand into Armantine. A Burgundian hermit, Ermin, too, gave St. Ermo to Italy, a name inextricably mixed with Elmo, the contraction of Erasmus; it is the St. Erme of France.
Very early, so as to be almost mythical, was the Thuringian Irmanfrit, or Irnvrit[Irnvrit], who hardly conduced to ‘public peace’ by calling in the Saxons; but Hermanfred continued in use in Germany, and was known to the French as Hermanfroi.
The Burgundian version of the great world-girding snake was Ermelind, a name that came to a saintly virgin of the sixth century from whom Ermelinda flourished as an Italian name, being probably common to both Lombards and Burgundians, as both Vandals.
But these Irmins are most frequent in ancient Spain. The Suevi had Hermanrik, or Hermanarico, public ruler, and the Goths, Hermanegar and Hermangildo; the last being the prince who is revered as having been converted from Arianism by his orthodox Frank wife, and whose death, by his father’s persecution, sealed the triumph of Catholicism in Spain. Hermenburga was a princess, offered to, but refused by, a Frank king; and Ermesinda, or, as Southey’s poem calls her, Hermesind, the daughter of Pelayo, carried the blue blood of the Balten to the line of Alfonso. Her name meant public dignity.
Parallel to these the Anglo-Saxons enumerate Eormenric, Eormenburh, Eormenburg, Eormengyth, Eormengild; and after the Conquest there still continue the forms of Eremburga, Ermentrude, and Ermengarde; the last by far the most frequent, and not yet disused in Germany.
Section XVI.—Erce.
The Anglo-Saxons were accustomed to perform an incantation to restore the fruitfulness of their fields. It began by the cry Erce, Erce, Erce, Eordhan Môder, as if it were not earth itself, but her mother that was called upon.
The same word erce is used for ark, chest, or ship, in the Anglo-Saxon New Testament. And Erce does not seem to have been entirely forgotten; for Erche, or Herkja, is a famous lady in old German hero songs.
From thence, too, may have sprung the Old German adjective ërchan, meaning holy, genuine, or simple, which is thought to have named the famous Hercynian forest of ancient Germany, which would thus be the sacred wood.
The founder of the East Saxon kingdom in England is called both Escwine and Ercenwine, the darling of Ese, or of Erce. In the Kentish genealogy we find Eorconberht, sacred brightness, answering to the Lombardo-Italic Erchimperto; and also Eorcongot, sacred divinity.
St. Eorconwald, holy power, was a bishop of London, about 678, and may almost be reckoned as the second founder of St. Paul’s, where his shrine was greatly revered; and about the same time Erkenoald was a maire du palais in France; and Erchenold, or Herchenhold, was an old German name, meaning probably firm in truth.
In old knightly times, we find the German Erchanbald, meaning a sacred prince, from which the French took many a Sire Archambault, and the Italians Arcibaldo.
The Scots, by some strange fancy, adopted Archibald as the Lowland equivalent of Gillespie, the bishop’s servant. So frequent was it in the houses of Campbell and Douglas, that, with its contractions of Archie and Baldie, it has become one of the most commonly used in Scotland, recalling many a fierce worthy, from old Archibald Bell-the-Cat downwards, and always translating the Gillespie of the Campbells to Lowland ears.[[119]]
[119]. Grimm, &c.
Section XVII.—Amal.
Amal is a very remarkable word. We have had it in Greek, as Αἰμύλος; in Latin, as Æmilius; in the Keltic as Amalgaidh; and in all it would seem as if one notion could be detected—that of work. Even in Hebrew Amal means to work; aml is work in old Norse; and we have still our verb to moil, taken therefrom. Mahl, be it remembered, is in German a time; mahl, a stroke; mahlen, to paint or make strokes; and so in the North, maal is a measure, or an end, a goal. Probably there is a notion of repetition of marks, stroke upon stroke, in all cases, and the Sanscrit meaning of Amal, or spotless, without mark, is in favour of the meaning.
It is safest, however, to translate the Teutonic Amal by work, the thought most familiar to the sturdy northern nations who used it, and loved work for its own sake.
In the Vilkina Saga, the mighty smith Velint’s first great trial of skill was with Amilias, an armourer at the court of King Nielung. Velint struck him with his sword Mimung; he said he felt as if a drop of water had flowed down him. “Shake yourself,” said Velint, and the unfortunate smith fell down cloven painlessly from head to heel, an example of labour versus skill.
Aumlung, the strong, is mentioned in the Book of Heroes, as feasting at the Nibelung court; and it was at Duke Amelung’s court that, according to the Danish ballad, old Sir Hildibrand had been staying for twenty-two years, before, going back to Bern, he met his unknown son Alebrand.
Amala was a favourite Lombardic commencement, and was likewise much in favour with German ladies; it became first Amalie, and then, when Italy and France had taken up the Latin Æmilia, this old Teutonic form was mixed up with it; and Amelia in England, Amélie in France, are scarcely considered to differ from it; and though historically Emily is the descendant of the Æmilii, Amelia of the Amaler, yet both alike come from the original Amal.
Amalaswinth, which would bear the translation, dignity of labour, though probably it was only given in the sense of dignity of the Amaler, was the unfortunate Lombardic queen, whom the Romans could not protect from the treachery of her favourites. Amalasontha is what historians call her; but on Burgundian lips it came to be Melisenda, Melicerte, Melusine.
Melisenda is in Spanish ballad lore the wife of Don Gayferos, and, being taken captive by the Moors, was the occasion of the feats that were represented by the puppet show in which Don Quixote took an unfortunately lively interest. Melisende again was the princess who carried the uneasy crown of Jerusalem to the House of Anjou; and, perhaps, from the Provençal connections of the English court, Lady Melisent Stafford bore the name in the time of Henry II., whence Melicent has become known in England, and never quite disused, though often confounded with Melissa, a bee, and sometimes spelt Millicent.
Melusine was a nymph who became the wife of the Lord de Leezignan, or Lusignan, on condition that he should never intrude upon her on a Saturday; of course, after a long time, his curiosity was excited, and stealing a glance at his lady in her solitude, he beheld her a serpent from the waist downward! With a terrible shriek, she was lost to him for ever; but she left three sons, all bearing some deformity, of whom Geoffroi au grand dent was the most remarkable.
Melusina continued in use in the south of France, Holland, and Germany, and is occasionally used in England. We find Melicerte in old French chronicles.
The very ancient queens of Navarre and the Asturias have a wonderful set of aliases, and one, the oddest, is “Amelina, or Simena, or Ximena,” the sister of Sancho I., of Navarre, who married Alfonso the Great. Could the Spaniards, by any possibility, have contracted the soft Amal into the harsh guttural Xi, which sounds as if it came from a Moorish throat. Yet, Goths as they were, they show no Amal, though their Ximen and Ximena reach up to 700, and Ximena survived long as a name among their ladies, and was the wife of the Cid, whence the French turned her into Chimène. Emmeline, as it is now generally spelt, came from France as Emeline, and is frequent in old ballad poetry, and in northern registers, as Emyln. It is probably another form of this same Amaline, or lind, Amal’s serpent.
The northern races have the one much reduced name of Malfrid, from Amalafrida, of peace.
The ladies have certainly been the chief owners of Amal, as a commencement; but it has had a brilliant part to play in the form of Amalrich, Almerich, or Emmerich, on the German side; Almerigo in Spain; Amalric, or Amaury, in France; Almerick in England. Amaury was an Angevin king of Jerusalem; and our own Sir Almerick St. Lawrence was brother-in-arms to Sir John de Courcy, and founded the House of Howth in Ireland. The House of Lusignan, Melusina’s descendants, called it Aymar; and in this form it came to England with Henry III.’s half-brother, whom he promoted to the see of Winchester, but who episcopally called himself Ethelmarus; though his nephew, Aymar de Valence, kept his proper name. Emmery is a surviving English surname, and Merica occurs in old Yorkshire genealogies.
But it is the Italian form, Amerigo, which was destined to the most noted use,—when the adventurer, Amerigo Vespucci, gave his name to the tract of land that Columbus saw for the first time in his company; little knowing that it was no island, but a mighty continent, which should hold fast that almost fortuitous title, whence thousands of miles, and millions of men, bear the appellation of the forgotten forefather of a tribe of the Goths—Amalrich, the work ruler; a curiously appropriate title for the new world of labour and of progress, on the other side the Atlantic.
Amalberge is an old Cambrai name; Malburg a Danish one; Amalgund, Amalbert, Amalbertine, and Amalhild, have also been known. The French Amelot must be the contraction of one of the masculine forms.[[120]]
[120]. Grimm; Kemble; Int. to Beowulf; Weber; Dugdale.
Section XVIII.—Forefathers.
The deification of forefathers, or the claim to divine origin, whichever it might be, led to the employment, as a prefix, of the very word that expressed them—that word which we use still at the beginning of ancestors, and that the Germans call ahnen. In old German the singular was ano, and it signified a remote forefather. The Rigsmaal, an old Icelandic poem which explains the origin of the various castes which the northern races acknowledged, represents Heimdall, the porter of heaven, as wandering to the earth, and being entertained by Ai and Edda, or great-grandfather and great-grandmother, who lived in a lowly hut; then by Avi and Amma (Lat. Avus), or grandfather and grandmother, who had a comfortable dwelling-house; and lastly by Fadher and Modher, whose abode was a splendid mansion. The son of Edda was Thrall; the son of Amma was Karl; the son of Modher was Jarl; and from these descended the three castes of the North—the thralls, or slaves; the churls, bondr, or farmers; and the jarls, or nobles.
This is an absolute mythic allegory by way of explanation of existing circumstances; but the names therewith connected mostly survived, though they refer to these mere embodiments of abstract ideas.
Ai, or ani, enters into the composition of the Icelandic Anar, ancestral warrior, and thus, no doubt, contributed to form our surname of Anson, which, like almost all our great naval names, thus traces back to some ancient viking, who has done us at least as much good as evil, by leaving us his sons to keep all other invaders from our shores.
The old Saxon histories call some of these enemies by the name of Anlaff, in particular the chief who visited King Æthelstan’s tent in a minstrel’s disguise, and betrayed himself by burying the guerdon that he was too proud to keep. The same persons whom England called Anlaff, and Ireland Amlaidh, were, in the North, Alafr, or Olafr, according to the custom of pronouncing the diphthong a like an o, and then so spelling it, e.g., Aasbiorn, Osbiorn. The latter syllable is laf or leif, from the verb lev, the Anglo-Saxon leafan, our own leave. It is a word that never is used as a commencement, and but rarely stands alone, though the North sometimes has a Leifr, and it is used in the sense of what is remaining. Anlaff, or Olaf, is thus what is left of his forefathers, his ancestor’s relic, and a very notable relic was the gallant king Olaf Trygveson, the prime hero of the Heimskringla, whose last battle is so nobly described there. Scarcely less noble is his relative, Olaf the saint, the ally of England, who fought her battles near London-bridge, and has left his name to the church of St. Olave, near the site of the battle, though, unluckily, English tongues made him St. Toly. St. Olaf was over-harsh in his endeavours to introduce Christianity to his subjects, and perished in a war with the rebels, assisted by Knut of Denmark and England; but his name continued glorious, and another royal St. Olaf, in Sweden, assisted to make it one of the most national of Scandinavian names, even to the present day.
Its Latinism is Oläus, and its contraction Ole, or, rather, this answers to the very old Aale, which, in its turn, answers to the Analo, Anilo, Anelo, of the old Germans.
Leif, or laf, we shall often meet as a termination, both in the North and in Germany, where it generally becomes leib or lip, and then the modern Germans take it for love, and thus have changed the old Gottleip into Gottleib. In the North it has scarcely fared better, especially in the case of Thorleif, or Thor’s relic, who changed from Tholleiv to Thoddeiv, or Tadeiv, on the one hand, and on the other, to Tellev, which, thanks to some classically-disposed clergyman, has been written Teleph, and referred to the Greek Telephus.
Of the other names connected with the Rigsmaal, we find Edda, the great-grandmother, giving title to the ancient poem on cosmogony and mythology that may be regarded as the parent of all the northern songs. Thrall was likewise, in spite of its meaning, used as a name.
The next generation, Avi, Amma, and the son Karl, are the prominent ones. The equivalent of Karl, Bondr, a farmer, is now and then a northern name; but it is the great Frank Karling line whose names so curiously answer to these.
Were they of the middle class of landholders, and were they proud of it, and anxious to trace their connection back to the grandfather, grandmother, and churl? Whether there were a Frank version of the Rigsmaal we do not know, but the leading name of the family was Karl, the churl (of which more in its relation to the cycle of Romance), and it is found in constant company with Amma, or Emma, and alternates with one that almost certainly represented Avi, or grandfather.
Charles, Pepin l'Heristal, Charles Martel, Pepin le Bref, Charles the Great, is the succession till the alternation was broken by the death of Pepin, the eldest son of Charles the Great. Now this most undignified Pepin is traced by the best authorities to be one of the many forms of the primitive and universal abba, father, papa, and to answer to the old German names of Bobo, Bobbo, and Poppo. And it is not, therefore, probable that Pepin and Emma stood for the northern Avi and Amma, both alike with the son Karl?
Amme, or Emma, no doubt formed by the first lispings of a child, is amme, a nurse, in Germany, and ama, a housekeeper, in Spain. As a name, it was at first exclusively Frank, and used by the Karling daughters. The first Emma mentioned was the daughter of Charlemagne; and the sister of Hugh Capet, who married Richard the Fearless, of Normandy, was likewise so called. Her granddaughter was the wife, first of Ethelred the Unready, then of Knut, and the supposed heroine of the ordeal of the ploughshares. Emma was considered as so un-English that her name was translated into Ælfgifu. However, we find ‘Emme’ among the daughters of Dru de Baladon, who came over with the Conqueror, and thus ‘Emm’ and ‘Emr’ are by no means uncommon in the registers of Yorkshire and Durham, even down to the seventeenth century. Then Prior, when modernizing and sentimentalizing the beautiful ballad of the Nut Browne Maid, supposed to be on the history of the shepherd Lord Clifford, called it Henry and Emma, whence it became rather a favourite romantic name of literature. Clergymen were apt to use it, in Latin registers, as a translation of Amy, as well as of its own Em. It is also confounded with Emily, and at the present day recurs extremely often in England, while it is almost disused in France, its native home. The Welsh use it as a translation of Ermin, probably a legacy of the Roman Herminii. Emmott is another old name of northern England, probably amplified from Em; but Emeline, as has been already said, is far more probably Amalina than any relation to Emma.
Jarl, as might be expected, was a very favourite eponym; but not in the same pronunciation; for it first became Irl, then Erl, in nomenclature. Erling, a name much used by the Norsemen, and often corrupted into Elling, is the son of the earl; and the Swedish once had a Jarlar, or earl-warrior, who changed into Erlher, Erlo, Erlebald, Erlebrecht, Erlhild.
CHAPTER III.
NAMES FROM OBJECTS CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGY.
Section I.—Day.
The rich imagination of the North could not fail to preserve the Eastern myths of natural appearances and animals with their myths, and these ideas are as usual reflected in the names of the race.
In the Edda, Nôtt, or night, the dark, one of the Jotun, is the wife of Dellingr, the brilliant and beautiful, one of the Æsir, and their son is Dag or Day. Mother and son each have a chariot in which they career round the sky, in pursuit of one another. The horse of Day is Shinfaxi, of shining mane; the horse of Night is Hrimfaxi, rime or frost mane[mane].
Day had many namesakes, though more often at the end than the beginning of a word.
Dago, Tago, or Tajo, was a Gothic bishop of Zaragoza, whom King Chindaswintha sent to Rome about 640, to bring home a copy of St. Gregory’s Comment on the Book of Job, which had been dedicated to a King of Spain, one of the Suevi, but had been lost in the irruption of the Arian Goths. The Roman clergy had been equally careless. Pope Theodorus could not lay his hands upon the manuscript; and the search became so tedious, that finally Bishop Tajo betook himself to prayer, and obtained a special vision of the holy Pope Gregory himself, who directed him to the depository of the manuscript.
This same Dagr figures in the Landnama-bok; and the North has Dagfinn, perhaps once an allusion to the resplendent glory of Odin, but usually translated white as day. Dagulf, or Daulf, day-wolf, was no doubt in allusion to the wolf Sköll, who hunts the sun daily round the sky, and will eat her up at last; whence to this day a parhelion is called in Sweden a sun-wolf, Sololf. Eclipses are caused when the wolf gains on the sun, who has no namesakes in Teuton nomenclature, the few that sound like it being from another source, namely, Salv or sölv, anointing or healing. The feminine ny, though meaning the new moon when standing alone, is only the adjective new, and means fresh and fair, so that the northern Dagny is, fair as day. The Norse ladies also have Dagheid or Dageid, cheerful as day.
Dagobert, or bright as day, was that long-haired king who, next to Clovis, impressed the French imagination. He was the employer of the great goldsmith St. Eloi, and the throne or chair of King Dagobert, ascribed to that great artificer, is still in existence. A successor in the fainéant times was canonized, and together the two Dagoberts, making one, have become the theme first of heroic and then of burlesque in France. It was Takaperaht in Old German; and there, too, Tagarat, or Dagrad, is to be found; but in general, dag or tac comes at the end of words.
Dagmar—the favourite queen of the Danes, whose only fault was lacing her sleeves on a Sunday—is called only by her epithet, Danes' joy. Her true name was Margaret of Bohemia, and the Danish princess Dagmar, who was christened after her, was on her Russian marriage called Marie.[[121]]
[121]. Blackwell, Mallet; Munch; Butler; Grimm; Thierry; Michaelis.
Section II.—The Wolf.
It is for the place that he occupies in the Teutonic imagination, rather than for his own merits, that the wolf stands foremost among the creatures that have supplied Teutonic names.
He is also the most universal. Zeeb, Lycos, and Lupus, have been already mentioned; and the midnight prowler, as the most terrible animal of Europe, held his place in imaginations, whence the lion and tiger faded for want of personal acquaintance. The French have no less than forty-nine proverbs about wolves, many no doubt remains of the beast epic.
Wolves called Geri and Freki sat on either side of Odin’s throne, and devoured his share of the bears' flesh of Valhalla, a banquet he was too ethereal to require. Wolves chase the sun and moon round their daily courses; and a terrible wolf called Mangarmr, or moon-gorger, is to devour the moon at the coming of the wolf-age, which, in the Voluspa, shadows the last days of the world. Fenris, the wolf of the abyss, is the son of Loki; and though bound by the Æsir at the cost of Tyr’s right hand, will finally break loose, destroy Odin himself, and only be rent asunder by Vidur in his resistless shoes.
Nevertheless, ulf, vulf, wolf was highly popular as a name-root; perhaps more common at the end than the beginning of a word, but often standing alone. It was the diminutive Vulfila that was the right name of that good bishop whose Mæso-Gothic version of the Gospels goes by his Latinism of Ulphilas.
Ulf was twenty-three times in the Landnama-bok; and ulf in every possible form ravaged the coasts of Europe. Wolf was again the hereditary prefix in the House of Bavaria, where the dukes varied between Wolf and Wolfart, till Wolfen became the designation of the family, and a legend was invented to account for it. An ancestress had, it was said, given birth to twelve infants all at once, and in the spirit of the child who, being shown his twin brothers, asked “Which shall we keep,” sent her maid to dispose of the eleven unnecessary ones in the river. The father met her, and asked what she had in her apron. “Only whelps,” she answered; but he was not to be thus put off, made an inspection, saved the children’s lives, and called them the Wolfen, or wolf-whelps! The Book of Heroes, however, makes the Wolfings descend from the brave Sir Hildebrand, and be so called from a wolf on their shield granted them by the Emperor Wolfdietrich, in remembrance of an adventure of his own infancy, when he had been carried off by a she-wolf to her den, and remained there unhurt—whence his name of Wolfdietrich. The male line of the Wolfen, however, in time became extinct, and the heiress married one of the Italian House of Este, which adopted the German Wolf in the Italianized form of Guelfo, and constantly used it as a name. Thence when the popes set up Otto d'Este, one of the Wolfen of Bavaria, as anti-emperor in opposition to the House of Hohenstaufen, his partisans were called Welfen; those of the Fredericks, Waiblingen, from the Swabian castle of Waibling. The Italian cities rang with the fierce cries of Guelfo and Zibelino, for the pope or the emperor, and Europe learnt to identify the Guelph with the cause of the Church; the Ghibelline with that of the State, when the origin of the words had long been forgotten.
One of the Bavarian Wolfen d'Este became Duke of Brunswick Luneburg, and from him descended the Hanoverian line of English sovereigns, who in the time of Revolution thence were said to be properly sumamed Guelf, or even Whelps, with about as much correctness as when Louis XVI. was styled Louis Capet.
We had a wolf among our sovereigns in the days of the Heptarchy, in Vulfhere, king of Mercia, the same as the northern Ulfar, and German Wolfer, meaning wolf-warrior. Also Vulfhilda was a sainted abbess in England, while Ulvhildur colonized Iceland. We had also Vulfred, Vulfnoth, Vulfstein, better known as St. Wulstan, the admirable bishop of Worcester. These English wolves of ours have a great inclination to lapse into sheep’s clothing and become wool, in which form we use them in the harmless surnames of Woolgar, Woolstone, Woolmer, Wolsey.
Ulfketill, or Ulfkjell, as odd a compound as can well be found, was one of the pirates who invested England, but is a peaceable inhabitant in Domesday, where Ulf swarms, as Ulfac, Ulfeg, Ulfert, Ulfener, Ulfric; just as he does in the Iceland Domesday, as Ulfhedinn, Ulfherdur, Ufliotr.
In Germany, Wolfgang, perhaps best rendered as Wolf-progress, was a sainted bishop of Ratisbon, in the tenth century, whence this strange name flourished, and, coming to Göthe, became prized by all his admirers. There, too, is Wolfram, the wolf-raven, Wolfrad, and Wolfert.
Some have translated ulf, or wolf, at the end of a word by help; but this is impossible, as though hulf is help in German, the f is the property of that language alone.
A few of the Danes seem to have learnt to respect the qualities of the magnificent Irish wolf-hound, whose qualities are highly praised in the Heimskringla. Then they took to calling themselves Hunde; and a son of Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, is called both Hvalp and Hund. The name of Hundolf is, however, supposed to be either hardened from Hun, or else to be from a word meaning booty or plunder, so as to mean the wolf of plunder.[[122]]
[122]. Grimm; Turner, Anglo-Saxons; Blackwell, Mallet; Dictionnaire des Proverbes Français; Sismondi, Republiques Italianes; Anderson, Genealogies; Lappenburn, Anglo-Saxons; Alban Butler; Marryat, Jutland; Pott.
Section III.—Eber, the Boar.
The boar, whom we found so popular in Roman nomenclature, is equally so among the southern Teutons, among whom the tusky boar was one of the prime beasts of chase. The Romans apparently viewed him and his titles in their domestic aspect; but the Teutons honoured the fierce Eber of their forests as their highest and most dangerous prey, and gave him a place among their mythology.
Freyr had a boar with golden bristles, called Gullenbörsti, and when the corn waved in the wind, the saying was, “Freyr’s boar is passing by.” Epurhelm, an old German name, was thus an appeal to the protection of Freyr.
The boar Sehrimnar was likewise the future feast of the brave in Valhall, daily hunted and eaten, and as often resuscitated for the next day’s sport and banquet. Scandinavia lay too far north for his porcine majesty; and the Norsemen had no personal acquaintance with him in their daily life, whatever they might look forward to; and thus Eber, the wild boar, does not figure in their nomenclature, and scarcely among our own insular Saxons, though he is said to have ranged our forests.
But turning to the Goths, we fall at once upon Ebroinus, an evident classicalism of Eberwine, not so much the boar’s friend, as Freyr’s friend. Ebrimuth, another early Goth, is wild boar’s mood or wrath, and in Visigothic Spain we find Eborico, namely, Eberik, boar ruler.
Frankland produced the formidable compound of boarwolf, Eberulf; but its two owners grew up monastic saints in the sixth and seventh centuries, and were honoured by the French as SS. Evrault, Evrols, Evrou, or Evraud. The second of these saints was a native of Normandy, and is patron of the abbey of Fontévraud, the burial-place of Henry II. and Richard Cœur de Lion, and the noblest nunnery in France.
It is difficult, however, to distinguish between the forms of the French Eberulf, and the German Eberhard, who was abbot of Einsiedlen in 934; indeed, it is highly probable that the Norman St. Evrhault, though derived from a saint Latinized as Eberulfus, and in German called Erulf, was supposed to be the same as Eberhard, and that this accounts for the English form of Everard, which sprung up from the four Evrards of the Domesday roll after the Conquest. Eberhard hardly reaches the rank of saint in the Roman calendar; but his exertions in a great famine that ravaged Alsace, Burgundy, and Upper Germany, in 942, account for the nationality of his name in all that region.
| English. | Italian. | Frisian. | German. |
| Everard | Everardo | Evart | Eberhard |
| Ewart | Eberardo | Evert | Ebert |
| Ebbo | Ewart | ||
| French. | Dutch. | Lett. | Eppo. |
| Evraud | Everhard | Ewarts | Ebbo |
| Ebles | Evert | Ebo | |
| Ebilo | |||
| Ebin | |||
| Etto | |||
| Uffo | |||
| Uppo | |||
| Appo | |||
The Germans likewise have a feminine from this ‘boarfirm’ word Eberbardine, contracted into Ebertine, or Ebba, and in Frisian, Ebbe or Jebbe. I am afraid these German forms do not certainly account for the Saxon Ebba, or Æbbe, sister of St. Oswald, and foundress of the famous priory of Coldingham. However, England had one St. Eberhilda, who was a pupil of St. Wilfrid, and foundress of a monastery called Everidisham, the locality of which cannot be discovered; but the abbess must have left an impression on the ladies of the North, to judge by the frequency of the occurrence of Everilda, which, with the contractions of Averilla and Averil, is not yet extinct.
Offa, the Low German legendary hero—is very probably called by a contraction of the wild boar. His name is repeated by the king of Mercia, who seems to have borrowed somewhat of the legend in his story, and Offa was not extinct even in Domesday.
Ebermund, a Neustrian Frank of Meerwing days, was founder of Fontenoy Abbey, and was honoured as St. Evrémond, whence the territorial surname familiar to readers of French memoirs.
St. Evre, who is frankly Latinized into Sanctus Aper, was the seventh bishop of Toul, where the register of bishops presents a curious succession of wild beasts, and some of the Ebbos and Affos of Germany may be his rightful property, though they are now all turned over to the charitable Eberhard of Einsiedlen. Eburbero, or Boar-bear, seems to have been a German invention.
Section IV.—The Bear.
The bear does not enter into the legends of the Edda, but he enjoyed immense regard in the North, and was looked on as a sort of ancestor, to whom, when he was killed, polite apologies were always made, and who is still called by the pet name of the Wise Man, rather than by his own proper term. Even in France he was mysteriously alluded to as le vieux or le grand père; and probably the Swiss veneration for the bears of Berne partly originated in the general devotion to the deliberate and almost human-looking plantigrade.
The Anglo-Saxons made Beorn the great-grandson of Wuotan, and the ancestor of the kings of Beornland; in Latin Bernicia, or Beornia, afterwards the earldom that gave title to Richard, son of William I. Legend again declared that the stout old Earl Siward Bìorn was actually the offspring of a bear, and that the ears of his parent might have been found concealed beneath his matted locks.
Norway and Iceland are, as in duty bound, the land of bears, but the Pyrenees had their share likewise; and if the North has Bjornulf, the same bear-wolf reigned over Gothic Spain in the form of Vernulfo; and in the Asturias and Navarre, the bear’s mood was dreaded as Bermudo, or Vermudo, and his protecting hand sought as Veremundo.
In the Pyrenees, too, flourished the bear-spear, the same with the northern Bjorngjer, though southern tongues made Berenger and Berengario, in which forms it was owned by many a mountain king of Navarre and count of Roussillon, Barcelona, or Toulouse. There, too, it formed the feminine Berenguela, and this, as princesses' names always do, travelled farther; for Berenguela was queen of Castille, and mother of St. Fernando; another Berenguela, or Berangère, as French tongues called her, is familiar to us under that most incorrect historical title of Berengaria, the bride of Richard Cœur de Lion. Another Berenguela, who from Portugal married the king of Denmark, so misconducted herself that Bjorngard or Berngard, the Danish version of her name, stands for an abandoned woman.
Biorn of the fiery eyes was appropriately named by Fouqué; for the Landnama-bok shows forty-two Biorns, and the name is still common in Norway and Iceland, where also are found still, as man’s names, Bersi and Besse, also titles of the bear, and Bera by way of feminine. Bjornhedinn is also northern, and there are numerous varieties of compounds, one of them rather of late date being Bjornstern, bear-star, probably in reference to the Pole-star. One of the present authors in Norway bears the fierce name of Bjornsternja Bjornsen.
The most famous of all the bears is, however, of Frank growth. Some have tried to resolve it into Bairn-heart, child-hearted; but though barn is of most ancient lineage, found even in Ulfilas’s Gospels, all analogy is against the interpretation; and there can be no doubt that when the first historical Biornhard was named, his parents would much have preferred his having the resolution of a bear rather than the heart of a child.
That first was an uncle of Charlemagne, and from him it was that the mountain, erst of Jupiter, was termed of Bernard, even before a second Bernard, surnamed De Menthon, fled from his home for love of a monastic life, and erected his noble hospice for the reception of travellers. Then came further glory to the name through the Cistercian monk, whose pure character was revered by all in the thirteenth century, until his became a universal name throughout Europe; in Ireland absorbing the native Brian. In Spain, too, Bernardo del Carpio is a great legendary champion, nephew to king Alfonso II. of Leon, and who, in the battle of Roncevalles, was said to have squeezed Roland the paladin to death in his arms. Bernal Diaz is the simple-hearted chronicler of Cortes.
| English. | French. | Italian. | Spanish. |
| Bernard | Bernard | Bernardo | Bernardo |
| Barnard | Bernadin | Bernadino | Bernal |
| Portuguese. | Wallachian | German. | Dutch. |
| Bernaldo | Bernardu | Bernhard | Bernhart |
| Bernadim | Berend | Barend | |
| Benno | Barndt | ||
| Frisian. | Lusatian. | Lettish. | Esth. |
| Bernd | Bernat | Berents | Pero |
| Slovak. | Hungarian. | Berns | Perent |
| Bernardek | Bernät |
It has the German feminine Bernhardine. The Irish Bryan adopts Bernard as his English synonym.
Other less celebrated German forms are Bernwald; the French, Berault; and Italian, Bernaldo. Berwart, abbot of Hildesheim; Bernclo, the Bavarian bear’s claw; Berner, and many others where bern or pern ends the word.
Bahrend, Berndt, Behr, Behring, all are surnames from the bear in Germany, and the last very appropriately named Behring’s Straits. It is the same that came to England as Baring.[[123]]
[123]. Munch; Lappenburg; Pott; Michaelis; Butler.
Section V.—The Horse.
No sacred animal was in more request than the horse. The gods had their wonderful horses. Sleipner (the Slider) was the eight-footed steed of Odin; Gullfaxi, or gold mane, belonged to the giant Hrimgrim; and the shining-maned and hoary-maned coursers of day and night have been already mentioned.
The eastern origin of the Teutons was never more shown than by their homage to horses. Beautiful and choice white steeds were reserved for the gods, drawing the waggons that conveyed the images, when the army went out to battle, or a colony migrated; and omens were derived from their neighings when alive, and from their heads when killed in sacrifice. Great sacrifices of horses were made on solemn occasions, and feasts were made upon their flesh as a religious rite, so that the abstaining from horse-flesh became absolutely a test of Christianity.
The horse was the national emblem of the Saxons; and Henghist and Horsa are both old Teuton names for the animal, the first surviving in the German hengst and northern hest, the last in our ordinary word horse: while the High German hross has fallen into the modern ross. White horses cut out in the chalky hill-sides of southern England from time immemorial, attest the antiquity of the symbol still claimed by the county of Kent, and by the Anglian-Continental kingdom of Hanover.
In the old poem of Beowulf, however, Hengist is a Dane, invading and oppressing Finn of Friesland, and afterwards slain. It is possible, then, that Hengist may after all be a mere mythic name erected into an ancestor by the Kentish monarchs. Some have tried to derive hross from horen, to hear or obey, in honour of the noble creature’s obedience; but it is in fact only another form of the ashva of India, to which ἵππος, equus, and the Keltic each have been traced; and it is curious to find that Brittany preserves the word ronse, as does Spain ronzin, the term that Don Quixote magnified into the magnificent designation of Rosinante.
The nation that sat round their cauldrons and feasted solemnly on horse-flesh might well call their sons Rossketyl, or Rosskjell. Three are to be found in the Landnama-bok, and Roskil is not extinct in Denmark. The agreeable title of Hrossbiorn, or horse-bear, is there to be found likewise, and Saxo-Grammaticus dignifies as Rostiophus, a gentleman who was properly called by the term of Hrossthiof, or horse-thief.
Hrossbert formed into Rospert, Hroshelm into Roselm, Hrosmod into Rosmund, Hrosswald, or horse-power, into Roswal, who was the hero of a Scottish poem called Roswal and Lilian. He is the disinherited heir of Naples; and, after a series of troubles, fights his way back to honour and the hand of Lilian, the fair princess of Bealn.
The feminines Hrossmund, Hroswith, Hroshild, Hrosa, have by general consent been changed from horses to roses, giving up the old idea of the Valkyr on her tall shadowy horse, weaving her web of victory, and have been treated of under the head of Latin flowers.
Hengst seems to have been used for the male, horse for the female; but jor in the North, ehu in Old German, ehvus in Gothic, meant both horse and mare; and this jor, or sometimes only the jo, is not uncommon in Norsk names, as Jogeir, Jofred, Jogrim, Jostein, or flower of chivalry, Johar or Joar, horse warrior, Joketyll, or Jokell. The women were, Jora, Jodis, Jofrid, Joreid, Jorunna, all, be it remembered, being pronounced as with a y.
Afterwards Justin devoured Jostein, and George probably consumed some of the others; indeed, some of the early specimens of Jordan among the Normans, probably accommodated their names to the river in their crusading fervour; but, en revanche, the great Gothic historian, Jornandes, is supposed to have been so called by corruption from his state name of Jordanes.
Jorund, which looks very like one of this race, is referable to another source.
Probably in honour of Thor’s he-goats we find the goat figuring in names, as Geitwald, Geithilt, and the wife of Robert Guiscard, Sichelgaita.[[124]]
[124]. Grimm; Munter; Munch; Dasent; Cambro-Briton; Blackwell, Mallet; Weber and Jamieson, Northern Romance; Sturleson, Heimskringla; Kemble Beowulf; Ellis, Specimens of Early English Poetry; Pott, Personen Namen.
Section VI.—The Eagle.
‘There is an eagle sitting on the ash Yggdrasil who knows many things.’
He is, in the North, aar, in Germany ar, in Scotland erne: though we and the modern Germans use, in eagle and adler, mere contractions of the Latin aquila. Places named from the king of birds are found wherever there are mountains.
His influence on nomenclature was exercised from the Dovrefeld and from the Alps, for the eagle-names are chiefly either Scandinavian or High German; we do not seem to have any native English ones.
The most noted of these southern ones are Arnwald, eagle power, and Arnulf, or eagle-wolf, and it is very difficult to distinguish their derivatives from one another. The saint of the Roman calendar was certainly Arnulf, a prince of the long-haired line, who in 614 retired into a convent at Metz, and became its bishop, when alive, and its patron, when dead. Another previous Arnulf, after whom he was probably christened, for their day is the same, was martyred by the heathen Franks, about the time of the conversion of Clovis; and a subsequent one was bishop of Soissons, under Pope Hildebrand. Arnoul was common as a name among the Burgundian kings, and was known in Italy as Arnolfo; but it has been swallowed up by Arnwald, or Arnvalldr, as he is in the North, perhaps because this latter was made famous in Provence by Arnaldo di Maraviglia, the troubadour; in Italy by the unfortunate Arnoldo of Brescia, and later in Switzerland by the patriot Arnold von Melchthal, and thus it has become popular enough to have the feminines Arnolde and Arnoldine.
| English. | French. | Italian. | Spanish. |
| Arnold | Arnaud | Arnoldo | Arnoldo |
| Arnaut | |||
| German. | Dutch. | North. | |
| Arnold | Arnoldus | Arnvalld | |
| Arno | Arnoud | Arnalldr | |
| Ahrent | Arend | ||
| Ahrens | |||
| Arold |
The Arnolds and Arnoldines keep their feast upon St. Arnulf’s day, thus confessing that they have no patron of their own. Ernulf is an old form found in Domesday Book, and not yet quite extinct.
The northern eagles are much confused by arin, a hearth, the same which is found at the end of Thorarin. It contracts into arn at the beginning of a word, so that, except when we meet with it in full, as in the case of the brave old sea-king, Arinbiorn, the hearth-bear, it is difficult to tell to which to send the owner, to the eyrie or the fire-side. And further, arn and arin both contract indiscriminately into ar and an, so that the list of Northern names is given rather in the dark. They are both masculine and feminine, for Arna was both used standing alone and as a termination.
Arnridur or Arneidur, eagle haste, one of these eagle ladies, had a curious history told in the Landnama-bok. She was the daughter of Asbiorn, a jarl in the Hebrides, and was taken captive by Holmfast Vedormson, who sold her to an Icelander named Ketell Thrymr. He was so much smitten with her as to pay for her twice the sum demanded by old Vedorm; but before the departure for Iceland, she found a quantity of silver beneath the roots of a tree, sufficient for her ransom. Instead of claiming it, her new master generously gave her the choice of purchasing her freedom or remaining his wife; she chose the latter alternative, and stands as honourable women do in the Landnama-bok, as the mother of a house in Iceland.
Arnthor, and his feminine Arnthora, contract into Arnor and Arnora, and this latter explains Annora, to be found in Norman pedigrees. Annora was wife of Bernard de St. Valery; and was carried into the family of Braose by king John’s victim, Maude de St. Valery, who called one of her daughters Annora. It is also said that Anora is only the contraction of Eleanora.
Ari was an adventurer who sailed to Greenland in fourteen days, fifteen years before the preaching of Christianity in Iceland.
The other old Icelandic and Norsk forms are:—
- Arnbiorg, eagle defence;
- Arndis, eagle sprite;
- Arnfinn, white eagle;
- Arnfridur, eagle fair one;
- Arngeir, eagle war;
- Arngrimm,
Arngrimur, } or Angrim,
eagle mask; - Arnkatla,
Arnkjell, } eagle cauldron; - Arnlaug, eagle liquor;
- Arnleif, eagle relic;
- Arnliotr, eagle wanderer;
- Arnmodur
or Armodr, } eagle wrath; - Arnstein, eagle stone;
- Arnthrudr, eagle maiden.
This Ari, be he eagle or hearth, seems to conduct us to the source of the first syllable of Arabella. The first lady so called, whom I can detect, was Arabella, the granddaughter of William the Lion, of Scotland, who married Robert de Quinci. Another Arabella, with her husband John de Montpynçon, held the manor of Magdalen Laver in the thirty-ninth of Henry III., and thus it was evidently a Norman name. The Normans made wild work with all that did not sound like French, and their Latin secretaries made the matter worse, so that I am much tempted to believe that both Arabella and that other perplexing name, Annabella, may once have been Arnhilda, cut down into Arbell, or Anable, and then amplified. “My Lady Arbell” was certainly what the lady was called, in her own time, whose misfortunes are so well known to us, under the name of Arabella Stuart, and from whom Arabella has been adopted in various families, and is usually contracted by Belle. Some have made it Arabella, or fair altar, others the diminutive of Arab, both equally improbable.
The most common form of Arn at present used in Scandinavia is Arnvid, the eagle of the wood, often contracted into Arve.
With much doubt I question whether the name of Ernest should not be added to this catalogue. It is obvious to take its native German form, Ernst, from ernst, earnest, grave, or serious, but this is quite unlike the usual analogy of such names. Arnust was the older German form of the name, and some even think that this was the proper name of Ariovistus, the German chief who fought with Cæsar, though others consider this to be Cæsar’s version of Heerfurst, or general, and others think they detect the universal root ar, husbandry.
The more certain form of the name begins in Lombardy, where Ernesto, lord of Este, was killed in battle by kinFg Astolfo, in 752. Is not Ernesto just what Italy would make of Arnstein, after fancying that Arnstino was a diminutive? Then, over the mountains, comes Arnust I., duke of Swabia, in right of his wife, in 1012, and Arnust the Strenuous, Markgraff of Austria, from whom Ernst spread all over Germany, especially after the Reformation, when Ernst, Duke of Brunswick, had striven so hard to spread Lutheranism among his subjects that Protestants called him the Confessor.
This is now one of the most national of German names, and it is working its way into England, though not yet with a naturalized sound. Its German feminine, Ernestine, is one of the many contracted by Stine and Tine, or by Erna. Bohemian has Arnostinka.
| English. | French. | Italian. | German. |
| Ernest | Erneste | Ernesto | Ernst |
| Dutch. | Bohemian. | Lettish. | Hungarian. |
| Ernestus | Arnost | Ernests | Erneszt |
One or two instances of Hauk occur. Hauk Habrok was a noted pirate; and there are two Haukrs in the Landnama-bok. The bird is now called hog in Denmark, and most of our families named Hogg are supposed to rejoice in Hawk as an ancestor.
As to Folco and his kin, though it is often attributed to the falcon, it has, as we shall see, quite another source.[[125]]
[125]. Grimm; Munch; Pott; Michaelis; Butler; Landnama-bok; Chalmers; Essex Pedigrees; Dugdale; Anderson, Genealogies.
Section VII.—The Raven.
Ferocious and predatory nations love and admire even the raven that scents slaughter from afar, and is the comrade and emblem of the battle-field. So as Oreb and Zeeb were among the Bedouin desolators of Israel, Hraben and Ulf were among the wasters of Christendom.
Two ravens, Mind and Memory, go forth throughout the world, then returning and perching on Odin’s shoulders, reveal to him all that passes on the earth.
The raven seems to have been the special mark of Odin, and sometimes used for Thor; for amulets have been found in Sweden and Denmark, where a raven flies before the mounted figure of Odin, and again is seen in company with the hammer of Thor. And who does not know the raven banner of the sons of Ragnar, denoting probably their family dis, which flapped its wings before victory and drooped them before defeat?
No wonder, then, that the raven has left traces in the nomenclature of Teutonic Europe, though it is not always easy to distinguish its progeny from those of ragn, judgment, and rand, a house.
The raven, in his harshest croak, entitled the Frank sovereign Chramne, who is hard to recognize as the near kinsman of the sixteen Rafns of the Landnama-bok, and Rabanus Maurus, the Latinism of the learned archbishop of Mainz of the ninth century.
Hrafenhilldur, a suitable title for a Valkyr, and Hrafenkell also figure in the Landnama-bok, and in Domesday stand Ravengar and Ravenswar, showing the transition from the gjer, or spear, down to our word war.
Rafnulf is northern, but has been mixed up with the derivatives of Randolf. Rambert, successor of St. Ansgar, in Holstein, was a bright raven, Rampold a raven prince, and the Italian form Ramusio may be another variety; but in general the raven comes at the end of words as in Wolfram, Valdraban, Bertram, &c.
Section VIII.—The Swan.
The swan might well figure prominently in the northern mythology, familiar as she was, as the fair creature of the autumn, when huge squadrons of the whistling swan fly southwards, athwart the darkened heavens and pine forests, making the air resound with the solemn beat of their heavy wings, and their deep peculiar cry.
Two swans, parents of all those who dwell on earth, had their home in the holy spring of Urd, beneath the world-tree, Yggdrasil; and the power and fierceness of these magnificent, pure, calm-looking birds connected them with the Valkyrer, who were supposed to have swan wings, and to be able to change themselves into swans. When the Valkyrier began to pass into mere magic ladies, they preserved their power of changing into swans, and by-and-by had swan garments, which they put off when they wished to assume human shapes, and which were now and then captured by some happy mortal, who thus won the owner for his bride. Swanhvit, or Swan white, was thus the suitable name of one of the three Valkyrier who married the sons of Vidja in the Vilkina Saga.
The swan transformations appear again in the beautiful tale, common to all Teutonic countries, of the twelve princes transformed into swans, and of the faithful sister who redeemed them by the nettle shirts that she wove, ever in silence, through every vicissitude of life even to the verge of death.
Svana is an Icelandic name, also Svanlaug, a swan ocean, which has contracted to Svallaug. Svanhild was used both by Norway and Germany, being Swanahilda in the latter, and Svanaburg and Swangarde were also there; but it is strange that so pretty a word for a white-skinned maiden should not have been more frequent. The Erse Gelges imitates the sense, but we have no English swan ladies, for Swanhals was only the epithet of the often commemorated lady, who is said to have discovered the corpse of Harold of Hastings.
For the most part, the swans were left to womankind; but the Germans had a Swanbrecht and Swanahold.
Section IX.—The Serpent.
Either from terror, or from a shadowy remembrance of the original temptation, the implanted enmity between the serpent and man has often resulted in a species of worship.
The North believed in the Jörmungandr, or Midgardsorm, the serpent that encircled the world and was one of the monstrous progeny of Loki.
And even till late in the seventh century the Lombards had a golden image of an enormous viper to which they sacrificed, until St. Barbatus recovered them from the heathenism into which they had relapsed.
One species of ship among the Northmen was called serpent. It was long and low, with the gilded head of a dragon at the prow, a long tail raised and curling over the stern, while with coloured shields ranged along the sides, and thirty oars on either side propelling it, besides the winged sails, it must have been more like a water-dragon than any creature that has ploughed the waves since the Plesiosaurus, and this probably accounts for the prevalence of the name of Orm among the northern nations.
Twenty-two Ormrs appear in the Landnama-bok; Orm and Ormar (Ger. Wurmhar) are both in Domesday. Orm was the founder of the Scottish house of Abernethy. Homer was considered, by the Danes of the middle ages, as the translation into Latin of the name of Ormr.
Ormilda is likewise a northern name, and it is not quite impossible that Ophelia may have been a translation of one of these serpent-names by the Greek ὄφις (ophis); at any rate the fair Ophelia shows no precedents for her name, and no other derivation for it occurs. The gentle maiden, with her most touching fate, is altogether an invention of Shakespeare, for though a woman appears in the old story of Amleth, she is of far other mould, and Ophelia may have been merely devised by himself. If so it is curious that he should have placed her in the chief land of serpentine names. A few lovers of its sound have used it in England and America.
Lind is another term for a serpent. The German dragons are always called lindwurmer, and the word is, in fact, the same as that which we still use as lithe, expressing supple grace; the adjective linths becoming, on the one side lind, on the other lithe. The Spaniards use lindo, linda, for pretty, with about the same difference of sense, in the masculine or feminine, as we do when we speak of a pretty woman, or a pretty man. Norse poetry considered it a compliment to compare a gaily dressed lady to a glistening serpent, and thus the idea seems to have passed from the reptile to the woman, so that, though the German Lintrude is the only instance of a commencing lind, the word is one of the most common of all terminations among German and Italian names, and dropping its d, so as to become linn, was made to serve as a favourite feminine diminutive, its relation to the Spanish linda, fair, keeping up its reputation. Thus we have Rosalind, or Rosaline, Ethelind, and many more of the same kind.[[126]]
[126]. Munch; Mallet; Grimm; Chalmers; Laing.
Section X.—Kettle.
Among mythological objects the kettle or cauldron can hardly be omitted; certainly the very quaintest of human names, but perhaps referring originally to the cauldron of creation, and afterwards to the sacrificial cauldrons that boiled the flesh of the victims at the great blots or sacrifices.
In the North, the vessel is ketil; in old German, chezil; in English, cytel; but the names from it seem to be almost entirely northern, though the cauldron is certainly the olla, so common a bearing in Spanish heraldry, and there at present regarded as the token of a large following, beneficently fed, somewhat in the same spirit as that in which the Janissaries used a camp kettle as their ensign.
Ketyl was the Norwegian conqueror of the Hebrides, and founder of the line of Jarls, of the Western Isles; and the family of Ketyl was very famous in Iceland, holding in honour an ancestor called Ketyl Hæng, from hæng, a bull trout; because when his father asked what he had been doing, he answered, “I am not going to make a long story of every fish I see leap; but true it is, that I chopped a bull trout asunder in the middle,” which trout turned out to be a great dragon.
Katla was Ketyl’s feminine, and not uncommon. The Eyrbiggia Saga tells wonderful stories of a sorceress so called, who, when her son was in danger from his enemies, made him appear first like a distaff, then like a tame kid, and, lastly, like a hog, but all in vain, for her spells were disconcerted by a rival sorceress, and she herself stoned to death.
Ketel does not often stand at the beginning of a word; but Ketelbiorn and Ketelridur are both Iceland names, and both the masculine and feminine are very common terminations; the masculine being, however, generally contracted into Kjel, and then into kill or kel.[[127]]
Section XI.—Weapon Names.
Weapons were so nearly divine, so full of the warlike temper of their owners, and so often endowed with powers of their own, that it seemed as if they themselves were living agents in the deeds wrought with them.
The sword forged by supernatural smiths, the terrific helmet, the heavenly shield, are dreams of every warlike nation, either endowing the Deity with the symbols of protection or wrath or of might, or carrying on the tradition of some weapon which, either its own intrinsic superiority or the prowess of its owner, had made an object of enthusiasm or of terror.
Some of these tales of magic weapons are perhaps, as Mr. Campbell suggests, remnants of the days when the iron age was coming in, and the mass of arms being of brass, one iron sword, “a sword of light,” as Gaelic tales call it, would have given irresistible superiority to its wielder, and even, perhaps, earned the worship that was paid by Attila’s Huns to the naked sword.
It accords with this theory that Iron appears as a component part of numerous names in Germany, and probably likewise in Scandinavia, though there the similarity of the sound to Iis, ice, occasions a doubt whether the word was intended for ice, or for iron. The North has, indeed, the cold but not inappropriate Snæulf and Snæbiorn, Snæfrid, snow peace, and even the uncomfortable Snælaug; and when their language had dropped the form eisarn for the metal, and called it jern, as we do iron, they probably transferred to ice the meaning of the names that once meant iron.
Isa is an old German feminine. Isambart, or iron splendour, is the best known of all the varieties, having been used in France as Ysambar, and travelled to England as the suitable baptismal name of the two engineers, to whom so much of our ‘iron splendour’ is due. Its German contractions are Isabert and Isbert.
Nor. Isgeir; Ger. Isegar, Isgar—Iron spear
Nor. Isbrand; Ger. Isebrand—Iron sword
Ger. Isebald; Fr. Isambaus—Iron prince
Nor. Iarngard; Ger. Isengard—Iron defence
Ger. Isenhard—Iron strong
Nor. Isrid—Iron vehemence
Nor. Isulf—Iron wolf
Nor. Ising—Son of iron
Steel or Staale, likewise had one name from it in the North, and, perhaps, likewise named even the historical Stilicho of barbarous birth, but the sole hope of Rome in her final fall.
But the stone of the elder age was not forgotten; the stone that at all times is the readiest weapon, and often the mark of the place honoured by conflict. To say nothing of the Seax, whether stone or stone knife of our ancestral Seaxnot, we find the North using the word Stein, both alone and as a prefix and suffix; while in England, though it is not very frequent, we have it in the honoured names of Athelstan and Wulstan.
Norwegian.
.ti 10
Norwegian.
- Stein
Sten(Dan.),}stone. - Steinarna, stone eagle.
- Steinbjorn, stone bear.
- Steinfinn, white stone.
- Steingrimm, stone helmet.
- Steinhar
Steinar,}stone warrior. - Steinthor
Steinar,}stone of Thor. - Steinulf, stone wolf.
- Steinvar, stone prudence.
Another old word for stone is hall, much used in the North; and in a few cases, such as that of the Scottish Halbert, or Hobbie, creeping to our island with its Danish invaders; but except in this, and a few surnames, unknown away from the North, save for the Hallar, or stone warrior, of Germany.
The northern varieties, however, had much reputation in their own country. Hallgerda is in the Njal Saga the haughty wife of Gunnar, of Lithend, the dame whose virulence is the cause of all the vengeance and counter-vengeance of the story.
- Hallbiorg, stone protection.
- Halldis, stone spirit.
- Hallfrid, stone fair.
- Hallgerd, stone fence.
- Hallgeir, stone spear.
- Hallgrim,
Hallgrima,}stone helmet.
- Hallkell,
Halkatla,}stone kettle. - Hallmund, stone protection.
- Hallthor,
Haldor,
Haldora,}stone of Thor. - Hallvard,
Halvor,}stone guard.
Grjot, in German gries, is another word for a stone. It was not so common as the others; but there was both a masculine and feminine Grjotgard, who in Denmark were rendered, the one into Gregorius, the other into Margarethe. The English lady, Græsia de Bruere (temp. Henry III.), must have been named from gries, a stone.
So too was Gries-hilda—Stone battle maid. Griselda was the perfectly patient wife whose tale was told by Boccaccio, and narrated by Petrarch to Chaucer, who told it in his own way. The Scots seem to have been peculiarly delighted with the lady Griselidis—and Grizell or Grisell acquired fresh honour with Lady Grisell Baillie. Grizzie or Girzie are the contractions, and there is a Grisley in the register of Madran, Cornwall, dated 1662.
Though in general Borg, or Bjorg, is used to mean protection, yet Bergstein is most probably a mountain stone, and it curiously answers to two names of noted ecclesiastics from Somersetshire, whose first syllable Dun is a hill; the same with our present word down, and the dunes on the other side of the Channel, where Dunkirk answers to our Dunchurch. The word is probably the Keltic don, dark brown, grey, or dun, used as the epithet of a hill, and lasting on like other Keltic local titles in the dunum of the Romans and the dun of the Teutons.
The two Somerset Duns are the hill-wolf, Dunulf, who is said by one of the traditions that ought to be true, to have been the swineherd whose cakes King Alfred burnt, and to have been afterwards made by him bishop of Winchester, which a Dunulf certainly was. The other was Dunstan, the mighty ascetic Abbot of Glastonbury and Archbishop of Canterbury, whose career, between wisdom and devotion, frenzy and sternness, is one of the least explicable studies of history.
His place in the calendar has given this rugged mountain stone a few namesakes.
There is a race of names, chiefly German, beginning with hun, that it would seem natural to ascribe to the Huns of Attila; but the original term for this race seems to have been in their own language Hiognu, and was retained in the pronunciation by other nations before writing and Latin had made the word Hun. In old Germanic poems, the Huns figure as giants or Titans, so that some translate, huni, or hiune, as a giant. The word hun, however, also means a stake, and it is most according to the ordinary analogy of nomenclature to suppose the names thus commencing were used in the sense of a stake, meaning either the weapon or that the bearer was strong and straight as a stake or a support, like the staff in Gustav.
| English. | French. | Italian. | German. |
| Humfrey | Onfroi | Onufrio | Humfrid |
| Humphrey | Onofredo | ||
| Humps | |||
| Numps |
The names of this commencement are Huno, Hunnerich, latterly lost in Heinrich, Hunold, the French Hunaud, Hunibert, which was corrupted in France into Humbert, and belonged to various counts of Savoy and dauphins of Auvergne, Hunigar, in Hungeir and Hunifred, which the French much affected in the form of Onfroi, which belonged to one of the short-lived kings of Jerusalem, and was Latinized as Onuphrius. In the form of Humfrey it was much used by the great house of Bohun; and through his mother, their heiress, descended to the ill-fated son of Henry IV., who has left it an open question whether dining with Duke Humfrey alludes to the report that he was starved to death, or to the Elizabethan habit for poor gentility to beguile the dinner-hour by a promenade near the tomb of Duke Humfrey Stafford in old St. Paul’s. From being a noble and knightly name, Humphrey, as we barbarously spell it, came to be a peasant’s appellation, and now is almost disused.
The northern Hundolf, or Hunnolf, and Hungerdur, are in some doubt between the dog and the stake.
The helmet is the most popular piece of armour in Germany. It comes from the word meaning to cover, the very same that furnished hol, whole, hale, and holy. To heal a wound is to cover it, and health is soundness. The Teutonic languages teem with derivatives from hulyan and helan, of which all that shall be here mentioned are our own; heel, the covered part of the foot, the hold of a ship, its hull, and the provincial hulls (chaff), and hillier (a slater).
The Latin galea was nearly related to the helm of the German, and may be from the same source. Indeed, it is, as has been said before, doubtful whether Galeazzo Visconti was the offspring of a classical or of a Gothic helmet. The only popular northern helmet is Hjalmar, the helmed warrior, apparently in honour of one of the heroes of the Orvarod Saga; but Germany has Helmar, Helmerich, in Friesland Elmark, the helmed king, Helmund, or helmet protection, Helmbold, Helmut, Helmich, Helmtac; besides numerous helms at the end of words, of which Wilhelm is the most notable.
The sword figures in northern and German nomenclature as Brand; but not from the verb to burn, but from brandr, an elastic staff, transferred to the blade of a sword. It would also mean the staff of a bow, and a short straight stripe of colour, whence a cow so marked is brandet in the north, branded with us. The Brands are many, with German and Frank commencements, such as Hildeprant, Liutprant, &c., but seldom common; though Brand sometimes stands alone in the North, and Brandolf, or sword wolf, is an old name. Perhaps the Zetland Brenda may be the feminine.
Degen, a blade, is another sword name of rarer use, and exclusively German. It also is compounded into Degenhard, then contracted into Deinhard; but the primary meaning is the hero, as it comes from the same word as tugend, virtue or valour.
Another very old term for a sword was hjøru, or hiru, in the North; hairu, heru, in the Gothic; heoru, in Anglo-Saxon. Here we see that the Heruli and Cheruschi, as the Romans called them, were both sword men. Heoruvard, or Hereward the Saxon, was the sword guardian; Heorugar answered to the northern Hjørgeir; there was a Gothic Hairuwolf, or Heruwolf; in the North, Hiørulf, Hiørleif, and Hiørdis also occur; but the syllable gets contracted into Her, and the names are not easily distinguished from those beginning with her, a warrior. Hjaraande is another northern form.
Boge, the bow, is sparsely found alone, and as Bauggisel in Iceland, and now and then in Norway at the end of a name. Bogo was Old German, and the surnames in Denmark Bugge, in England Bogue. But its English fame rests upon a champion called Bogo, who was supposed by our ancestors to have been Earl of Southampton at the time of the Norman Conquest; to have fought a battle with the invaders at Cardiff, and to have left his sword as a relic at Arundel Castle. Whether this ever occurred or not, Boge was rendered by Norman tongues into Bevis, or Beavois, and was the subject of an old metrical romance, where his great exploit is killing the tremendous giant Ascapart, who had carried off his wife, the converted Saracen princess Josyan. He lives to a good old age, sees his twin sons kings, and dies happily on the same day as his wife and his good horse Arundel, once doubtless Hirondelle, or the swallow.
His fame travelled to Italy, where Buovo d'Antona is accepted as one of the heroes of romance, though he stands alone, not fitting into any of the cycles. The etymologists of Elizabeth’s time were led by the form Beavois, in which they spelt the word, to imagine that it was Bellovisus, beautiful to behold. But if ‘Bevis of Hampton’ was anybody, he was an Anglo-Danish ‘Bow,’ or Boge, a word which, like bay, bough, and boughsome or buxom, comes from bygan, to bend.
The spear and the breastplate, Geir and Brune, will be mentioned in the next chapter. The shield is now and then found in the North, as Skialde, Skioldbjorn, Skiolulf, and Skioldvar, shield bear, wolf, and, more appropriately, shield caution. The shield wolf is capable of being contracted into Schelluf.
Saro, saru, searu, is the entire equipment or suit of armour; Sørle is a Norwegian name for it, contracted into Solle; and among the Normans was called Serlo, and considered to be the same with Saher.
If there were plenty of weapons, there was also balsam to heal their wounds; that is, if the northern names beginning with Sölv are rightly referred to salve, the same word in the North as with us. The v has for the most part been left out by pronunciation, but the dotted o remains to testify that Sölmund, or Saamund, has no connection with Sol, the sun, as little as with Solomon, by which the Danish bishops rendered it. Solveig, healing drink, is now Solva, and Sölvar is Sölvi.[[128]]
[127]. Grimm; Munch; Dasent; Int. to Nial Saga; Weber and Jamieson; Spanish Heraldry (Quarterly Review).
[128]. Munch; Michaelis; Ellis; Campbell; Montalembert.
Section XII.—Thought.
Mind or thought amounts to a mythical character in northern fancy. The word is hugr, the same with hu, still the Scandinavian word for thought, as heuge is in Holland, all coming from old verbs represented by the Mæso-Gothic gahugan, and Anglo-Saxon gehygan.
The two ravens who sat on Odin’s shoulders, and revealed to him all that passed in the world, were Huginn and Munninn, thought and memory; and when Thor made his famous visit to Utgard, it was Hugi, or thought, alone that was swift enough to outstrip him in the race. At Tours, the Northern Lights are le carrosse du roi Hugues, perhaps originally from some connection with speed of thought, though latterly mixed up with Hugues Capet.
The name has been much used by all the Teutons, and it was not inappropriately chosen by Fouqué, as that of the old knight in the Magic ring, whose character he has sacrificed for the sake of making him the representative parent of all the chivalry of Europe, except the English, which he considers as independently typified by Richard Cœur de Lion. This roving knight appears at home as Hugo; Hugur in the North; Hugues, in France; Uguccione, in Italy; and even as Hygies, in Greece, which last is, however, only a resemblance, not a translation.
| English. | Scottish. | Gaelic. | French. |
| Hugh | Hugh | Uisdean. | Hugues |
| Hugo | Hughie | Hues | |
| Hutchin | Hutcheon | Huon | |
| Huet | |||
| Hugolin | |||
| Huguenin | |||
| Ugues | |||
| Provençal. | Italian. | German. | Norwegian. |
| Oc | Ugo | Hugo | Hugr |
| Ugolino | Hugi | ||
| Ugone | |||
| Ugotto | |||
| Uguccione |
Part of the popularity of the name was, no doubt, owing to the Cymric countries having adopted it as the nearest resemblance to the mighty Hu Gadarn, from whom the national Hugh of Wales almost certainly sprung. A Frank saint, Archbishop of Rouen, and one of the many canonized cousins of Pepin, first made Hugo current among his own race; but the only person who wore it on the throne was the Gallican Count of Paris, who may have had it as a compromise between the Cymric Hu and Frank Hugr; at any rate, it was long spelt without the g in France, and declined as Hues, Huon. The old Cambrai form was Huet, with the feminine Huette.
Hugo is very frequent in Domesday Book, and the name was much more common in earlier times than at present. In Scotland and Ireland it has been pressed into the service of Anglicizing the native Aodh, or fire; but the Gaelic name Uisdean, pronounced something like ocean, is most likely intended as a rendering of Hutcheon, the form in which the Scots caught the Hugon of their Anglo-Norman neighbours, who revered the name doubly for the sake of the good bishop of Lincoln, and for another St. Hugh of Lincoln, i.e. the child murdered by the Jews, as in the Prioress’s Tale in Chaucer. St. Hugh of Lincoln is revered in the north of Italy as well as at home; and Ugo is common there in all manner of varieties, the most memorable, perhaps, being that of the terrible Genoese, Ugolino de Gherardesca, whose fearful fate has been rendered famous by Dante. In Dutch, it is Huig. Huig Groot was the home name of the author whom the world hailed as Hugo Grotius, and the Walloons use the contraction Hosch.
Hyge was the Low German form, and Hygelac is the sea-king of the Geats, the friend and lord in the poem of Beowulf. The latter syllable lac is the northern leik, and Gothic laiks, signifying both reward and sport, the same word that in some parts of England has become lake, meaning to play or to be idle, and in slang, to lark. It is rather a favourite termination, but only a commencement in the Norse feminine Leikny, fresh sport.
Hygelac is thus the sport of thought, or it may be, the reward of thought. Hugoleik was thus not an inappropriate name for an old Frank chronicler, who has had the misfortune to descend to the world by the horrible Latinism of Chochilaicus. Hugleik was current in Norway, was transformed by the Danes into Hauleik and Hovleik, and in Ireland seems to have turned into Ulic, a favourite name, but latterly transmogrified into Ulysses.
Hugibert, or bright mind, belonged to the bishop of Liege, to whom attached the Teutonic story of the hunter’s conversion by the cross-bearing stag, making him the patron of hunters, and his name very popular in France, Flanders, northern Italy, and probably once in England, since it has left us the two surnames of Hubbard and Hobart.
| English. | French. | Italian. | Portuguese. | German. |
| Hubert | Hubert | Uberto | Huberto | Hucpraht |
| Hugibert | ||||
| Hubert |
It used to be wrongly translated bright of hue.
Hugibald became the German Hugbold and the Italian Ubaldo, the prince of thought; Hugihard, or firm in mind, is the French Huard.
CHAPTER IV.
HEROIC NAMES OF THE NIBELUNG.
Section I.—The Nibelung.
As the Greeks believed in the exploits of semi-divine heroes, a sort of borderers between Olympus and the human race, so the Teutonic race had its grand universal legends of beings rising above human nature, and often embodying beliefs that once had attached to the gods themselves.
The great Teutonic legend, holding the same place as the deeds of Hercules, Theseus, and the Argonauts did in Greece, or those of Fionn with the Gael, is the story of the Nibelung. How old it may be is past computation, but it was apparently common to the whole Gothic race, since names connected with it come from Spain, Lombardy, and France: fragments of the story are traceable in England and the Faroe Islands, and the whole is told at length in Germany, Norway, and Denmark. Each of these three latter countries claim vehemently to have originated the romance, but there is little doubt that it was one of the original imaginations of the entire race, and that each division moulded the framework their own way, though with a general likeness.
Names of historical personages, probably called from its heroes, have led many to suppose it exaggerated history; but each attempt to fit it on to a real person has resulted in confusion, and led to the perception that the actors are really mythical, and the localities, which chiefly lie in Burgundian Germany, were only connected with it by that general law which always finds a home for every heroic adventure.
The tale is begun by the Norwegian Volsunga Saga, and, about half way through, it is taken up by the Danish Vilkina and Niflung Saga, and by the German Nibelungenlied, and it is finished by numerous Danish ballads and German tales, songs, and poems, with the sort of inconsistencies always to be found in popular versions of ancient myths, but with the same main incidents.
Nifelheim, the supposed abode of these heroes, is interpreted to be nebelwelt, the world of mist, or cloudland, and there can be little doubt that the heroes said to be descended from the mythic Vili, Vidga, and Velint, are, in fact, fallen deities. Germany, however, turned Nifelheim into the Netherlands, and placed the realm of Brynhild in Iceland, and the scene of Aldrian’s and Gunter’s court at Wurms, the centre of the Burgundians.
It is highly probable that the story is another form of the original myth, with the same idea, carried through, of the early death of the glorious victor, and of the revenge for his death, but only through a universal slaughter in which all perish. But the whole has become humanized, and the actors are men and not deities; and thus the allegory is far less traceable.
The story, as it begins in the Volsunga Saga, relates that there were three brothers, Fafner, Reginn, and Audvar, or Ottur, whose name is from the same source as øg, awe, so that he may be another form of Œgir. Transforming himself into the beast that bears his name, for the convenience of catching himself a fish dinner, Ottur was killed, in this shape, by Loki. The father and the other brothers insisted that, by way of compensation, in the Teutonic fashion, Loki should fill the dead otter’s skin with treasure, which he accomplished, but laid the treasure under the curse, that it should do no good to its owner. Accordingly, the amount excited the avarice of Fafner, and after murdering his father, he transformed himself into a dragon, and kept watch over the treasure, to prevent Reginn from obtaining it.[[129]]
[129]. Lettsom, Niebelung; Weber and Jamieson; Koepper; Howitt, Northern Romance; Grimm, Deutsche Heldensagen.
Section II.—Sigurd.
Sig, or siga, means, in all Teutonic tongues, conquest; and the Victor seems to have been a very old epithet for the Divinity. St. Augustin speaks of a Gothic exclamation Sihora armen, which he translates as Κύριε ἐλεήσον, and the first word of which evidently answers to Ceadmon’s epithets for the Almighty, Sigorafrea, Sigorugod, Sigoracyning.
Odin was called Sigfadir, or conquering father, and this accounts for the later notion that the adventurer was called Sigge, and assumed the divine appellation of Odin.
Thence the victorious god, conquering the serpent, yet afterwards dying, whether he were originally meant for Odin himself, or for another form of Baldur, sank into a human serpent-slayer, bearing the name of victory—Sigward, perhaps originally, but varied into Sigufrit, Siegfried, and Sigurd.
The main points in Siegfried’s story are that he was the son of Siegmund the Volsung, and of Queen Sigelind; born, according to the Book of Heroes, under the same circumstances as Perdita, in the Winter’s Tale; put, by way of cradle, into a drinking-glass, and accidentally thrown into the river, where he was picked up by the smith Mimir, and educated by him. In the Book of Heroes he is so strong that he caught the lions in the woods and hung them over his castle wall by their tails. Reginn incited him to fight with and slay the dragon, Fafner, and obtain the treasure, including the tarn-cap of invisibility. Also, on roasting and eating the heart of Fafner, he became able to understand the language of the birds. And by a bath in the blood he was made invulnerable, except where a leaf had unfortunately adhered to his skin, between his shoulders, and given him, like Achilles and Diarmaid, a mortal spot. His first discovery from the song of a bird was that Reginn meant to murder him at once; he therefore forestalled his intentions, and took possession of the fatal gift, thus incurring the curse. The Book of Heroes calls him Siegfried the horny, and introduces him at the court of the German favourite, Theodoric, and the Nibelungenlied separates the dragon from the treasure, and omits most of the marvellous in the obtaining it.
His next exploit was the rescue and awakening of Brynhild; but he fell into a magic state of oblivion as to all that had passed with her, when he presented himself at the court of Wurms, and became the husband of Gudrun, or Chriemhild, as a recompense for having, by means of his tarn-cap, enabled Gunnar to overcome the resistance of Brynhilda herself, and obliged her to become his submissive bride. Revelations made by the two ladies, when in a passion, led to vengeance being treacherously wreaked upon Siegfried, who was pierced in his vulnerable spot while he was lying down on his face to drink from a fountain during a hunting party in the forest. The remainder of the history is the vengeance taken for his death; and the North further holds that his child, Aslaug, was left the sole survivor of the race, and finally married Ragner Lodbrog, whence her descendants always trace their pedigree from Sigurdr Fafner’s bane.
His namesakes are well-nigh innumerable. There are nineteen in the Landnama-bok; and Sigurdr swarms in the earlier Scandinavian royal lines, being, perhaps, most remarkable in the person of King Sigurd the Crusader of Norway.
| English. | French. | German. | Bavarian. |
| Sigefrid | Sigefroi | Sigefrid | Sigl |
| Siward | Siffroi | Siegfrie | Norwegian. |
| Seaward | Italian. | Sigfrid | Sigvard |
| Seaforth | Sigefredo | Seifrid | Sigurdhr |
| Seyferth | Siffredo | Sikko | Siurd |
| Sicco | Sjurd | ||
| Sigo | Sjul | ||
| Polish. | Syvert | ||
| Sygfryd | Syver | ||
| Siewers |
At the instance of the king of Sweden, our Edred had sent a missionary named Sigefried, who is esteemed the apostle of Sweden, and gave a Christian sanction to the serpent-slayer’s name, whence it has continued extremely common there. The stout old Danish Earl Siward, the conqueror of Macbeth, the same who had the bear’s ears and would only die upon his feet, is an English version of the northern Sigurdr, and bore the name that is now Seaward. Indeed Sæward is found among the kings of Essex in 616, and, in fact, that line have so many prefixes of Sige, that it is likely that they thought themselves connected with Fafner’s bane. There is a Sigefugel, or Sigewolf, in their descent from Odin, who may be another form of Sigurd. Germany has made the feminine Sigfrida.
Some have considered the story to be chiefly Burgundian; and Sigmund, conquering protection, the name of Sigurdr’s father, was that of the first Catholic king of Burgundy, who was canonized both for the recovery of his kingdom from Arianism, and for the severity of his penance, after having killed his son, Sigeric, on a false stepdame’s calumny. His relics were carried to Prague in the fourteenth century, and the effect of the translation appeared at once in the name of the Bohemian-born Emperor Sigismund, from whom this became European, and formed the feminine Sigismunda. Gismonda is thus an old Lombardic feminine.
| English. | French. | Italian. | German. |
| Sigismund | Sigismond | Sigismondo | Sigmund |
| Sæmund | Portuguese. | Sismondo | Sigismund |
| Sigismundo | |||
| Norwegian. | Polish. | Illyrian. | Hungarian. |
| Sigmund | Zygmunt | Sisman | Zsigmond |
| Sæmund | Bohemian | Zsiga | |
| Zikmund |
Some have imagined that the curious correspondence of names, when Sigebert, the Frank, married Brynhild, the Goth, is a sign that the Nibelung referred to the Austrasian court; but the Frank Sigebert would have been a very poor serpent-slayer, and, no doubt, only bore the name as a remembrance of him, as did our East Saxon monarch Sæbert, and the Spanish bishop Siseberto. It has lasted on in Germany and Friesland, to be called Sizo, Sitto, Sibert, and Sidde, and is the English surname Sebright. Sigelind, conquering snake, now and then used by German ladies, has the Eastern-looking abbreviation Zelinde.
Sigridur, or conquering impulse, was a favourite among northern ladies. Sigrid the haughty of Sweden, was wooed by King Olaf Trygvesson, and had accepted him; but on her refusal to be baptized, he struck her on the face with his glove, and said, ‘Why should I have thee, an old faded jade, and a heathen to boot.’ She remembered his discourtesy against him, and stirred up the war, which ended in his fatal battle with Earl Sigvalddr. Sigrid is Sired in Domesday; in the North, she is shortened into Sîri, and then Latinized as Serena.
Sigvalldur, conquering power, curiously ran into Sjovald, from whence we take our surname Shovel, one of the many by which our naval commanders are traceable to the vikings.
Sigeheri, Sigehere, Sighar, conquering warrior, is what on Norman lips was Sagar, and then Saher, the hereditary name of the De Quincys, and as a surname spelt Sayers.[[130]]
The other forms are,
| North. | |||||||
| Sigbiorg Siborg Siber | } Conguering protection | Ger. Sigburg | |||||
| German. | English. | Frisian. | Italian. | ||||
| Sigebald | Sibbald | Sibold Sibel | Sibaldo | } | Conquering prince | ||
| North. Sigbiorn; Eng. Siborne—Conquering bear | |||||||
| German. | Frisian. | Spanish. | |||||
| Sigbod | Sibot Sibo Sibbe | Sisebuto | } Messenger of victory | ||||
| Nor. | German. | Frisian. | |||||
| Sigbrand | Sigbrand | Sibrant Sibbern | } | Conquering sword | |||
| Nor. Sigfus—Conquering impetuosity | |||||||
| German. | English. | Frisian. | French. | ||||
| Sighard Siegert | Sigehard | Siard Siade | Sicard | } | Conquering firmnesss | ||
| Ger. Sighelm—Conquering helmet | |||||||
| Nor. Sighvatr—Conquering swiftness | |||||||
| Nor. Sigmar; Ger. Sigmar—Conquering greatness | |||||||
| Nor. Signy—Conquering freshness | |||||||
| Ger. Sigrad—Conquering advice | |||||||
| Ger. Sigrich—Conquering ruler | |||||||
| Sigtrud—Conquering maid | |||||||
| Nor. Sigtrygge—Conquering security | |||||||
| Nor. Sigulf, Siulf; Eng. Sigewolf—Conquering wolf | |||||||
[130]. Nibelung; Weber and Jamieson; Kemble, Beowulf; Michaelis; Pott; Butler; Heimskringla.
Section III.—Brynhild.
A thorough Valkyr was Brynhilda, the maiden whom Odin had touched with his sleep-thorn, so that she lay in a deep slumber in the midst of a circle of flame, through which Sigurd made his way, aroused her, and won her for his own; but became utterly and magically oblivious of all that had passed as soon as he had returned to common life. This is the northern version, the evident origin of our fairy tale of the Sleeping Beauty, pricked not by the thorn of Odin, but by the distaff, perhaps, of one of the Nornir. The Book of Heroes reduces the circle of flame to a mere strong castle, with seven gates; and the Nibelungenlied only takes up the story at the time of Sigfried’s appearance at the court of Burgundy, and courtship of Brynhild’s rival, Chriemhild.
Brynhild had retained her matchless strength, and, like the Greek Atalanta, was only to be won by a champion who could excel her in games of strength, and her conquered suitors were all put to death. Gunther, the brother of Chriemhild, being willing to obtain her on these conditions, Siegfried, by means of his tarn-cap, invisibly vanquished the Valkyr, while Gunther appeared to be her conqueror; and when she thus had been compelled to give her hand, it was Siegfried who, again unseen, broke down her violent resistance, and compelled her to become a submissive wife, on which she lost all her supernatural strength. Siegfried was rewarded by the hand of Chriemhild, Gunther’s sister.
By-and-by the two sisters-in-law had a desperate quarrel about precedence; in the old northern version, which should wade farthest into the Rhine when bathing; in the half-civilized German song, which should first enter the cathedral of Wurms; and in the course of it Brynhild was roundly informed that she had not given way to her husband, but to Siegfried. Valkyr nature could not stand such an affront, so Brynhild set on Hagen to assassinate Siegfried. The northern story makes her slay herself, and be burnt with his corpse on a funeral pile, in Suttee fashion; the German tames her into being merely brought to repentance too late by the death of her husband.
No doubt Brynhild was commemorated by the name of the Gothic princess, daughter of King Athanagild, who, for her misfortune, was married to the Frank Sigebert, and through the whole of her long life continued a fierce and dauntless resistance to her savage rival Fredegund, until, when both were aged women, Brenhilda fell into her rival’s power, and was implacably sentenced to be dragged to death by wild horses. French historians aver that her name was at first only Bruna, and that hilda was added to make it royal; but this is very unlikely, since Spanish historians call her Brenhilda. The Latinism is Brunechildis, in French Brunehault, but the name has not been followed, except by the northern race, whose existence was hardly developed at the time of the misfortunes of the Austrasian queen, and who therefore take it from her original. Among these it has been contracted to Brunilla and Brynil.
The meaning is the Valkyr of the Breastplate, the byrni of old Scottish, bryne of the North, bruniga of the German, broigne in Old French, bronha in Provençal. A near connection of this name is the northern Bryngerd, placing the gentle Gerda in this cuirass; and the North has likewise Brynjar, properly hari, the Cuirassier, and Brynjolfr, which wolf in a breastplate was a great Icelandic ancestor, and has been cut short into Brynjuv and Brynjo.
The Chriemhild, or Helmet Valkyr of the Nibelung, is the Gudrun of the northern version; and Gudrun, as before said, would be either good wisdom, or, far more probably, war wisdom. In the Nibelungenlied, the action of the story begins with Chriemhild telling her mother her dream of her favourite falcon being torn to pieces by two eagles; and when it is explained to mean her future husband, vowing that she will never marry. However, Siegfried’s arrival, and his successful exertions in winning Brunhild for Gunther, overcame all the lady’s scruples.
She had lived happily ten years in the Netherlands with Siegfried before, on a visit to Wurms, she was so ill-advised as to reproach Brynhild with his victory over her; and afterwards was deluded into sewing a mark upon his garments to show where was his vulnerable spot. After his death, she found out the murderer by the ordeal of touch, and treasured up a deadly and enduring spirit of revenge; perhaps the most terrible of all the many forms in which legend has proclaimed the old rule of blood for blood.
She was left the heiress of all Siegfried’s treasure, as well as of his Nibelungen or Netherlandian troops, but it was taken from her by her husband’s murderer, and sunk beneath the Rhine. After thirteen years of widowhood, she was induced to marry Etzel, or Atli, king of the Huns, by the promise that he would avenge all her injuries; but still she bided her time for thirteen more years, at the end of which space she invited her brothers and all their champions to visit her in Hungary at Etzelenburg. They had not long been there before she stirred up a most tremendous battle, in which mutual destruction took place, as is minutely related in the ancient lays. Finally her brother Gunther was captured and slain at her savage command, and she herself slew the murderer Hagen with Siegfried’s own sword. Immediately after, however, she was put to death as an act of justice by old Sir Hildebrand; at least so says the Nibelungenlied; but in the Kœmpe Viser there is a still further revenge, for the secret of the deposit of the treasure is left with the son of Hagen, who beguiles Grimhild into the cave with the hope of its restoration, and there locks her in and starves her to death.
The historical Attila is really said to have had a German wife named Kremheilch. The Gudrun of the North is a far more amiable personage. She forgives her brother, and is with difficulty persuaded to marry Atli, who is, in this version, Brynhild’s brother, and lays the plot against Gunther, in order to avenge his sister’s death. She does all in her power to warn them, but in vain; and when all had been slain, her senses failed her, and in her frenzy she slew her two children by Atli, and made him drink their blood; he died of horror, and she cast herself into the sea, but was carried alive to the land of King Jonakr, whom she married, and then underwent other misfortunes which extinguished the last remains of her family. Her name of Gudrun has already been treated of.[[131]]
[131]. Nibelungenlied; Weber and Jamieson; Thierry; Mariana; Munch.
Section IV.—Gunther.
Gunth (Goth.), guth (A.G.S.), gunnr (North), gond or gonz (High German), all meant war or battle, and have an immense number of derivative names, inextricably mixed up with those from God and Gut; and it is even thought that there may be a close connection between them, so much did the Teutons believe their deities to be gods of battle, and goodness to be courage. The word gunth has lived on even in Lombardy in the Gonfalon, the war banner, solemnly carried out to battle in a car as the images of the gods had formerly been, in charge of the official known as the gonfaloniere in the republics of northern Italy. Gundahari, warrior, was really an old name among the kings of Burgundy, who were, no doubt, called in honour of Gunther or Gunnar, the eldest brother of Kriemhild, and husband of Brynhild. He seems to have been brave but weak, led first by Sigurd, then by Hagen, but at last fighting with great spirit.
Gunthar, or Gunnar, at full length Gundahari, continued in favour with the Burgundians; and an abbot in Brittany being canonized, left Gonthier to France, and Gontiere to Italy.
This masculine Gunnar was very common in the North, and so was likewise the feminine Gunnr, war, or Gundvar, war prudence, both confounded in Gunnar, which historians generally render as Gunnora.
Gunnhildur was in high favour in the North. One most celebrated owner was the wicked queen of Eric Blodaxe. She was said to be a native of the Orkneys, and to have filled Scandinavia with her crimes, upon the details of which, however, Norse and Danish histories are not quite agreed.
Gunhild again was the Danish princess whose murder on St. Brice’s night brought her brother Sweyn down in fury upon England; and her nephew Knud likewise had a daughter so called, but who was Anglicized into Æthelthryth; and each generation of the Godwine family records a lady Gunhild. After the Conquest, however, Gunhild died away in England; but it has never been discarded in the North, where it is now called Gunnilda, or Gunula.
That daughter of William the Conqueror, or sister of Gherbod the Fleming, whichever she was, who was the ancestress of the Warrennes, and is buried at Lewes, has a name so much disguised as to be as doubtful as her birth. It maybe Gunatrud, a Valkyr title, or Gundridur, war haste, or Gundrada, war council, the same as the Spanish Gontrado; at any rate it has had few followers.
Gunnr and Göndol were both Valkyr titles, and the Valkyr Göndol’s most noted namesake was a maiden of the Karling race, who was bred up by St. Gertrude, at Nivelle; and on her return to her father’s castle at Morzelle, used to go to her early devotions at a church half a league distant from home. On winter mornings she was lighted by a lantern, which the legend avers to have been blown out by the wind, but rekindled by her prayers. Thence comes the name of St. Gundula’s lamp, applied to the Tremella, an orange-coloured jelly-like fungus that grows on dead branches of trees in the winter. She is the patroness of Brussels, where the church of St. Gudule is the place used for coronations; but her common title in Flanders is Ste. Goëlan, while the convent built in her honour at Morzelle, in Brabant, is Ste. Goule.
War could not fail to have her wolf, the Gundulf of Norman England, the Gunnolfr of Iceland, the Gundolf of Germany, and, far more notable than either, the Gonsalvo or Gonzalo of Spain, always frequent among the Visigothic families, and becoming especially glorious in the person of the great captain, the brave and honourable conqueror of Naples, and the trainer of the infantry that gave the predominance to Spain for a hundred years, until they fell as one man at Rocroy.
| French. | Provençal. | Spanish. | Portuguese. | Italian. |
| Gonsalve | Guossalvo | Gonzalo | Gonçalo | Consalvo |
| Gonzalve |
The war raven, Gunthram, figures in French history as Gontran, and the war serpent is the German Gundlin, or Gondoline, when a lady; when a man, the terrible Guthorm, whom, as King Alfred’s foe, godson, and tributary, our histories call Guthrum. In Denmark, the name was very early contracted into Gorm; but it has been so often spelt Gudthorm, that a doubt has arisen whether the latter half of the word may not be thorm or thyrma.
It is very difficult to distinguish between the derivatives of God and Gund, both being very apt to eliminate the distinctive letters. On the whole, however, it seems as if these warlike names had been some of the most universal throughout the continent, though in England they were very scarce, and do not occur in royal pedigree, nor in hagiology, except in the case of St. Guthlac, the first founder of the original Croyland Abbey, whose name in the North would be Gudleik or Gulleik, war sport.
Hosts of northern Frankish and Visigothic names thus commence, and many feminines end with this word. The other varieties thus beginning are:—
| Nor. Gunbjorg; Ger. Gondaberge; Goth. Sp.—War protection | ||||
| Nor. Gunbjorn—War bear | ||||
| German. | French. | |||
| Gondebert | Gondobert | } | ||
| Gondeberta | Gombert | } | War splendour | |
| Gumpert | Jombert | } | ||
| Ger. Gondebald; Fr. Gondebaud; Sp. Gondebaldo—War prince | ||||
| Nor. Gudbrand, Guldbrand, Gulbrand—War sword | ||||
| Ger. Gundekar—War spear | ||||
| Nor. Gunlaug, Gullaug—War liquor | ||||
| Nor. Gunleif, (Eng. Cunliffe)—War love | ||||
| Nor. | German. | Spanish. | ||
| Gudmar Gulmar | Gundemar Gutmar | Gondomiro Gondomar | } | War Greatness |
| Nor. | German. | |||
| Gudmund Gulmund | Gundemund Gunimund | } | War hand | |
| Ger. Gunderich; Fr. Gonderic; Sp. Gonderico—War ruler | ||||
| Sp. Gondesinda—War strength | ||||
| Nor. Gunnstein—War jewel | ||||
Gunthe was the old German feminine contraction for any of these warlike damsels, and being further endeared into Jutte, or Jutta, was probably the source, under the hands of chroniclers, of the Judiths, who made their appearance among the Franks so long before the days of Scripture or saintly names.[[132]]
[132]. Munch; Michaelis; Nibelung; Weber and Jamieson; Mariana; Thierry; Garland for the Year; Alban Butler; Fleischner, Onomatologie; Lappenberg; Dasent, Burnt Njal; Marryat, Jutland.
Section V.—Hagen.
Haghen, Hagano, or Hogni, may be considered as the villain of the Nibelungen. In the Danish version he is the half-brother of Grimhild and Gunther, with an elf-father; in the German, he is their wise and far-travelled uncle, who first related the adventures of the newly-arrived stranger, Siegfried, but always seems to have disliked him, and readily undertook to revenge Brynhild’s injuries upon him. As Loki deceived Frigga, he persuaded his niece to mark where was the mortal spot on her husband’s skin, and contrived that no wine should be taken into the forest, so that Siegfried might be reduced to lie down to drink at the stream, and thus expose the fatal place.
The body bled at his touch, and he was the chief object of Chriemhilt’s vengeance, more especially after he had taken the treasure away from her, placed it in a cave beneath the Rhine, and jealously guarded the secret of the spot. When she invited the brothers to Hungary he was much averse to the journey, till he found that his disclination was imputed to fear, when he became vehemently set upon going, in spite of the omens against it. Taunts and injuries passed between him and Chriemhilt, and the next day the fierce and furious battle began, which raged till Gunther and Haghen alone were left. After Gunther had been killed, Chriemhilt offered Haghen his life, on condition that he would disclose the place where the treasure was, but he refused, and died by her hand.
There is a curious poem, called the Duke of Aquitaine, which is evidently another version of the same notion of Haghen. Hagano, a descendant of the Trojans, is there sent to deprecate the invasion of Attila, and afterwards assists the Burgundian king Gunther of Wurms in an attack on Duke Walther of Aquitaine, and Hildegunna, sister to Gunther, in order to recover a treasure that they had carried off from Attila’s court, where they had been hostages. This version of the great central story of Europe named Hagen, Count of Aquitaine, the uncle of Charles the Bald; but the North has used it more, in the form of Hogen.
The name is either from hagr, deft or handy, or else from hagi, a hook; most probably the latter, perhaps in connection with the other meaning, a thorn or prickle, so that here we may find a personification of the thorn destroying the victor. The word hag is seldom found in names, and is probably imitated from Hagen, without much regard to the meaning. It occurs only in the Danish, as Hagbrand, Hagbart, contracted as Habaar, or Habor; Hagthor, which is incorrectly modernized as Hector; and Hagny. The more usual form in Denmark is Hogne, probably from the German Hagano.
But there has been a confusion between this Hagan, or Hogni, and Haagan, properly Haakvin, from haa, high, and kyn, meaning of high kin, the well-known Norwegian and Danish name of many a fierce viking; sometimes Latinized as Haquinus, Frenchified as Haquin, and called in the North Haaken, or Hakon. Domesday has it as Kaco, Hacon, Hacun, and Hakena; and Hacon still lingers among the fishermen of the Orkneys. Other northern names, with the same opening, haa (pronounced ho), are Haamund, no doubt the parent of our Hammond, and Haavard, whence our Hayward, both alike meaning high protection.[[133]]
[133]. Lettsom; Nibelungenlied; Weber and Jamieson; Munch; Anderson, Royal and Noble Genealogies.
Section VI.—Ghiseler.
Ghiseler is one of the brothers of Gunther, an inoffensive personage, and the only one of the party of whom Chriemhild took any civil notice, when she had decoyed them to her court to their destruction. Nevertheless he did not escape, but died in combat with Wolfhart, of Bern, when the champions of Dietrich could not be withheld from the fray.
His name is tolerably clear—Giselhar, the pledged warrior. The first syllable is from gildan, geldan, keltan, to owe, or to pay what was due. The terms ran through all the Gothic tongues, and caused the Anglo-Saxons to call all the offerings due to the gods gield and ghëlstar.
A pledge of mutual obligation was, in Anglo-Saxon, gisel, and is still gidsel in the North; in the German, geissel. Thence, far more probably than from the older word geisli, a beam, or nimbus, was derived the Frank Gisel, as a maiden’s name. A daughter of Pepin, so called, was offered to Leo X. of Constantinople; and afterwards the daughter of Charles the Simple, who became the pledge of amity between the Karlingen and Northmen, by her marriage with Rollo. She was called by the French Gisèle, by the Normans Gisla, in which same form it has lived on in Friesland and in Norway. The commencement is not, however, a very common one in the North, though Giselher is repeated in Gissur Isleifson, Bishop of Iceland, in the eleventh century. Gislaug, the pledge drink, is likewise northern, but though gils is an extremely common termination, almost all the names where it is a commencement are Frankish, or German, and thus probably Giselfrid came to the North as Gisrod.
Giselhilda, and Giselberge, were German, also Gisalhart, and Giselof; and Gisalrico is found among the Spanish Goths. Geltfried and Giltimir are also German forms, and the latter explains Gelimer, the Vandal king in Africa, conquered by Belisarius.
Gils is a common Norwegian name, and no doubt contributed to the English Giles, French Gilles, and Spanish Gil, though all these look to the Greek hermit in France, Aigidios, as their patron. In the North, Ægidius is rendered by Ilian, Yljan, Yrjan, Orjan, but not by Giles: and it would seem as if Julius had been confounded with the name, as well as, perhaps, Giolla, a servant.
Giolla Brigde, or Bridget’s disciple, is thought to have contributed the Scottish examples of Gilbert, which is incorrectly explained by some as Gelb-bert, or yellow bright; but is clearly traceable to the old Frank Giselbert. There were four saints so called, namely, an abbot of Fontenelle, a great friend of William the Conqueror, an Auvergnat knight in the second Crusade, the English founder of the order of Gilbertine monks, and a bishop of Caithness; and it has been a prevalent name in England, Scotland, and the Low Countries, with many contractions, especially in the latter.[[134]]
| English. | French. | Italian. | German. |
| Gilbert | Guilbert | Gilberto | Giselbert |
| Gilpin | Gisebert | Dutch. | Gilbert |
| Gil | Gileber | Gysbert | Gisbert |
| Gibbon | Gilbert | Gysbert | Gispert |
| Gipp | Ghiliber | Flemish. | Giseprecht |
| Gilli |
[134]. Munter; Munch; Michaelis; Grimm; Took.
Section VII.—Ghernot.
Ghernot was Gunther’s second brother, who was free from the guilt of the murder of Siegfried, and greatly displeased with Haghen for depriving Chriemhilt of the treasure; but he shared the fate of his brothers, being killed early in the encounter by the Markgraf Rudiger.[Rudiger.]
Perhaps, necessity of war, or spear compulsion, would be the best sounding translations of this remarkable name.
Ghere, the same as the northern Gejr and German Kero, is the messenger sent to invite Siegfried and Chriemhild to Wurms, when they paid the visit that had such fatal consequences; and gher or gjer is one of the most frequent of the component parts of names. Its right and original meaning is a spear, the same as that of the Latin quiris and Keltic coir. Thence the Anglo-Saxons called all other weapons waren, and the battle war, a word we still use, just as the French do guerre, and the Spaniards guerra.
Gar is quite in modern German, and gher has dropped out of the language, and thus most of the German names commencing with it have been misinterpreted to mean all, but it is impossible to compare them with their northern cousins without tracing the same spear in both.
The chief favourite amongst these spear titles seems to have been once a Valkyr name Gêrdrûd, or Geirthrud, the spear maid; for, alas! the pretty interpretation that has caused so many damsels of late to bear it, as meaning all truth, is utterly untenable, unless they will regard themselves as allegorically constant battle-maids, armed with the spear of Ithuriel.
The ancient popularity of this name was owing to a daughter of one of the great Pepins, in their maire du palais days. She founded the abbey of Nivelle, and was intensely revered by the Franks and Germans, chiefly on account of the miracles imputed to her. At old heathen feasts, the cups quaffed in honour of gods or demi-gods were prefaced by the words “Wuotansminne, Thorsminne,” meaning in Woden’s or Thor’s memory; but the Christian teachers changed these toasts to be in the memory of the saints, such as Michelsminne for the guardian angel. Johannisminne was the special favourite, and was supposed to be a charm against poison, because the Evangelist was thought to have experienced the fulfilment of the promise, “If ye drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt you,” as typified by the dragon in his cup. The royal nun, Gertrude, was almost as great a favourite as the Apostle with the Germans, and the regular toasts at their banquets came to be Johannisminne and Gerdrutsminne, till drinking to St. John and St. Gertrude were almost a proverb for revelry.
Let us observe, en passant, that minne, lately in honour of Minna Troil erected into a lady’s name, is from the Gothic munan, to remember, from the Saxon form of which we take our mind. Minnie has lately become a favourite name, and must be referred to this source.
A second St. Gertrude, of noble blood in Saxony, was abbess of Heldelfs, had an exceedingly high reputation for sanctity, and died in 1334, leaving her name doubly popular.
| English. | French. | Italian. | Portuguese. |
| Gertrude | Gertrude | Gertrude | Gertrudes |
| Gatty | Geltruda | ||
| German. | Bavarian. | Netherlands. | Danish. |
| Gertraud | Traudl | Drutje | Gertrud |
| Trudchen | Traul | Trudje | Jartrud |
| Trudel | |||
| Slovak. | Lettish. | Esth. | Polish. |
| Jera | Gêrde | Kert | Giertruda |
| Jerica | Gerte | Truto | Lithuanian. |
| Jedert | Gedde | Truta | Trude |
| Jra | Hungarian. | ||
| Gertrud |
There is great confusion between Gerwald and Gerhard; the one meaning spear power, the other firm spear.
Though gar was not a common English prefix, the first Saint Gerhold was Anglo-Saxon. He migrated to Ireland, received the cowl in the monastery of Mayo, founded that of Tempul Gerald, died in 732, and became the subject of one of the Irish legends of saints. It declared that the wife of Caomhan, king of Connaught, turned him out of the fort of Cathair Mhor, with his 300 saints, who thereupon joined him in one of the peculiar prayers of Irish saints, that there never should be another king of the same race for ever. However, he afterwards relented, and only cut off from the throne the offspring of the lady herself, while to those of the king’s former wife he granted the right of sitting first in the drinking house and of arraying the battle. The Irish call him Garalt, and have confused his name with the Keltic Gareth, one of the knights of the Round Table, so that Garrett and Gerald are regarded as identical.
The great prevalence of the name in Ireland is, however, chiefly owing to the Normans. There had been two Frank saints thus called in the twelfth century, Gerard of Toul, and Girroald of Fontenelle; but it was also a Lombardic name, and the old Florentine family of the Gherardi claims the parentage of one of the many Gerolds who accompanied William the Conqueror, the same whose descendant[descendant], Maurice Fitzgerald, was one of the companions of Earl Strongbow, the parent of the Fitzgeralds, or Geraldins, of Kildare, the turbulent race, who disputed with the Butlers of Ormond the supremacy of the island. Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a daughter of this house, was the lady who, in imitation of Beatrice and of Laura, was erected by Surrey into the heroine of his poetry, under the title of the Fair Geraldine, thus leading to the adoption of this latter as one of the class of romantic Christian names. Gerald Barry, the Welsh chronicler who Latinizes himself as Giraldus Cambrensis, may have been rightly Gareth, and the provincial form Jarrett, still common in the North, is probably rather a remnant of the Gareth of Strathclyde, than a version of the Norman Gerald.
Another St. Gerald, bishop of Namur, left his name to be very common in the Low Countries, where we have already shown how curiously the transformation was effected of Gerhard Gerhardson into Desiderius Erasmus. Lastly, a St. Gerhard went on a mission to convert the Hungarians, and the name, or rather the two names, for there is no distinguishing between them, have become universal.
| English. | French. | Provençal. | Italian. |
| Gerard | Gerard | Girart | Gherardo |
| Garrett | Giraud | Guerart | Gerardo |
| Jarett | Girairs | ||
| German. | Netherlands. | Dutch. | Frisian. |
| Gerhard | Gerard | Gerhardus | Geerd |
| Gerrit | Gerrit | ||
| Geert | |||
| Danish. | Polish. | Lettish. | Hungarian. |
| Gerhard | Gieraud | Gerkis | Geller |
| Geert | Gêrts |
| English. | French. | Italian. | German. | Frisian. |
| Gerald | Giraud | Giraldo | Gerold | Gerold |
| Guirauld | Gerelt | |||
| Girault | Gerel |
Gerhardine in German, and Giralda in Italian, are the feminines, besides our own Geraldine. Possibly Giralda may once have been the Valkyr name Geirhilda, which has survived in the North in the form of Jerilla, jer being the northern corruption of geir. Jerlau is thus Geirlaug, and Jeruf, or Jerul, Geirolf.
In like manner, though with different pronunciation, we make Jervis out of the old Norman Gervais, which was probably Geirfuss, or warlike eagerness. It used to be explained as gerfast, all firm, but this is, of course, wrong; though, as I have not found Geirfuss in the roll of northern names, and it would have been Gerfuns in Germany, where Gerwas is common, as is Gervais in France, and Gervaso in Italy, this must be doubtful.
The Gerberge of French history, the queen of Louis l'Outremer, was the same as the Geirbjorg of the North: Gerwin, or spear friend, made the Guarin of France, whence the Waryn of a few English families, and Guarino of Italy.
The old Spanish-Gothic feminine Garsendis was certainly Garswinth, or spear strength, and the equally ancient Garsias, or Garcia, so common in Galicia and Navarre, must have its commencement from the same source, though the last syllable has lost its individuality on the soft Spanish tongues. It was long a royal name, but was dropped about the thirteenth century, and makes its last public appearance in the person of the Peruvian prince and author Garcilasso de la Vega.
The spear raven, Gerramn, is the old English Jerram, that has become lost in Jerome; and the spear prince, Gerbold, has furnished the family name of Garibaldi. Gar is very rare in native Anglo-Saxon names, whether as a beginning or end, but most frequent in all the other branches of the Teuton stock; and its other form, gais, is the most reasonable explanation of the beginning of the name of Geisserich, the king of the Vandals, who has been made into Genserich, and then translated into the Gander king! The remaining forms are:—
| Ger. Gerbert; It. Gerberto—Bright spear | ||||
| Ger. Gerfrid—Spear peace | ||||
| Nor. | German. | Neth. | Frisian. | |
| Gierlac | Gerlach Gerlib | Garlef Garlaf | Garleff | Spear sport Spear relic |
| Nor. Geirmund, Garmund—Spear hand | ||||
| Nor. Geirny—Spear fresh; Gierrandur—Spear house | ||||
| Nor. Geirridur—Spear impulse; Gierstein—Spear stone | ||||
| Nor. Geirthiofr—Spear thief; Geirvör—Spear prudence | ||||
| Nor. Geirvart; Fris. Gerber—Spear guard | ||||
Section VIII.—Folker.
Of all the champions of Burgundy, none is more full of gallantry and bonhommie than Folker, the mighty fiddler of Alsace, a true knight, always equally ready for music or for fighting. If the Nibelungenlied be really another form of the Eddaic myth, Folker may answer to Bragi, the god of poetry, but he has his own individual character of blithe undaunted courage. Even when the terrible battle has begun, and the heroes find themselves hemmed in by Chriemhild’s warriors, Folker fiddles on, until he dies by the hand of Hildebram.
Folker’s name is from our own word folk, the near relation of the Latin vulgus, whose progeny are found all over Europe in vulgar, vulgo, foule, &c. Most likely Folkvard is really the right version, and would mean people’s guard, and Folker is rather its corruption than independently the people’s warrior, and the same with Folko; they are, therefore, all thrown together in the following table.
| English. | German. | Frisian. | Nor. |
| Fulk | Volquard | Folkert | Folkvard |
| French. | Volkvart | Foke | Folke |
| Fulcher | Folkward | Fokko | Fokke |
| Feuquiers | Folquhard | ||
| Foulques | Folkhard | ||
| Fouques | Folker | ||
| Folko | |||
| Fulko | |||
In the Foulques stage, this name was home, alternately with Geoffroi, by the counts of Anjou, and with the strange soubriquets of Nerra and Réchin. One of these counts, the grandfather of our Henry II., became king of Jerusalem; but our English Angevins did not perpetuate the name; and though six Fulcos are recorded in Domesday, Fulk never took root in England, and is chiefly remembered because it belonged to Fulk Greville, the friend of Sydney. It was, in fact, with all its varieties, chiefly Burgundian.
Germany shows a few other forms: Folkwin, or Volquin, which exactly answers to Demophilos, or Publicola; Folkrad, Folkrich, and Folkmar; also Folkbert, which some prefer to Wilibert, as the origin of the Savoyard Filiberto, and our Fulbert.[[135]]
[135]. Nibelungenlied; Weber and Jamieson; Munch; Michaelis.
Section IX.—Dankwart.
In the Nibelungenlied the father of Chriemhilt, who dwelt at Wurms, was ‘hight Dankrat,’ and the marshal at the court was Dankwart the swift, Hagen’s brother. Innocent as he was of a share in his brother’s crime, he was the first to be assailed while he was dining with Etzel’s knights, and he had to fight his way through Chriemhild’s warriors before he could return to his comrades in the hall, when he kept the door until, like all the rest, he perished in the massacre.
The first syllable of the name is the same as our word thank, and the name means thankful or grateful. The father of Chriemhild was thus Thank-rede, or grateful speech, and from him the Northmen seem to have taken their Thakraad, which in Normandy became Tancred, the knight of Hauteville, whose twelve gallant sons chased the Saracens from Apulia, and were the founders of the only brave dynasty that ever ruled in the enervating realms of the Two Sicilies. The son of one of these gallant knights, Tancredi di Puglia, was the foremost in the first crusade, and the favourite hero of Tasso, in whose epic he is a Christian Achilles; and Tancredi again was the last Sicilian king of the true Norman line, the same whose bickerings with Cœur de Lion make so unpleasant an episode in the third Crusade.
Dankwart, thankful guardian, lingered in Germany; and in 1668, a Yorkshire register records the baptism of Tankard, the son of a ‘Turkey merchant,’ who had probably learnt the name from some of his foreign connections. Dankheri, thankful warrior, was in Normandy Tancar. Dankker is the German surname, and has even come to Tanzen; so that our surname Dance may have the same origin. Thangbrand was the German priest whom King Olaf Tryggvesen of Norway sent to convert Iceland, but whose severity led to his expulsion; and Germany also mentions Dankmar; but the prefix is almost exclusively German.[[136]]
[136]. Nibelungenlied; Munch; Pott.
Section X.—Theodoric.
Theodoric of Bern is hardly a genuine hero of the Nibelung, being really the main figure in a cycle of Germanic romances of his own; but as he, under the abbreviation Dietrich, is brought in to play a considerable part in the final action of the tale, this seems the fittest place for treating of him and the names in connection with him.
He seems to have been brought into the Nibelungenlied because the Germanic mind could conceive of nothing considerable passing without him. He is represented as one of the four-and-twenty princes in King Etzel’s train, and as anxious to prevent mischief to the visitors from Burgundy, warning them of Chriemhilt’s enmity, and refusing to attack them at her request. When the great slaughter began, it was Dietrich who conveyed the king and queen safely out of the mêlée, and withheld his men from engaging in it, until almost at the end, when they could no longer be restrained, and rushing into the fray were all slain except old Sir Hildebrand, though on the other hand, Gunther and Haghen alone remained alive of the Burgundians. Dietrich then armed himself, and after a fierce combat, made them both prisoners, and delivered them up to Chriemhilt, fully intending that she should spare their lives; but when her relentless fury had fallen on them, he assisted King Etzel to bury the dead, and to return the horses and armour of their fallen champions to their respective countries.
Other German romances, however, elevate this prince to a much higher rank. The Book of Heroes, written by Wolfram of Eschenbach and Heinrich of Ofterdingen, makes Dietrich of Bern, in Lombardy, son of King Dietmar. Hearing of Chriemhilt’s rose garden, which measured seven miles round, and was guarded by twelve champions, he was seized with a desire to do battle with them, for love of battle, not of ladies, though the victor was to receive a chaplet of roses and a kiss from the young lady. The wise old Sir Hildebrand, of the Wolfing line, conducted him and his eleven companion champions to Wurms, where the single combats took place. Dietrich’s knights were successful, and for the most part took the Chaplets, but refused the kisses, because they disdained Chriemhild as a faithless maiden.
A Danish ballad describes ‘Kong Tidrich’s’ tremendous battle with a Lindwurm, the progeny of one that had escaped his great-grandfather Wolfdietrich. He was led to enter on the battle by entreaties for help from a lion whom the dragon had seized; but at first he came by the worst, for his sword broke, and
‘The Lindwurm took him on her back,
His steed beneath her tongue,
Bore them into the hollow hill
To her eleven young.’
She bade them eat the horse to pass away the time while she rested, promising that on her awakening they should devour the knight. In the cave, however, Tidrich found the magic sword of Siegfried and two knives; and in spite of the threats of the young dragons, and the promises of the old one, he killed them all; but the old worm fell so as to choke the mouth of the cave, whereupon the friendly lion dug him out, and supplied the place of the slain steed by carrying him to Bern on his back.
So much for romance. History mentions a real Theodoric, son of Theudemir, and king of the Ostrogoths in Italy, from 475 to 527. He had been sent as a hostage to Constantinople, and there educated; and though he could not write his name, and had a stamp perforated with the letters Theod to enable him to sign his edicts, he was exceeding able, wise, and skilful, and Arian as he was, conciliated the love of the Catholics. Verona was his chief city, and is evidently the Bern of the romances. He lived too late for the historical Attila, who had died in 453; and though there is a report of a previous Theodoric, who meddled in a dissension between Attila’s sons, and took part in a great slaughter that lasted fifteen days, it is most likely that the original Theuderik was a mythical personage, after whom these historical princes were called, and who afterwards received the credit of some of their deeds, and was localized in the places of their dominion. It is in favour of this notion that Dietrich of Berne is one of the many titles of the wild huntsman, though the Lusatians corrupt him into Dietrich Bernhard, and the Low Countries into Dirk-mit-den-Beer, or with the beard. Indeed, Dirk, the Dutch form of Theodoric, was a half-mythical king of Holland.
It was a most universal name, Anglo-Saxon and Visigothic, as well as Frank and German; and two saints made it everywhere popular in the middle ages, though the Dutch at present chiefly use it.
| English. | French. | Italian. | Span. and Port. |
| Theodric | Theodoric | Teodorico | Theodorico |
| Theodoric | Thierry | Dieterico | |
| Derrick | Thian | ||
| Terry | Thean | ||
| Tedric | |||
| (Domesday) | |||
| German. | Bavarian. | Frisian. | Danish. |
| Diotrich | Dietl | Tiaderik | Tjodrckr |
| Dietrich | Dutch. | Tiarik | Didhrikr |
| Diez | Diederik | Tiark | Theodrckr |
| Diether | Dierk | Tiado | Tidrich |
| Dirk | Tiaddo | Didrik | |
| Todo | Slovak. | ||
| Tade | Todorik | ||
| Tido | |||
| Tide | |||
| Dudde | |||
| Polish. | Bohemian. | Lettish. | Hungarian. |
| Dytrych | Detrich | Diriks | |
| Didschis | Ditrik | ||
| Tiz |
The name of Dietmar, the father of Theodoric, is to be found in many forms; in Theudemir, a Frank, who faithfully served Constantius; in an Ostrogothic Theodomir; Spanish, Theodomiro; and the modern Frisian, Thiadmar, Tiedmer, Tyeddemer, Tidmer. It means people’s greatness.
Dietleib, his friend, is rightly Ditlev; and in the North, Thjodleif, the people’s relic, or what is left to them. He, too, survives in constant Friesland, as Teallef, Taedlef, Tiadelef.
The chief favourite of this class is, however, the people’s prince, occurring both among the Frank and early Anglian kings, and belonging to two French hermits and one English archbishop. It took firm root in Provence, and has an aroma of crusades and courts of love surrounding it; and though it is not in Domesday, it and its contractions survive as English surnames; and in a Gloucestershire parish register of the eighteenth century, the feminine form occurs frequently in every variety of spelling; Tibelda, Tiballa, Tibotta, Tybal.
| English. | French. | Spanish. | Portuguese. |
| Theodebald | Theudobald | Theudebaldo | Theobaldo |
| Theobald | Thiebault | ||
| Tybalt | Thiebaud | ||
| Tibble | Tibaut | ||
| Dibble | |||
| Italian. | German. | Dutch. | Netherlands. |
| Teobaldo | Dietbold | Tibout | Dippolt |
| Tebaldo | Diephold |
The people’s wolf was canonized as a Frank hermit, who gets called St. Thiou. Our friend Theodolf, the Icelander, as Fouqué calls him, would have been in his own land Thjodolf, and the contraction is there Kjold, or Kjol, as Kjoil, or Kjoille, is for Thjodhild, the same as the Diuthilt of the Germans, and Theudhilda, a nun-sister of Clovis. St. Audard has undergone a still greater change; he was once archbishop of Narbonne, and called Theodhard, or ward, the Tiard of Friesland, and Thjodvar, or Kjovar, in the North.
The remaining forms are,
| Ger. Dietbert; Frank. Theudebert—People’s brightness | |||||
| Ger. Dietbrand—People’s sword | |||||
| Ger. Dietburg—People’s protection | |||||
| Nor. | German. | Frank. | |||
| Thjodgjer Toger Kiogjeir Kygeir Kyer |  | Dietgar | Theodokar—People’s spear | ||
| Ger. Diether—People’s warrior | |||||
| Nor. Thjodhjalm; Ger. Diethelm—People’s helmet | |||||
| Ger. Dietlind; Lomb. Theudelinda—People’s snake | |||||
| Ger. Dietman—People’s man | |||||
| Ger. Diutrat; Frank. Theodorada—People’s council | |||||
| Ger. Dietram—People’s raven | |||||
| Nor. Thjodvald, Kjodvald, Kjoval—People’s power.[[137]] | |||||
[137]. Weber and Jamieson; Munch; Grimm; Butler; Nibelung.
Section XI.—Uta, Ortwin.
Frau Uote was the mother of Kriemhild, who interpreted her dream and predicted the early death of her bridegroom. Ortwin, of Metz, was truchsess, or carver, and was the nephew of Hagan and Dankwart, sharing, of course, their fate.
They are not very interesting personages, but it is curious that they bear the only names, among all the Nibelungen, which have any genuine Anglo-Saxon likenesses; that is, if Uote is, indeed, from the word in Anglo-Saxon, ead, in the North aud, in Mæso-Gothic audr, in High German od, everywhere meaning wealth. Some ascribe it to the same root as good and as Woden, including them with adel, noble; but its derivatives are more easy to follow than its forefathers.
In the North, odel is the term for property to which an entire family retains an equal right, all-od, or allodial property. But when the warriors made incursions on their neighbours, they obtained, in addition, their share of spoil, originally cattle, feh, or feo, i. e., their fee. So feh-od came to be the word for possessions gained by the individual by personal service to his lord, and thus passed from cattle to land itself, when held of the chief on condition of following him in war; and thus we have the feudal system, with its feoffs and, too often, its feuds.
The feminine of this word probably named Uta. It was popular everywhere. Audur-diupaudga, or Audur the deeply rich, was a female viking, one of the first Icelandic settlers, who called a promontory Kambness, because she dropped her comb upon it; nor has her name passed from her own country, while, in Norman-England, it appears first as Auda and then as Alda, answering to Alda the wife of Orlando the Paladin, and Alda queen of Italy in 926, also to another Alda, a lady of the house of Este, in 1393. These are from the Gothic and Scandinavian aud; but the High German form was also represented by Oda and the Low German by the old Saxon Ead, which was soon translated into Ide, the most common of all the early feminines in the Cambrai register, together with its diminutive Idette. Ida was the name of King Stephen’s granddaughter, the Countess of Boulogne, was always used in Germany, and has of late been revived in England, from its sounding like the title of a poetical mountain of the Troad.
It is not quite clear whether Othilie, the Alsatian virgin of the seventh century, who was said to have been born blind, but to have obtained sight at her baptism, is a form of Odel, noble, or a diminutive of Oda, or whether she is Otthild, answering to our Eadhild, one of the many sisters of Æthelstane: and there is the same doubt with Odilo and Odilon, the masculines.
The masculine form of aud was extremely common. We had it in the person of Ida, king of Bernicia; the North owned many an Audr; the Germans used Odde, Orto, and Otto, and when the gallant Saxon counts won the imperial crown, they took the old Latin Otho for the rendering of their name. France, meantime, had called her Burgundian prince Eudon, but when a relay of Norman Audrs appeared, they were Odons; and in the needlework with which Queen Matilda adorned Bayeux cathedral, her husband’s doughty episcopal half-brother is always labelled ‘Odo Eps.’ But though we had previously had a grim Danish archbishop Odo, and though Domesday shows plenty of Eudos and Odos, neither form took root, and both are entirely continental.
| French. | Provençal. | Italian. | German. | Nor. |
| Odon | Orzil | Otto | Odo | Audr |
| Eudon | Lettish. | Ottone | Otto | Odo |
| Eudes | Atte | Ottorino | Orto | Oddr |
| Othes | Attinsch | Otho |
Ortvin the truchsess, had his namesake in the Lombard Audoin father to Alboin, also, in the Frank Audwine, blessed by St. Columbanus, beloved by St. Eligius, and bishop of Rouen, whose loveliest church is that of St. Audoenus, now transformed by French lips into St. Ouen. And, at home, we hail the same ‘rich friend’ in Eadwine, the first Christian king of Northumbria, whose conversion is the most striking portion of Bede’s history. His dominion extended over the Lothians, and he disputes with Aodh and the Ædui the naming of Edinburgh. Beloved as he was, his name of Edwin never entirely died away, and became in modern times diffused by the popularity of Goldsmith’s ballad, and of Beattie’s Minstrel. It is just known upon the Continent. Ortwin, or Audoenius, is very possibly the Don Ordoño of the early Spanish kingdoms; but Germany has chiefly dealt in the independent Odvin. Edwin, in spite of Mr. Taylor’s tragedy of Edwin the Fair, is not the same as Edwy, namely Eadwig, rich war, a name well remembered for the unhappy fate of the owner.
Odoacer, as the Romans called him, who was put to death by Theodoric, was properly Audvakr, treasure watcher; not quite the same as the Germanic Ottokar, or Ortgar, happy spear, which is identical with our familiar Eadgar, or Edgar. This name, after being laid to rest with the Anglo-Saxon monarchy, came to life again with the taste for antiques; and Edgar Ravenswood, in his operatic character, has brought Edgar and Edgardo.
Eadmund, or happy protection, is one of our most English names, belonging to the king of East Anglia, who, as the first victim of the Danes, became the patron saint of Bury St. Edmund’s, and the subject of various legends. The sudden deaths of Sweyn, and afterwards of Eustace de Blois, when engaged in ravaging his shrine, made him be regarded as an efficient protector; and Henry III., when he had the good taste to make his sons Englishmen, christened the second after this national saint, so that Edmunds were always to be found in the House of Plantagenet, and thence among the nobility and the whole nation. The Irish called it Emmon, the Danes adopted it as Jatmund, in addition to their own Oddmund, the French occasionally use it as Edmond, and Italy knows it as Edmondo.
The most really noted of all our own genuine appellations is, however, Eadvard, the rich guardian. It comes to light in our royal line with the son of Alfred, and won the popular love for the sake of the young king whom St. Dunstan and the English called the martyr, in their pity for his untimely fate. And again, little as ‘the Confessor’[Confessor’] had been loved in his feeble lifetime, enthusiastic affection attached to him as the last native sovereign; while, on the one hand, it was the policy of the Norman kings to regard him as their natural predecessor, and of the barons to appeal to the laws that had prevailed in his time. All parties thus were ready to elect St. Edward to be the patron saint of England, and, in the ardour of embellishing his foundation of Westminster Abbey, it was natural to give his name to the heir of the crown, afterwards ‘the greatest of the Plantagenets.’ The deaths of his three children bearing Norman or Spanish names confirmed this as the royal name, and the third king so called spread it far and wide. It was carried by his granddaughter to Portugal, and there had its honour so well sustained by her noble son, as there to find another home; and with us it has recurred continually in every rank.
The contraction Neddy, common to all of these, is one of the titles of a donkey.
| English. | Welsh. | French. | Italian. |
| Edward | Jorwarth | Edouard | Odoardo |
| Neddy | Irish. | ||
| Teddy | Eudbaird | ||
| Portuguese. | German. | Nor. | Netherlands. |
| Duarte | Eduard | Jaward | Ede |
| Oddward | Audvard |
The other less celebrated parallel varieties are:—
| Eng. Eadbald—Rich Prince | ||||
| Eng. Eadburh—Rich pledge | ||||
| Eng. Eadburge; Nor. Oddbjorg; Ger. Edburge—Rich protection | ||||
| Eng. Eadbryht—Rich splendour | ||||
| Eng. Eadfrith; Ger. Otfrid; Prov. Audafrei—Rich peace | ||||
| Eng. Eadfled; Fr. Audofled—Rich increase | ||||
| Nor. | German. | |||
| Oddgrim Audgrim | Ortgrim | } | Rich helmet | |
| Nor. Odgisl—Rich pledge | ||||
| Nor. | German. | French. | ||
| Audgunnr Ougunna Augunna | Oddgund | Augen | } | Rich war |
| Nor. Odkel, Odkatla—Rich[Rich] kettle | ||||
| Fr. Authaire—Rich warrior | ||||
| Oddlaug—Rich liquor | ||||
| Nor. Oddleif; Ger. Ortleip, Ortleib—Rich relic | ||||
| Eng. Eadmar; Nor. Odmar; Ger. Otmar—Rich greatness | ||||
| Nor. Oddny—Rich freshness | ||||
| Eng. Eadred—Rich council | ||||
| Eng. Eadric, Edric; Ital. Odorico—Rich king | ||||
| English. | Nor. | German. | ||
| Eadulf | Odulf Oulf | Oddulf Ortwulf | } | Rich wolf |
| English. | German. | |||
| Eadwald Edwald | Edvald Odvald | } | Rich power. | |
Eadswith, Eadgifu, and Eadgyth, all once separate names, together with Adelgifu and Ælfgifu, seem to have been all mixed up together by the Normans. Eadgyth was undoubtedly the name of Earl Godwin’s daughter, of whom Ingulf said, ‘Sicut spina rosam, genuit Godwinus Egitham;’ but in the roll of her lands in Domesday, she is Eddeva, Eddid, and Edeva, and for some little time Edeva seems to have been used among the Normans, though the queen of Henry I. was not allowed to retain anything so Saxon. Aline and Edith were used in a few families, but Edith survived the others.
Giav or give is not a very common commencement; but in the Vilkina Saga, King Gjuko is the father of Gunnar and Gudrun, and the whole family are called Giukungr. In German, in the Book of Heroes, he is Gibicho, and there was really a historical Burgundian King Gibica, mentioned as a law-giver; but in the Nibelungen-nôt, Gibich is only a vassal king of Etzel’s. The North had Gjaflaug, liquor giver, no doubt the Hebe of the Norse banquets, Gjavvald, in German, Gevald, and perhaps Gabilo and Gavele, the Gebelius of Latinists. Germany had likewise Gebahard, a firm or perhaps a strong giver, which still survives under the unpromising sound of Gebhard.
Gyda, or Gytha, that most difficult name, sometimes sounds like Gith, the contraction of Eadgyth; but it was evidently northern, having belonged to the proud damsel of Hordaland, who refused to marry Harald Harfagre, unless he was sole king of all Norway. Afterwards it was borne by the semi-Danish ladies of Earl Godwin’s family, and melted into Gjutha, then became confounded with Jutta, which was considered as short for Juditha.
Section XII.—Sintram.
Sindolt was the schenke, or butler, at the court of Wurms, in the Niebelungenlied[Niebelungenlied]; and in the Vilkina Saga, Sintram is one of the heroes of Thidrek’s following. The derivation of the first syllable is uncertain. Michaelis takes it from the old High German sinths, a journey. Professor Munch refers Sindre to a word meaning sparkling or spark, and mentions a mythological dwarf who was a famous smith, and was yclept Sindre; also a poet in Harald Harfagre’s time, whose appellation was Guthorm Sindre, or the sparkling. Sundre or Sondre is, the same authority tells us, more used in the Thellmarken in Norway than elsewhere; and another possible derivation for it is from ‘sondra,’ to sunder. The forms Sunrir and Sunris are there found; and Germany had a few others, such as Sindwald, or Sindolt, Sindbald, the Sinibaldo of Italy, Sindbert, Sindolf, and the above-mentioned Sindhram, chiefly interesting to us as chosen by Fouqué for the name of his masterpiece, the wonderful allegory spun out of Albert Durer’s more wonderful engraving.
Section XIII.—Elberich.
The elf king Elberich here brings in his own fairy kindred. In the Nibelung, he is watching over the fatal treasure when Siegfried comes to claim it, and, dwarf as he is, does such fierce battle over it that Siegfried was ‘in bitter jeopardy;’ but he is at length overcome sworn to Siegfried’s service, and brought by him to Wurms, where he has no more to do but to lament when Haghen makes away with the treasure.
He is called very ancient, and well he may be, for he had appeared in the Book of Heroes long before the time of even Hughdietrich, when King Otnit of Lombardy had set forth to win the daughter of the king of Syria, and Elberich showed himself under a linden tree in the guise of a beautiful child. Otnit was about to pick him up, but received from him a tremendous blow, and after a sharp fight came to terms, and thenceforth he assisted him in his enterprise, gave him magic armour, and assisted him to gain the lady. Much of this story is repeated in the French romance of Huon de Bourdeaux, where Auberon, as he is there called, gives the knight an ivory horn wherewith to summon him to his aid in an emergency, and thus arose the English Oberon, the elf-rik or king, the graceful but petulant fairy whom Drayton marries to the Irish Mab, and Shakespeare to the Greek Titania. He had his human namesakes, too; Alberich was in fashion as a Frank name, as Ælfric was as a Saxon; and the Domesday Book shows that while we had plenty of the latter native form, Edward the Confessor had already imported two specimens of ‘Albericus comes,’ and these or their sons contracted into Aubrey, which was known to fame as almost hereditary among the De Veres, earls of Oxford. France, too, had her Aubri; and Alberico was used in Lombardy, where likewise the notable and terrible monarch Alboin, whose name as Alboino is still common among the peasantry, bore the name that Anglo-Saxons called Ælfwine, or elf-friend, perhaps likewise an allusion to the aid and friendship of ‘Oberon the faëry,’ whose first protégé was a Lombard. Alwine is the feminine used in Germany, and perhaps may be our Albinia.
The elf of England and Germany, the alfr of the North, was a being dear to the imagination of the people. His name means the white, the same word already mentioned as forming the Latin albus, and designating the Elbe and the Alps, as well as appearing in the Elphin of Cymric legend. The elves, or white spirits, were supposed to be beautiful shadowy gifted beings, often strangely influencing the life of mortals, so that in old Germany the Alfr were the genii of man’s life, like the Disir of the North; and Elberich probably originally attended Otnit in this capacity. Christianity did not destroy the faith in the elf-world, but the existence of these beings was accounted for by supposing them children of Eve, whom she had hidden from the face of her Maker, and He had therefore condemned to be hidden from the face of man. They were thought to mourn for their exclusion from Redemption, and to seek baptism for their infants; but in process of time their higher attributes dropped off from them, and they were mixed up with the malicious black dwarfs. They took to stealing young maidens, as the Scottish Burd Ellen, and to exchanging infants in the cradle; and Scotland created an Elfinland, which was a striking element of worldly vanity. In England, the traditions of the Keltic spirits, pucks and pixies, were mixed up with them, and our Elizabethan poets treated them as the males of the French fairies; and what comes to us so recommended, surely we must accept.
These elves, in their more dignified days, played a considerable part in our native nomenclature; nay, the most honoured of all our English sovereigns wrote himself upon his jewel Ælfred, i.e., Elf in council, wise as a supernatural being. Some have tried to read the word Alfried, all peace; but there is no doubt that the Elf is the right prefix. The English loved to continue his name, but it was Latinized as Aluredus, and thus Alured is the form in which it is borne by many persons recorded in Domesday, and is still kept up and regarded as a separate name, though Alfred has been within the last century resumed in England; it is much used about the good king’s birth-place at Wantage in Berkshire, and has of late been adopted in France and Germany.
Ælfhæg was as high as an elf; whether given to a very small infant, or supposed to refer to a being of unearthly stature, does not appear. It was the very inappropriate name of the archbishop who, under Ethelred the Unready, was pelted to death at a Danish banquet because he would not oppress his flock to obtain a ransom. The offence given by Lanfranc in refusing to regard him as a true martyr may be judged by the large numbers called after him in Domesday. In Sussex they are set down as Ælfech; in Hants as Ælfec; in Nottingham as Ælfag; and thanks to the Latinism of Alphegius, our calendar calls him Alphege.
Ælfgifu, or the elf gift, was the unfortunate Elgiva of history, a not unsuitable name for one whose beauty was like a fatal fairy gift, bringing ruin on her and on her husband; but it was also used to translate into Saxon that of the Norman Emma, which was regarded as too foreign for the Saxons. Knut’s first wife, Ælfwine (elf darling), the daughter of Ælfhelm, Earl of Southampton, is recorded by Dugdale as Ailive; and Aileve, Ælveva, or Alveva, is very common in Domesday. Aileve indeed continued in use for many years.
In fact, it was England that made by far the most use of elf names. The North was perhaps the next in the use of them, having an immense number of instances of Alfr in the Landnama-bok, but there the elf at the end of a word has such an unfortunate tendency to transform himself into a wolf, that it is impossible to tell which was the original, the same person being sometimes written Thoralf, and sometimes Thorulf. There are few instances preserved from the other Teutonic branches, except as we have seen the two Lombardic names, that seem direct from Elberich.
English names in Æthel often contract into El, and when followed by an f, appear to be elves; but they must be pursued to their original form before being so rendered.
Nor. Alfdis—Household fairy
Nor. Alfgejr; Eng. Ælfgar—Elf spear
Nor. Alfgerdur—Elf woman
Nor. Alfheidur, Alfeidur—Elf cheerfulness
Eng. Ælfhelm—Elf helmet
Nor. Alfhild—Elf battle maid
Nor. Alfliotr—Elf terror
Eng. Ælfric—Elf king
Eng. Ælfthryth, Elfrida—Threatening elf
Eng. Ælfwold—Elf power
Alvaro and Elvira are the Spanish forms of these elf names.
A bishop of Lichfield, whose name was Ælfwine, was always called Ælla, and thus there is reason to suppose that elves named both the Ælle of Deira, whose name caused Gregory the Great to say that Alleluja should be sung in those regions, and also the later Ælla, who put Ragnar Lodbrog to death. Otherwise these would be referred to the word in Gothic, aljan, meaning battle, found in the Old German Ellanheri and Ellanperaht.
Some of our commencing els are no doubt from the fairy source; but there are others very difficult to account for, beginning in Anglo-Saxon with ealh, which is either a hall, or without the final h, the adjective all, by which in fact they are generally translated. The most noted of them is Ealhwine, the tutor of Charlemagne’s sons, generally called Alcuin, though his name has remained at home as Aylwin. Some Aylwins, are, however, certainly from Ægilwine, or awful friend; Ealhfrith, Ealhmund, and Ealhred, are also found, and one of these must have formed the modern Eldred. Among ladies are Ealhfled, and Ealhswyth, or Alswitha. On the whole it seems to us that the hall is the more probable derivation; the h so carefully used in the Saxon Chronicle is unlike a contraction.[[138]]
[138]. Munch; Weber and Jamieson; St. Pelaye, Huon de Bourdeaux; Grimm; Keightley; Lappenburg; Landnama-bok; Domesday; Scott, Minstrelsy of Scottish Border; Sharon Turner; Kemble, Names of the Anglo-Saxons.
CHAPTER V.
THE KARLING ROMANCES.
Section I.—The Paladins.
Another remarkable cycle of romantic fable connected itself with a prince, not lost in the dim light of heroic legend, but described by a contemporary chronicler, and revealed in the full light of history. However, in reality, the records of Eginhard were, no doubt, as unread and unknown as if they had never existed, and with the notion that a magnificent prince had reigned over half Europe, there was ample scope for tradition to connect with him and his followers all the floating adventures that Teutonic, Keltic, or Latin invention had framed; and, by-and-by, literature recorded them, using them as her own world of beauty and of wonder, until nothing but the names were left in common with their originals.
France, Germany, Lombardy, and Spain, all looked back to the same emperor, and hung their traditions around him, with a far more national sentiment than it was possible for them to possess for the British Arthur. In the Charles who bore the surname of the Great, all the legends centred. He was at once emperor, and, like his grandfather, champion of Europe against the Saracens, with whom in popular fancy, both his own Saxons and his grandson’s Northmen were fused together; he was besieged, like his grandson, in Paris, and lost all his best followers in the pass of Roncesvalles, by the treachery of the Navarrese.
These were the materials that fancy had to work upon. The existing feudal system supplied the machinery, and not with utter incorrectness, since it had actually then existed in its infancy, and the chiefs of the Frank court were veritably obliged to pay martial service to their head for the lands that they had received from him on the conquest of the country. Pfalz, the same word which we now call palace, the central court, furnished the title for the feudatories employed at the court; Pfalzen, a word that continued in use in its proper region, Germany, naming the Pfalzgraf of the Rhine, whence we have learnt to speak of the Count Palatine and the Palatinate.
Pfalzen, then, on French tongues, became Paladins, and Paladins were supposed to have been not so much political as military, so that we regard the term as meaning a champion of high prowess. There was an idea likewise of a council of these Paladins as the twelve peers of France in the golden age of her constitution; and the Docipairs, as the Douzepairs were sometimes run together, stood on a level in romantic imaginations with the Seven Champions of Christendom, or the Knights of the Round Table.
Spanish ballads, German lays, and Provençal songs, had been working up the stories of the Paladins, when somewhere about the year 1100, there came forth a French translation of the supposed chronicle of Turpin, who had really been archbishop of Rheims in the reign of Charlemagne. The chronicle was confirmed in 1122 by the infallible authority of the Pope, and was translated again and again, amplified and referred to by every one who wrote or sung of the Paladins, for the events they celebrated, whether it contained them or not.
The influence of the Karlingen upon our subject has been great. First, some of the genuine historical characters left hereditary Christian names; next, several were adopted in romantic and chivalrous families, and in the poetical ages of literary Italy, they became absolutely frequent.
Paladins, however, connect themselves with hardly any genuine female names of the same period. The Ossianic Fenians have their wives and beloved maidens, the knights of the Round Table are united with ladies of Cymric title, like their own, and evidently as traditionary as themselves; the dames of the Nibelungenlied are intimately connected with the whole structure of the legend; but the knights of Charlemagne have brought with them few genuine ladye loves. Orlando once had a wife, the Alda, or Belinda, of the old traditions; but even the Clarice of Renaud in the Quatre Fils Aymon, betrays a late French, or rather Romanesque, influence; and far more do the Doña Clara, Belerma, and Sebilla of the Spanish ballads, show how late they must have arisen; whilst Angelica, Marfisa, Bradamante, Fiordespina, and Fiordiligi, and the like, are absolute Italian inventions.
The Frankish ladies seem, in fact, to have been held in little estimation. Chivalry had not blossomed into respect for womanhood, and they had probably been left behind by their lords in the march of civilization. The female names from time to time cast up in the surging tide of affairs seldom appear except for disgrace or misfortune, so that we come to the conclusion that womanhood in the Frank empire was seldom happy or honourable except in the cloister. Thus, no traditional names of woman came down with the Paladins; and when love became an essential part of the machinery of the Italian poets, they had to invent, and entitle, the heroines for themselves.
Section II.—Charles.
Most heroes gain by becoming the subjects of romance, but this has been by no means the case with the great Karl of the Franks, for though ‘il Rè Carlo’ be three rolled into one, he has lost the heroism of him of the hammer, and the large-minded statesmanship of the first emperor, obtaining instead the dulness and weak credulity of him who was called the Bald.
The three Charleses are matter of history, and the Carlo Magno of romance and ballad is little more than a lay figure, always persuaded to believe traitorous stories of his best friends, and meeting with undignified adventures, as in the case of the enchanted ring that bound his affections to lady, bishop, and lake. We therefore pass on at once to this name, which a foolish old story thus accounts for. As an infant he was put out to nurse, and when brought home, much grown, his mother exclaimed, ‘What great carle is this?’ whence he continued to be so called, instead of by his baptismal name of David. This tale may have been suggested by the fact, that the veritable Charles the Great, when laying aside his state he became a scholar in his palace hall, under the teaching of the English Alcuin, assumed the appropriate title of David.
Karl was in fact, as we have shown in the chapter on ancestral names, the regular family name of the line, used in regular alternation from its first appearance with the grandfather of the hammering Charles, who perhaps took his soubriquet from Thor, and gradually acquiring more and more ignominious epithets till it sunk into obscurity in Lorraine, whence it only emerged again when the Karlings intermarried with Philippe Auguste, and brought the old imperial name into the French royal family, where five more kings bore it. They sent it to Naples with Charles of Anjou; and his son, Charles Robert, or Caroberto, being elected to Hungary, had so many namesakes that Camden was led to suppose that all Hungarian kings were called Carl. It went to Germany when the son of the blind king of Bohemia received it from his father’s connection with the French court, and afterwards reigned as the 4th Karl of Germany, taking up his reckoning from the old Karlingen. Again, the second ducal house of Burgundy was an off-shoot from the line of Valois, and it was from Charles the Bold that the name was transmitted to his great grandson of Ghent, soon known to Europe as Carlos I. of Spain, Karl V. of Germany, Carolus Quintus of the Holy Roman Empire. He was the real name spreader from whom this became national in Spain, Denmark, and even in Britain, for his renown impressed James I. with the idea that this must be a fortunate name; when, in the hope of averting the unhappy doom that had pursued five James Stuarts in succession, he called his sons Henry and Charles. The destiny of the Stuart was not averted, but the fate of the ‘royal martyr’ made Charles the most popular of all appellations among the loyalists, and afterwards with the Jacobites, in both England and Scotland, so that rare as it formerly was, it now disputes the ground with John, George, and William, as the most common of English names.
Another namesake of Charlemagne must not be forgotten, namely, the son of St. Olaf, of Norway, whom his followers, intending an agreeable surprise to the father, baptized after the great emperor by the name of Magnus, whence the very frequent Magnus, of Scandinavia, and Manus of Ireland.
| English. | Keltic. | French. | Span. and Port. |
| Charles | GAEL. | Charles | Carlos |
| Charlie | Tearlach | Charlot | German. |
| ERSE. | Karl | ||
| Searlus | |||
| Italian. | Swedish. | Danish. | Dutch. |
| Carlo | Karl | Karl | Carolus |
| Carolo | Kalle | Karel | Carel |
| Karel | |||
| Polish. | Bohemian. | Illyrian. | Lusatian. |
| Karol | Karel | Karlo | Karlo |
| Karolek | Slovak. | Karlica | Karlko |
| Karol | Karlic | ||
| Lettish. | Esthonian. | Hungarian. | Dantzig. |
| Karls | Karl | Karoly | Kasch |
| Karel |
The two feminines are of late invention. The first I have been able to find was Carlota or Charlotte, of Savoy, who married Louis XI., and thus introduced this form to French royalty. Charlotte d'Albret had the misfortune to be given in marriage to Cesare Borgia, and had one daughter, who married into the house of La Tremouille, whence the brave Lady Derby carried it into England, and our registers of the seventeenth century first acknowledge Charlet. The Huguenotism of the house of La Tremouille connected it with that of Bouillon, where the heiress Carola, or Charlotte, was married in 1588. The house of Orange probably thence derived it, and it became known in Germany, whence it was brought to us in full popularity by the good queen of George III. A sentimental fame was also bestowed on it, as the name of Göthe’s heroine in Werther.
Carolina, the other form, seems to have been at first Italian, and thence to have spread to Southern Germany, and all over that country, whence we received it with the wife of George II., by whom it was much spread among the nobility, and is now very common among the peasantry.
| English. | French. | Spanish. | Italian |
| Charlotte | Charlotte | Carlota | Carlotta |
| Lotty | Lolotte | Lola | Carlota |
| Chatty | Caroline | Carolina | |
| Caroline | |||
| Carry | |||
| German. | Swedish. | Slovak. | Lettish. |
| Charlotte | Lotta | Karolina | Latte |
| Lottchen | Karolinka | Dantzig. | |
| Caroline | Karla | Linuschca | |
| Lina |
Ceorl was the name of an early king of Mercia, and of a thane of Alfred’s, who defeated the Danes, and Carloman was almost as common as Carl in the old Karling family.[[139]]
[139]. Sismondi; Roscoe; Michaelis; Pott; Anderson, Genealogies.
Section III.—Roland, &c.
When the army of Charles the Great was marching back from Spain, the Gascons, Navarrese, and Goths, who were afraid of being swallowed up by his empire, if they exchanged his protection for that of the Arabs, plotted together, fell on the rear of his columns as they were passing through the defile of Roncesvalles, close to the little town of Fuente Arabia, and slaughtered the whole division that were guarding the baggage. ‘There was slain Rotlandus, prefect of the Armorican border.’
So says Eginhard, the contemporary chronicler, and as he mentions only two other nobles as having been killed, it is natural to conclude that this Rotlandus was a man of mark. Who was he? Certainly Warden of the Marches of Brittany, but was he a Frank Hruodland (the country’s glory), the repressor of the Kelts, or was he a Breton in the Frankish service? The Cymry have laid claim to him; they say that the rolling word is intended to render Tallwch, a rolling or overwhelming torrent, the name of the father of Tristrem; and in the later romances, this knight has actually been turned into Rowland, which thus has become a favourite national Welsh name.
It is far more likely that ‘Rotlandus’ was Frank, but the next question is, what were the deeds that made his birth worth contending for, and the war song of Rou be the chant of the gallant minstrel Taillefer, to cheer the Normans on to their victory at Hastings?
Eginhard is utterly silent. Turpin tells us that Rolandus was the emperor’s nephew, the son of his sister Bertha, and of Milo de Anglars. With Turpin, the expedition to Spain is the prominent feature of the reign, and he gives us an account of a mingled battle and controversy between Roland and Ferragus, a giant of the race of Goliath, and only vulnerable in one point, where, however, Roland managed to pierce him. Very soon after follows the ambush of Roncesvalles, the enemy being Saracens, not Christians, but conducted by the traitor Ganelon. After a terrible battle, Roland, sorely wounded, lay down under a tree, and apostrophizing his good sword Durenda, in the most tender manner, thrice struck it upon a block of marble, and shattered it in twain, lest it should fall into the Saracen hands. Then he blew upon his horn, which had such wondrous tones that all other horns split at the sound, and this blast was with such effort that he burst all the veins in his neck, and the sound reached the king, eight miles off! He then commended his soul to heaven, and made a most pious and beautiful end.
That block of marble is magnified by popular fame into the mountain itself, and la Brèche de Roland is supposed to be the cleft made by his sword! The Northern Lights, too, are said to be King Charles riding by, and Roland bearing the banner. The Spaniards, so far as they were Christians and Teutons, felt with the Franks; so far as they were Celtiberians, against them, and the result was a collection of admirable popular ballads, all prime authorities with Don Quixote, in which il rey Carlos and his peers are treated as national heroes. Nevertheless they are proud of his defeat at Roncesvalles, declare that the emperor broke his word to Don Alfonso of Leon, and that the attack was therefore made in which Don Alfonso’s nephew, Bernardo de Carpio, was leader, and demolished the invulnerable Conde Roldan, by squeezing him to death in his arms.
It is the Spaniards alone who have transferred to Roldan the invulnerability of Achilles, Siegfried, and Diarmaid; the French and Italians bestow it only on Ferragus, who is, as already mentioned, an evident Keltic importation through the Breton poets, being either the Irish Fergus, or the Welsh Vreichfras, though he has since become a Moorish giant.
The English, having their own Arthur to engage their attention, did little more than versify Turpin, but allowed Roland’s sword to be carried away by his friend Sir Baldwin, and took vengeance for his death.
But it was the Italians who did the most for their Orlando. Some floating Valkyr notion had attached itself in German fancy to his mother, who was at first Bertha the goose-footed, and then the large-footed, and romance further related that she was the emperor’s sister, who had secretly married the knight Milone di Anglante, and therefore was driven out of the court, and forced to take refuge in a cave, where the hero was born, and was called Rotolando, from his rolling himself on the ground. His father went to the wars, and Berta became the diligent spinner before alluded to, but she was still so poor that his young companions each gave her boy a square of cloth to cover him, two white, and two red, whence he always bore those colours quartered on his shield. Afterwards he was taken into favour, and became the chief Paladin.
Here Luigi Pulci took him up, and made him the hero of a poem called the Morgante Maggiore, from a giant whom Orlando converted, and who followed him faithfully about through all his adventures. Orlando is here a high-spirited Christian knight, brave, pious, and faithfully attached to his wife Alda. When slain at Roncesvalles, he mentions her in his last and very beautiful prayer, and his sorrow for his comrades, and parting with his horse and sword, are very touching.
It was Bojardo who deprived Orlando of his old traditional character of the high-minded champion, that crusading days had dwelt upon. Led, perhaps, by the idea of the frenzy of Amadis de Gaul, he made Orlando fall desperately in love with the fair and false Angelica, princess of Catay, and leave the court and all his duties just as the Saracen king Gradasso was invading France, to obtain possession of Durindana, Orlando’s sword. The action of the poem is taken up with the adventures imposed upon Orlando by the mischievous beauty, and the pursuit of him by the other Paladins, and finally it leaves off with the whole chivalry of Charlemagne besieged in Paris by the Saracens.
Orlando was only innamorato according to Bojardo; Ariosto took him up and made him furioso. Continuing the poem where it had dropped from Bojardo’s hands, Ariosto made Angelica fall in love with an obscure youth, and marry him, whereupon Orlando, after the example of Amadis de Gaul, went into the state of frenzy that Don Quixote tried to imitate; and the Christians suffered as much as the Greeks did without Achilles, till the champion’s senses were brought back from the moon; when he returned to his duty, restored fortune to the Christians, and saved France from becoming tributary to the infidel.
Charles VIII. of France, in his romantic youth, named one of his short-lived children, Charles Roland, by the way of union of the two heroes.
| English. | French. | Italian. | Spanish. |
| Roland | Roland | Orlando | Roldan |
| Rowland | |||
| Portuguese. | German. | Netherlands. | |
| Rolando | Roland | Roeland | |
| Roldao | Ruland | ||
| Rudland |
The derivation of the first syllable is the word hruod in Frank, hrothr in the North, and in modern German ruhm, meaning fame or glory.
Hruod is a most prolific word. As Hruodgar, famous spear, it figures in the Nibelungenlied, where the Markgraf Rudiger is the special friend of Dietrich, and for a long time, like him, refrains from the fray, though at last he plunges into it and is killed.
There seems to have been a veritable Hruodgar living in the time of Pepin, who married a lady whose father’s name was Hector, whence it was taken for granted that she descended from Hector of Troy. Therefore the House of Este bore the white eagle in their coat of arms, because it was said he of Troy had a shield azure with a silver eagle! Roger, Olivier, and Roland are mentioned together as subjects of minstrel songs. In the old romances there is a Ruggieri de Risa, or Reggio, who marries an Amazon, called Galaciella, but is soon after murdered, and she is carried off by sea by her enemies, whom, however, she manages to overpower and destroy on the voyage, but only to be driven to a desert island, where she dies at the birth of her twins, Ruggiero and Marfisa. This Ruggiero is the prime favourite of the Italian poets. Bojardo tells how he was bred up on lion’s marrow by the enchanter Atlante, in Africa, and when his education was finished, was sent to France with the wonderful hippogriff, or winged horse. And Ariosto, probably in compliment to the House of Este, made his adventures the main plot of the Orlando Furioso, and completed it by converting him to Christianity, and marrying him to the brave and amiable Amazon, Bradamante.
Bojardo probably adopted Ruggiero because his country was Reggio, a country with which the name had become connected, when Roger de Hauteville had founded the kingdom of Sicily, and Ruggero, the son of his elder brother, Robert Guiscard, had been count of Apulia. These were both, of course, direct from the northern Hruodgeir, as was the turbulent Roger de Montgomery, who gave so much trouble in Normandy. It was once a famous knightly name, but is now too much discarded. Roger must once have been very frequent in England, since Hodge is still proverbial for a rustic,—whereas as a rule he is never so called, though the Registrar-General noted an extraordinary number of Roger Tichbornes in the year of the claimant’s trial!
| English. | French. | Italian. | Spanish. | German. |
| Roger | Roger | Ruggiero | Rogerio | Rüdiger |
| Hodge | Rogero | Roger | ||
| Nor. | Netherlands. | Russian. | Polish. | Lettish. |
| Hrodgjer | Rogier | Rozer | Rydygier | Rekkerts |
| Raadgjer | Rutger |
Hrothgar was also a famed name among the Angles. It appears in Beowulf, as the chief of the Scyldings, the son of Healfdane. There, too, are found Hrothmund and Hrothwulf; and the northern names of Hroar and Hrolfr are contractions of these, though the characters they belong to are not the same as those in Beowulf. Hrolf Krake was the subject of a northern Saga; and the father of our Norman kings, whom we are wont to call by his Latinism of Rollo, formed from the French stammer of Rou, was in fact Hrolf Gangr, or at full length, Hrothulf, Fame-Wolf. A name of fame and terror it was, when the mighty man, too weighty for steed to carry him, was expelled from his own land, and fought for a home, not for plunder, among the fertile orchards of Neustria, when his followers' rude homage overthrew the degenerate Karling, and ‘the grisly old proselyte,’ in his baptism, assumed, without perhaps knowing of the similarity, the French Robert. This change prevented his original name from being very prevalent among the Normans; and the German form, Rudolf, is chiefly from a sainted Karling prince, who was bishop of Bourges, and from whom Rudolf of Hapsburg must have derived it. From him it became imperial, and other countries received it, without knowing it for their old friend.
| English. | French. | Spanish. | Italian. |
| Rodolph | Rodolphe | Rodulfo | Rodolfo |
| Rolf | Raoul | Portuguese. | |
| Roul | Rodolpho | ||
| Rou | |||
| German. | Bavarian. | Frisian. | Swiss. |
| Rudolf | Ruedolf | Rulef | Ruedi |
| Rulves | Ruedeli | ||
| Rotholf | Rudi | ||
| Swedish. | Nor. | Lettish. | Hungarian. |
| Rudolf | Hruodulf | Rohlops | Rudolf |
| Rolf | Hrolfr | ||
Robert, the name assumed by Rolf Gauge at his baptism was Frank, rather than Northern, inasmuch as bjart is an uncommon conclusion among his native race. Hruadperaht, or bright fame, was the original form, the property of a bishop, who somewhere about the year 700 founded the first Christian church at Wurms. Honoured alike in France and Germany, he became Ruprecht in the latter, and Robert in the former. Like St. Nicolas, he is in Germany supposed to exercise a secret supervision over children; in some places Knecht Ruprecht dispenses Christmas gifts, but he more often keeps watch over naughty children, and thus answers to the English Robin Goodfellow, or Hob Goblin. Red was long supposed to be the origin of the name, which some made Redbert, or bright speech, others Redbeard! The German form, however, disproves both of these, and Ruprecht continued in honour in its own country, naming in especial that wise Pfalzgraf of the Rhine, who in 346 founded the university of Heidelberg; and on the deposition of the crazy Bohemian Kaisar Wenzel, was elected Emperor of Germany, and reigned for nine years with great success and glory. It was after him that the infant, born at Prague, during the brief greatness of the Winter King, received that name of Rupert, which was so terrible to the Roundheads, but which for the most part they translated by their native Robert—native, because thoroughly Anglicized, for it was of French growth, had belonged to two or three saints, and to the hymn-writing and much persecuted king called the pious, the second of the Capet or Parisian dynasty; but after the son of St. Louis carried it off to the House of Bourbon, it scantily appeared among the royal family. Normandy, however, cultivated it after it had been chosen at the baptism of her first duke, and sent it to Apulia with the astute Robert Guiscard, whence Roberto became national in the Neapolitan realms, and was adopted by the Angevin line, among others by the king who patronized Petrarch. The next Duke of Normandy who bore it was that wild pilgrim, whose soubriquet varies between the Devil and the Magnificent. The disinheritance of his equally wild, but more unfortunate grandson, Robert Courthose, diverted it from the English throne, but a flood of knights and nobles had poured in and established it so completely, that in a few generations more Hob was one of the established peasant names in England. Robin was its more gracious contraction—let our dearly beloved archer be who he will—either as ballad tells, the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon, or as late critics would have us believe, only another manifestation of Robin Goodfellow, or of the wild huntsman. Robin was the epithet by which Queen Elizabeth was wont to address the two earls, step-father and stepson, who so long sunned themselves in her favour; and though it has now acquired a homely sound, and the popularity of the full name has somewhat waned, it is still frequent. To Scotland it was brought by the Anglo-Norman barons, and when the English Bruces had made their distant drop of Royal Scottish blood float them to the throne, Robert the Bruce became a passionately beloved national hero, and his name one of the most favoured in the Lowlands. In Ireland it is called Roibin, a gentleman called in English Robin Lawless being in Irish, Roibin Laighleis.
| English. | Scotch. | French. | Italian. |
| Robert | Robert | Robert | Roberto |
| Robin | Robin | Robers | Ruberto |
| Hob | Robbie | Robi | Ruperto |
| Bob | Rab | Robinet | |
| Rupert | Rupert | ||
| German. | Bavarian. | Slovak. | Lusatian. |
| Hruodebert | Ruprecht | Ruprat | Huprecht |
| Ruprecht | Prechtl | ||
| Rupert | |||
| Rudbert | |||
| Robert |
Not behindhand in glory is the northern Hrothrekr, or Germanic Hruoderich, famous ruler. In Gothic Spain, it was indeed Rodrigo, who lost his country to the Moors, but became in his people’s minds the centre for pity as much as for blame, and the subject of the beautiful legends that Southey has embodied in the finest of his poems. And it was Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar,‘Ruy mi Cid Campeador,’ in whom ballad lore delighted. This became one of the most frequent of all the grand-sounding names prefaced by Don, and Rodriguez and Ruiz to be very common surnames.
The northern Hrothrekr was not long in being shortened to Hrorekr, and thence came the name of that Norseman, who, according to Russian historians, was invited by the Slaves to be their protector, and founded the Norman dynasty of Ruric, which continued on the throne during the troubled days of Tatar supremacy. Roric and Godwald were the first Northmen to obtain fiefs in France. In Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, Roderick has a sort of false honour, being adopted as the equivalent of the native Keltic names, the Welsh Rhydderc, and the Gadhaelic Ruadh; for Roy and Rorie, though rightly and traditionally so called by their friends, would now all make Teutons of themselves, and use the signature of Roderick.
| English. | French. | Italian. | Spanish. |
| Roderick | Rodrigue | Rodrigo | Rodrigo |
| German. | Nor. | Russian. | |
| Roderich | Rothrekr | Rurik | |
| Hrorek |
There are numerous other forms from this prolific source. Rother, who figures in Lombardic history, is the German Hruodhari, or famous warrior, and in the North divides with Hrothgar the property of the strange abbreviation, Roar, and in the harsh old Latinisms of Frank names is Crotcharius.
There too is found Chrodovaldus, which in German was once Hrodowald, and afterwards Rudold, perhaps, too, the Danish and Scottish Ribolt, and in the North Roald, and in Italian Roaldo, the founder of an order of monks. Nay, Romeo de' Montecchi himself, the Montague of Shakespeare, bore a common Lombardic name, softened down from the Chrodomarus of Frankish Latin, as in Germany Hruotmar is Rudmar and Romar. Hromund, or Romund, must not be confused with the derivatives of Ragin, though it is most likely that the Irish Redmond is a Danish legacy from this source.
Nor. Hrodbern—Famous bear
Frank. Chrodogang—Famous progress
Nor. Hrothild; Ger. Hrodhilde; Frank. Chrodehilda—Famous
heroine
Ger. Hrodfrid—Famous peace
Ger. Hrodhard—Famous strength
Ger. Hrudo; Frank. Chrodo; Nor. Hroi—Fame
Nor. Hrodny—Famous freshness
Nor. Hrollaug—Famous liquor
Nor. Hrolleif—Relic of fame
Nor. Hrodsind; Frank. Chrodoswintha—Famous strength
Ger. Hrodstein—Famous stone.
Ruod must have been evolved from the word meaning speech, razda in Gothic, rœdo in Anglo-Saxon, whence advice became rede in Old English and Scottish, and rath in modern German.
Rad is chiefly a Frankish prefix, though we had one king Redwald. Radegond, or war council, was a Frankish queen who became a nun at Poitiers, and left a name still used by French girls in that neighbourhood. King Ordoño of Gallicia married, about the year 910, a lady recorded as Radegonda, or Arragonda, or Urraca, so that the perplexing Urraca may possibly be a contraction of this name. In the Spanish vernacular a magpie is called urraca, but probably from the likeness of the word to the note of the bird.
Radegist or Radelchis, and Radegar, were princes of Beneventum. Radbad, the Frisian Rabbo, and Radbert, seem to be Old German forms, but it is a word liable to be confused with hramn, and with rand, and though a common masculine termination in England, in the North it is only a corruption of fred, peace.
Section IV.—Renaud.
To the French, Renaud de Montauban was a far more popular and national hero than even Roland.
His name, Raginwald, was common among the Franks, and his origin is suspected to be an Aquitanian Rainaldus, who in 843 was killed in fighting with the Bretons, when in the miserable days of Charles the Bald, they invaded France under Nominoë, and were joined by the traitorous Count Lambert.
Charles the Bald, as has been said, seems to have sat for the picture of his grandfather, the Bretons turned into the Saracens, Count Lambert’s treachery went to swell the account of Gano, and Rinaldus could fall at Roncevaux quite as well as at Mans!
He is just mentioned by Turpin as among the knights who accompanied Charlemagne, and were killed at Roncesvalles; and the Spanish ballads dwelt much upon the exploits of Don Reynaldos; indeed it appears that he enjoyed Don Quixote’s special admiration for having carried off, in spite of forty Moors, a golden image of Mahomet, which he wanted to melt up for the payment of his men!
Such an exploit was decidedly in the line of the French hero Renaud, or Regnault, who is in romance a sort of prince of freebooters. He and his three brothers go by the title of the Quatre Fils Aymon, and he is a sort of chivalrous Robin Hood to the French mind, insomuch that country inns may still be found with the sign of the Quatre Fils Aymon. In the old French tale, the outlawry of Renaud is accounted for by his having been insulted by the emperor’s nephew Berthelot, while playing at chess, and replying with a blow of the golden board that struck out the offender’s brains. He and his brothers then were banished, lived a freebooting life, built the castle of Montalban in Gascony, the king of which country bestowed on him in marriage his daughter Clarice, and finally went on pilgrimage, made his peace with the emperor, turned his hand to the building of Cologne Cathedral, and was killed there by his jealous fellow-workmen.
In Italy Rinaldo became a wild, high-spirited Paladin, always fighting and falling in love, and retaining little in common with his French original, except the possession of his matchless horse Bayard, or Bajardo, which fought as well as his master, and on his loss ran wild in the woods. In the Morgante, Rinaldo mistrusts Gano, and avoids the ambush of Roncesvalles, but is afterwards carried with his brother Ricciardetto by two devils, to revenge the slaughter, which they do most effectually.
In the Orlando Innamorato, Rinaldo is at first ensnared by Angelica’s beauty, but is cured by drinking unwittingly of the fountain of hate, while she drank of the fountain of love, and was enamoured of him. He is carried off by Malagigi to an enchanted island of delight, but returns during the great siege of Paris, takes a counter-draught of the fountain of love, fights in single combat with Ferrau, but is interrupted by Bajardo straying into a wood, whither he pursues the animal, and is there deserted by Boiardo, to be taken up by Ariosto, and after many adventures brought to relieve the Christian army in the utmost danger, and to give his sister Bradamante in marriage to Ruggiero.
Some have thought that Tasso’s one fictitious hero, Rinaldo, was partly borrowed from the Paladin, going as he does to the enchanted gardens of Armida, and being only brought back when the crusading host was in the utmost jeopardy. The chief mission of this latter Rinaldo was, however, it may be suspected, to be a compliment to the House of Este.
Some even think Roland himself only another version of Ragenwald, but the one Paladin is undoubtedly traceable to Hruoland, as is the other to Ragenwald, though I am inclined to think that the Rolandsaulen, that accompany the Irminsaulen at the gates of old cities, may perhaps be rightly from Raginwald, judgment-power.
The Normans received this name from two sources, the French Regnault or Renaud, generally from the Paladin, and from their own northern Ragnwold or Rognwald. So Domesday has it in various forms, as Ragenald, Reynald, and Rainald, the latter fourteen times after the Conquest; and amongst them all we have derived our Christian name of Reginald, and the surname of Reynolds. The Scots took their form from the northern Rognvald, belonging to a great Jarl of the Orkneys, a noted skald, and thus obtained Ronald, which is in Gaelic Raonmill.
Ragn, or judgment, the leading word in this class of names, is connected with the Latin rego, to rule, and as rectus sprang from the one, so the Gothic raihts and our right arose from the Teutonic forms, as well as to wreak, and the German rache, vengeance, both from the old idea of justice. Ragn, though primarily meaning justice, is also used, as judgment is, in the sense of wisdom. Reginald Pole was in his own time known as Reynold. We get the longer name from his Latinism as Reginaldus.
Some of Renaud’s freebooting fame may have come from a person whose name so closely resembles his own, that it is by no means easy to distinguish their progeny; namely, Raginhard, or firm judge. A nobleman of this name was Count of the Palace, or Pfalzgraf, to Louis de Debonnaire, and engaged in a conspiracy against him, with Bernard, king of Italy. They were made prisoners, and condemned; the emperor commuted the sentence to the loss of their sight; but his wife, who wanted Bernard’s inheritance, took care that so savage a person was sent to perform the operation that they both died in consequence.
| English. | Scottish. | Gaelic. | Italian. |
| Reginald | Ronald | Raonmill | Rinaldo |
| Reynold | Ranald | ||
| Rex | |||
| Spanish. | French. | German. | Polish. |
| Reynaldos | Regnauld | Reinwald | Raynold |
| Renaud | Reinald | ||
| Regnault | |||
| Esthonian. | Lettish. | Frisian. | |
| Rein | Reinis | Reinold | |
| Reino | Rennold |
Another Reginard is said by Le Grand to have been a cunning politician, who lived in Austrasia in the ninth century, and much troubled his lord by sometimes taking part with the Germans, sometimes with the French, by which means he became so much detested that he was the subject of many songs in which he was called the Little Fox. At any rate, in the great animal epic, the fox has taken the name of Reinart, or Reinecke Fuchs, and as early as 1313, when the sons of the wily Philippe le Bel were knighted, the edifying spectacle was represented before them of the life of Renard the Fox, who became successively physician, clerk, bishop, archbishop, and pope, eating however hens and chickens all the while, much after the fashion of their father’s unhappy tool at Avignon. Renard has thus become the absolute name of the animal in France, to the entire exclusion of the ancient golpe, and in England Reynard is his universal epithet. It was not however confined to the creature, but was once prevalent among the human kind.
| English. | French. | Provençal. | Italian. |
| Reynard | Regnard | Rainart | Rainardo |
| Renart | |||
| German. | Frisian. | Polish. | Hungarian. |
| Raginhart | Renert | Raynard | Reinhard |
| Reinhard | Rinnert | Raynard | Reinhard |
| Reineke | Rennart | ||
| Renke | Rienit | ||
| Renz |
Another old Frankish form is Raginmund, much in use in southern France, where there was a long line of counts of Toulouse, called Raymond, one of whom was celebrated by Tasso in the first Crusade as a gallant knight, but the last of whom, Raymond Berenger, one of the earliest examples of double names, went down before the sword of the first Simon de Montford, as a supporter of the Albigenses. The counts of Barcelona, in Spain, bore the like name, and the old Romanesque territories are still its usual home.
| English. | Provençal. | Italian. | German. |
| Raymond | Raimons | Raimondo | Reinmund |
| French. | Spanish. | ||
| Raimond | Ramon |
Terrible to us, but glorious to Denmark, was the name of Ragnar. Once we had it peacefully in East Anglia, as Raginhere, the warrior of judgment, but in that same East Anglia it was to have a deadly fame. The historical Ragnar seems to have been decorated with a few mythical exploits of some more ancient hero, for he is one of the dragon killers. His first wife, Thyra, had her bower encircled by a deadly poisonous serpent, the ravager of the whole country, until he won her hand by the slaughter of the serpent, having guarded himself from its venom by a suit of hairy garments covered with pitch, whence he obtained the soubriquet of Lodbrog. Afterwards he married a poor but beautiful maiden called Krake, who, after she had borne him four sons, disclosed that she was the last of the Wolsungen, the daughter of Sigurd and Brynhild. Nay, Icelandic families connect themselves through her with the heroes of Wurms! And after this it is strange to find Jarl Ragnar sailing up the Seine, and ravaging Paris, in the days of Charles the Bald, being in fact the Agramante of the poets. Again he was the cause of bitter woe to England, falling into the hands of King Ælle of Northumbria, and being put to death by being thrown into a pit filled with vipers, where, till his last breath, he chanted the grand death song that is worthy to stand beside the dirge of King Eric Blödaxe. It was revenge for his death that brought his fierce sons with that dire armament which ravaged England—the invasion that was fatal to Edmund of East Anglia, ruined the great abbeys of the fens, and though finally mastered by Alfred, made the North of England Danish. This name of dread was brought to Normandy by his kindred, and figures in Domesday as Raynar, a frequent surname in England. In France it was cut down to René, a name that crept into the House of Anjou, and was bestowed on the prince—too much of a troubadour and knight-errant for a king—who vainly tried on so many crowns, and was hated in England because ‘Suffolk gave two dukedoms for his daughter.’ Why the feminine of this name, Renée, was chosen for the younger daughter of Louis XII., does not appear, but when she married into the House of Este, it was translated into Renata, and the Italians, in their revived classicalism, seem to have fancied it had some connection with regeneration. Renira is the Dutch feminine form.
| English. | French. | Provençal. | German. |
| Rayner | Reignier | Raynier | Reiner |
| Rainer | Renier | Italian. | Nor. |
| René | Renato | Ragnar | |
| Ranieri |
Raginmar, great judgment, still exists in Germany, as Reinmar, or Reimar, and is the most probable origin of the Ramiro, so frequent among the early kings of the small struggling Pyrenean realms.
Ragnhild, a favourite with old Norwegian dames, has become in Lapp, Ranna.
The German contraction rein has been often translated into pure, but this is an error, as these names can almost uniformly be traced back to ragn.
The remaining forms are—
| German. | English. | ||
| Ragnfrid, M. Ragnfrida, F. | Renfred, M. Ragnfrida, F. |  | Judgment of peace |
| Nor. | |||
| Ragnfrid, F. Ragnrid, F. Randid, F. Randi, F. |  | Fair judgment | |
| Ger. | Prov. | ||
| Raginbald Reinbold Renbold Rembald | Rambauld | | Prince of judgment |
| Ger. Reginbrecht, Reinbert—Splendour of judgment | |||
| Nor. Ragenheid—Wise impulse | |||
| Ger. Reinger—Spear of judgment | |||
| Nor. Reginleif—Relic of judgment | |||
| German. | Frisian. | ||
| Raginward Reinward | Remward Renward Remma | | Guardian of judgment |
And lastly Regina, called in Bavaria Reigl and Regl, was originally less the Latin queen than the feminine of ragn. Nor in effect is the meaning far apart.[[140]]
[140]. Roscoe, Bojardo and Ariosto; Sismondi, Histoire de France; Mallet; Northern Antiquities; Spanish Ballads.
Section V.—Richard.
Richard, or Richardet, was one of the Quatre Filz d'Aymon, who, according to one version, was the person who gave the fatal blow with the chess-board, instead of Renaud. He is not a very interesting personage, being rather the attendant knight than the prime hero, the rescued, not the rescuer; but under his Italian name of Ricciardetto, he has a whole poem to himself, a mere scurrilous satire upon friars, and was the lowest depth to which romantic poetry fell.
It was not to this Paladin that his name owed its frequency, but to Ricehard, or stern king, an Anglo-Saxon monarch of Kent, who left his throne to become a monk at Lucca, and was there said to have wrought many miracles. The third Norman duke bore the name, and transmitted it to two successors, whence we obtained as many as twenty Richards at the Conquest, and have used it as a favourite national name ever since. Two more saints bore it, the excellent bishop of Chichester, and a hermit, who was made bishop of Andria, in Apulia. Three times has it been on the throne, though finally discarded by royalty after the enormities imputed to the last Plantagenet; and latterly it has lost a little of its popularity, though it has never been entirely disused.
| English. | French. | Italian. | Netherlands. |
| Richard | Richard | Riccardo | Rijkert |
| Ritchie (Scot.) | Ricciardo | Riikard | |
| Diccon | Portuguese. | Ricciardetto | Riik |
| Dick | Ricardo | ||
| Polish. | |||
| Ryszard |
The leading syllable is from the same source as ragn; it is he who executes judgment, the ruler or king, the same word as the Indian rajah, and the Latin rex. It was reiks in Gothic, rich in old German, ryce in Anglo-Saxon; and its derivative reich was the origin of the Neustria and Austrasia, the oster reich and ne oster reich, eastern and not eastern, realms, of the Franks, and of the present Austria or eastern kingdom. Reich is the home term for the German empire at the present day. Our adjective rich is its sordid offspring, and in France a wealthy peasant is un richart.
Rik is more in vogue as a Gothic and Frank commencement than among most of the other Teutons, though all use it as a conclusion. Richard is its only universal name; but among the first foes of the Romans, we find among the Suevi, Rechiarius, who is the same with the German Richer, or kingly warrior, and the French saint, Riquier. Ricimar, the name of the terrible Goth who for a short time held Rome, is the great king, and was the maker and dethroner of the four last Augusti; and his namesakes, Ricimer and Rechimiro, appear in Spain, and may, perhaps, be the right source of Ramiro. Recared, Richila, Riciburga, are also Gothic.
The Franks show Rigonthe, or royal war, a daughter of Fredegonda; Rictrude, a saint, as well as Richilde, also a queenly name, which continued for some time in use, and is better than the Richenza and Richarda, sometimes used in England as the feminines of Richard. Richolf endures in Friesland as Rycolf, Ryklof, or Rickel, and Germany once had Ricbert.
One great name of this derivation is the northern Eirik. The first syllable is that which we call aye to the present day, the word that lies at the root of the Latin œvum, the German ewig, and our own ever. Ei-rik is thus Ever King. An ancient Erik was said to have been admitted among the gods, and Earic was the second name of Æsc, the son of Henghist; but it was the northern people who really used Eirik, which comes over and over in the line of succession of all the Northern sovereignties, figures in their ballads, and, in the person of King Eirik Blödaxe, is connected with their finest poetry. In the present day it is scarcely less popular than in old times, and has the feminine Eirika.
| English. | French. | German. | Nor. | Swedish. |
| Eric[Eric] | Eric | Erich | Eirik | Erik |
| Polish. | Slovak. | Lettish. | Esth. | Lapp. |
| Eryk | Erih | Erik | Erik | Keira |
| Areh | Eers |
Two other names of the North have the same commencement, Eimund, ever protecting, or eternal guard, commonly called Emund, and Eilif, the ever-living, answering to the Greek Ambrosios. Eilif is also written Eiliv, Elliv, Ellef, and even Elof, and Latinized in Elavus.[[141]]
[141]. Roscoe; Munch; Butler; Michaelis.
Section VI.—Astolfo.
Astolfo is to the Paladins what Conan is to the Feen, the butt or grazioso. In his full-blown perfection he is first cousin to Orlando, being the son of Milone’s brother Ottone, and was also related to Rinaldo, according to the quaint genealogies of the chivalrous heroes that exact heraldry loved to draw up. He joined the four sons of Aymon, when they left the court after the quarrel at chess, and shared in their wild exploits; but apparently permitted no meaner interlopers in the trade, for when he caught a party of robbers, he insisted on some unfortunate hermits being their executioners, declaring such an office was quite as pleasing to Heaven, ‘che dire il Pater nostro,’ and finally pummelling them into compliance. In Bojardo, Astolfo gained possession of a magic lance, brought by Angelica from Catay, which unhorsed all its antagonists, and secure in its aid, refused when he was required to deliver up to Gradasso, Bajardo and Durindana, which had been left in his charge while their masters were wandering after Angelica, but challenged Gradasso to single combat, defeated him, and then went in search of his cousins. Ariosto conducts him into the enchanted palace, where every one was pursuing something lost; Rinaldo, his horse, Bradamante, Ruggero, Ruggero, Bradamante.
One blast of Astolfo’s horn, also magical, destroyed the enchantment, and he became possessed for the time of the Hippogriff, upon whom he soared to the terrestrial paradise, and was conducted by St. John to the moon, where he obtained possession of Orlando’s senses, and restored them to him. The later writers, who added to the burlesque element and diminished the chivalrous, made more and more of Astolfo’s boastfulness, till he is quite the buffoon of their poems. He was finally killed at Roncesvalles; and the Spaniards call him Don Estolfo.
The person killed at the same time as Rotlandus is called, by Eginhard, Anselmus, and he, no doubt, contributed in the idea of the Astolfus, Count of Champagne, whose burial after the battle is recorded by Archbishop Turpin. But the real bearer of the name of Astolfo was one of the enemies of the Karlings, namely, Astolfo, king of the Lombards, who held his court at Pavia, and whose encroachments on the Roman territory were the first cause of the interference of the Franks in Italy. He was besieged by Pepin at Pavia in 755, and forced to come to terms; but he was evidently a very considerable sovereign; and Ernesto, Marchese d'Este, was killed in battle with him in 745. His promotion to be a Paladin is accounted for by his having been a Christian, and the character he bears, by the possibility of there having been satirical songs and poems upon him, especially at the time when Charlemagne ill-treated his granddaughter, Desirata. Astolfo is still a current name in Lombardy, though we do not find it anywhere else, and its congeners only in Scandinavia.
The meaning of the last syllable is, of course, wolf; the first is aast or ast, love or wishes, or if the sense of hot impetuosity be allowed, Astolf is the swift wolf. Aasta was rather a favourite name with the maidens of the North, and Asta is not disused, though too often treated as the short for Augusta.
Astridur is from hridhur, an impulse, and thus would mean swift impulse, or the impulse of love. It was greatly used by the royal ladies of the North, among whom may be specified the mother of St. Olaf, and a daughter of Knut, called by Danish pronunciation, Estridh, but transmuted into Margaret.
The diminutive of Ast, under various mispronunciations, named that most terrible of vikings, Hasting, whose ravages, though kept from England by the policy originated by Alfred, were fearful all along the French coast, and even extended to Italy. It is he who is said to have many times submitted to baptism, and then returned to his fury again; and there is a curious report, that Rollo’s Normans found him settled in France, and reproached him with the tameness of his old age, so that he dashed away again, and returned to his ships and his piracy. Hastinc occurs in Domesday, and Warren Hastings' family claimed descent from the old Sea King.[[142]]
[142]. Roscoe; Sismondi; Munch; Michaelis; Histoire de Normandie.
Section VII.—Ogier le Danois.
One of the Paladins was, undoubtedly, the legacy of a much more ancient myth, namely, Ogier le Danois. He does not play a very prominent part in the poems of the Italians, but as Ogier the Dacian he is one of Turpin’s catalogue of knights, and a ballad especially dear to Don Quixote thus commences:—
‘De Mantua sale el Marques,
Danes Urgel el leal.’
It proceeds to tell how he found Valdovinos, his nephew, dying under a tree, having been assassinated by the emperor’s son, Carloto. The ballad further relates how the Marques proceeds to court, gets Carloto tried by his peers and doomed to death, and though el Rey Carlo banishes them all for uttering the condemnation, the sentence is carried out.
This Italian marquis is an exceedingly droll development of the old Teutonic hero, Holger Danske. In Italy he is Oggieri, Oggero, or Uggieri il Danese; in French, Ogier le Danois; and, at times, le damné, or il dannato, which title is further accounted for by the story that he was a Saracen who became a Christian, and that his friends wrote from home ‘tu es damné,’ whence he chose to be thus christened. In the Reali de Francia, Charlemagne cuts off, with his own hand, the head of an unfortunate Oldrigi, whose blood was too noble to be shed by any one else. Now this Oggier was without doubt a contribution from the stores of Norman tradition; for Holger, or Olger, Danske is the grandest national hero of Denmark. There is a ballad, given by Weber, where he and Tidrek the Strong have a tremendous battle, and he comes off victor. Moreover, he has eaten of the fruit of the trees of the sun and moon, and has become immortal, and there he sits with his fellows in the vaults of the Castle of Kronberg, near which are two ponds, called his spectacles. A peasant, with a plough-share on his shoulders, once lost his way, and wandered in; he found a circle of tall old men in armour, all asleep round a stone table, with their heads resting on their crossed arms. Holger Danske, who sat at the head of the table, raised his head and the stone broke asunder, for his beard had grown into the stone. He asked his guest some questions about the upper world and dismissed him, offering his hand. The peasant, dreading the gigantic grip of the old champion, gave his ploughshare. ‘Ha! ha!’ said Holger, as he felt its firmness, ‘it is well. There are still men in Denmark. Tell them that we shall come back when there are no more men left than can stand round one tun!’ But the ploughshare had been twisted round by his fingers. Can this return of Holger be the Roger Bon Temps of the French peasantry?
But Holger, though I have placed him among the Paladins, might have gone even farther back than the days of Dietrich. He is a mythical king, well nigh a god, originally called Haaloge, and owing, as his sacred island, Haalogaland, or Heligoland.
His name itself is holy, our very word holy—the halig of the Anglo-Saxons, the hellig of the North, the heilig of Germany, and these words sprang from those denoting health; as the Latin salve, hail, salvus, safe, and salvatio, safety, are all related to soundness.
Leaving this, as not belonging to our main subject, we find that Helgi, the Norse form of the word for this holy old mythic king, was exceedingly popular in the North. Helgi has a poem to himself in the elder Edda. A son of Burnt Njal was called Helgi, and forty-two cases are found of the name in the Landnama-bok, and thirty-four of its feminine, Helga. In Domesday there are five called Helgi, besides fourteen Algars, very possibly meant for Holger; and it may be suspected that the Helie of the early Norman barons may have been as much due to the Helgi of their forefathers as to the prophet whom they learnt to know on Mount Carmel. Perhaps, too, Helga was the source of Ala, or Ela, by which name a good many Norman ladies are recorded, the best known of whom was Ela, heiress of Salisbury, the wife of one William Longsword and mother of the other, one of the founders of Salisbury Cathedral, and the witness of a vision of her son’s death in Egypt.
Helgi’s descendants towards the East are far more certain matters. Helgi, called Oleg by the Russian historians, was the son of Rurik, the first Norman grand prince of Kief, and his daughter, Olga, visited Constantinople, and was there baptized by the name of Helena, which makes the Russians suppose her two names to translate one another; but they have fortunately not discarded either Oleg or Olga, which thus remain mementoes of the northern dynasty among the very scanty number of Russian names that are neither Greek nor Slavonic.
In its own country Helgi gets contracted into Helle, and Helga into Hæge.[[143]]
[143]. Munch; Roscoe; Keightley; Marryat, Jutland.
Section VIII.—Louis.
With the throne of the Franks, the Karlingen took their favourite prefix of the old Salic line, hlod.
This word, the same in root as the Sanscrit çru, Greek κλύω (kluo), Latin cluo, Anglo-Saxon hlowan, may possibly have been originated by the cow, to whose voice, in our own language, the verb to low is now restricted. All mean to make a noise; and the dignity of that noise increased, for κλυτός (klutos) was Greek for renowned, κλέος, fame, as we saw when dealing with Cleomenes, Cleopatra, &c.; and in Latin, clueo, was to be famous, clientes or callers beset the honoured man, and laus was praise or fame; and so not only have we loud in English, lyde in the North, for the ordinary adjective, but hlod or hlud was the old German term for renown, and los for which French knights afterwards fought and bled, and a score of other words, less relevant to our purpose, will easily suggest themselves as current in every European tongue, first cousin words from laus or from hlod.
The rough aspirate at the beginning was once an essential portion of the word, and among the Franks it must have been especially harsh, since their contemporary Latinists always render it by ch.
Chlodio, as they call him, is numbered as the second of the long-haired Salians, the father of ‘Meroveus,’ and leader of the incursions of the Franks about 428. His grandson married the Burgundian maiden, called by the Valkyr title of Hlodhild, or Chlodechilda, as the Latin civilization of her day called her, when it hailed her with delight as the converter of her husband to Christianity. Although canonized, her name was not in great use for a good many generations, and to this she probably owes it that, when it was revived as belonging to a royal saint, for the benefit of the daughter of the good dauphin, son of Louis XV., it had not been shorn of its aspirate like all the cognate ones. It has since become a favourite with French ladies.
| French. | Italian. | German. |
| Clotilde | Clotilda | Klothilde |
The husband of Clotilda was known to his own fierce Franks as Hluodowig, or famous war, or consecration; but when his success after his prayer to the God of Hluodhild had brought him to abjure his Teuton gods, and receive baptism from St. Remi, the pope accepted the only orthodox sovereign of Europe as most Christian king and eldest son of the Church by the appellation of Chlodovisus, or Clovis, the retranslation into French.
Among his successors was found many a fainéant who had nothing of him but his prefix and his long hair, and one who is counted as Clovis II. When these had passed away, Charles the Great gave the name of the great founder of the former line to one of his younger sons, the only one who lived to succeed him.
What Hlodwig Haman’s War was called in his own day may be seen by the curious barbaric Latin poem sung by his soldiers in honour of their exploit in setting him at liberty, when he had been treacherously made prisoner by Adelgis, Duke of Beneventum, a song that shows Latin in its first step towards the tongues of southern Europe.
‘Audite omnes fines terre errore cum tristitia,
Quale scelas fuit factum in civitas Beneventum
Lluduicum comprenderunt, sancto pio Augusto.’
‘Lluduicus’ is now known to the French as Louis le Debonnaire, a title that some ascribe to his piety, others to his weakness. The Germans took him as Ludwig, and thenceforth these two varieties held a double course, while the softer Provençals made him Aloys, which is now regarded, owing to a saint of its own, as a separate name. Three monarchs of the Karling line bore this favourite name, and the fifth descendant of Hugh Capet brought it in again, to come to its especial honour with the saintly Crusader, ninth king so called, from whom it became so essentially connected with French royalty, that after the succession of the Bourbons, no member of the royal family was christened without it. Indeed, hardly any one of rank or birth failed to have it among their many names, till its once-beloved sound became a peril to the owners' heads in the Revolution, and it has in the present day arrived at sharing the unpopularity of François.
Elsewhere it is chiefly a French importation; the Welsh use Lewis as an Anglicism of Llewellyn, and the Irish of Lachtna; and the Scots make rather more use of it from their old alliances and connection through the Scottish guard. The Scottish Lodowick is probably taken from the northern form of the original word; just as with the Italians, Luigi is the mere Italian version of Louis, Lodovico the inheritance from the Lombards or Germans, and in this shape was long current in northern Italy, belonging in particular to the unfortunate Sforza, of Milan, who perished in the first shock between France and Italy.
| English. | Breton. | Scottish. | French. |
| Ludovick | Loiz | Lodowick | Clovis |
| Lewis | Loizik | Louis | |
| Louis | Looys | ||
| Provençal. | Italian. | Spanish. | Portuguese. |
| Aloys | Lodovico | Clodoveo | Luiz |
| Chlodobeu | Luigi | Luis | |
| Lozoic | Aloïsio | ||
| German. | Swiss. | Swedish. | Dutch. |
| Ludwig | Ludi | Ludwig | Lodewick |
| Luz | Bavarian. | Lood | |
| Lotze | Wickl | ||
| Polish. | Bohemian. | Slovak. | Hungarian. |
| Ludvik | Ludvik | Ludvick | Lajos |
| Ludvis | Ljudevit |
The Provençal Aloys apparently was the first shape that threw out a feminine, the Aloyse or Heloïse, whose correspondence with Abelard was the theme of so much sentiment, and whose fame, brought by the archers to Scotland, no doubt was the origin of the numerous specimens of Alison found in that romantic nation. According to Dugdale, the wife of the Norman William Mallet was Hesilia or Helewise, no doubt the same as Heloïse. Heloïse had nearly died away in France when Rousseau’s romance of La Nouvelle Heloïse brought it as well as Julie into fashion again.
The votaresses of St. Louis had, however, chosen to come much nearer to his name, and by the end of the fifteenth century Louise was in great vogue at the French court; it travelled everywhere with French princesses, came to us with the House of Hanover, and has now a thorough hold of all ranks.
| English. | French. | Italian. | Spanish. |
| Louisa | Louise | Luisa | Luisa |
| Louie | Lisette | Eloïsa | Portuguese. |
| Scotch. | Loulou | Luiza | |
| Leot | Heloise | Luizinha | |
| Alison | Louison | ||
| Alison | |||
| German. | Swedish. | Polish. | Lettish. |
| Ludowicke | Ludovica | Ludvika | Lusche |
| Luise | Lovisa | Ludoisia | Lasche |
| Lova | Lodoiska |
The eldest son of the great Clovis was Hlodmir, or Clodomir, great fame, made more euphonious in German as Ludomir, and furnishing such surnames as Luttmer and Lummers.
All his sons were murdered by their uncles, except one, who was shorn of his long locks to save his life, and was put into a convent, where he became a holy man, was canonized, and his harsh name of Hlodowald, or Clodvald, became the pleasant one of St. Cloud, best known for the sake of the palace near Paris. Another St. Chlodvald, of Metz, is commonly called St. Clou.
One of the uncles who killed the poor boys was Hlodhari, or Chlotachari, famous warrior, a terrible savage, but the last survivor of the brothers, and counted in the Frank history as Chlother, or Clotaire. Others of his race likewise were so baptized, and when the name passed to the Karlingen it was as Lothar. So was called the son of Louis le Debonnaire, whose portion, known at first as Lotharingen, came to be in Latin Lotharingia, and still remains Lorraine. Lothar did not pass away from Germany; one emperor, after the separation, was so called; and it fell into many forms of surnames, in especial into Luther; and when Martin Luther had rendered this almost saintly to his countrymen, they over-hastily explained it by lother, pure; while the Bohemians found a similar word in their own tongue, meaning a swan. Oddly enough, Huss signified a goose, and the saying arose that the Bohemian goose had let fall a quill, which had been picked up by a swan of far more distant flight.
Luther has a few namesakes in his own country on his own account, but, in general, Chloter has died out of Christian nomenclature.
| English. | French. | German. | Spanish. |
| Lothario | Clotaire | Lothar | Clotario |
| Lowther | Lothaire | Luther | Lettish. |
| Italian. | Lutters | ||
| Lotario |
Chlodoswintha, or famous height, was a Frank princess, without namesakes beyond her own race; in fact, the use of this prefix seems to have been exclusively Frank.[[144]]
[144]. Sismondi, Histoire des François, Littérature du Midi de l'Europe; Friedrich Pott; Michaelis; Thierry, Récits des Temps Mérovingiens[Mérovingiens].
CHAPTER VI.
DESCRIPTIVE NAMES.
Section I.—Nobility.
The names connected with any great cycle of interest have been nearly exhausted, and only those remain that seem to have been chosen more for sense than connection, though afterwards continued for the sake of their owners. Several of our own truly English or Anglo-Saxon names are among these, and in especial those with the prefix meaning noble, Æthel, Athel, Adel, Edel, or in High German, Adal. It is thought to come from the universal word atta, a father, and thus to convey that the owner has forefathers, the essence of nobility, as with the pater and patrician of Rome, and the hidalgo, the son of something, of Spain. Adel, or Æthel, is a favourite prefix in all the Teutonic branches except the Scandinavian, where it does not occur at all. It is essentially Gothic,—witness Athalaric, the formidable but gentle conqueror of Rome, who well deserved his name of Noble-King. He is generally, however, called Alaric, and his name has been deduced from al, all; but the right reading seems to be that which identifies[identifies] his appellation with our own English Æthelric, and the Uadalrich of Germany.
Udalrich, archbishop of Augsburg till the year 973, is notable as the first person canonized by the pope according to the present forms, which could not, however, have included the half-century of posthumous probation, as he was placed in the calendar only twenty years after his death. Contracting his name to Ulrich, Germany made him a favourite national saint; and we find him and his feminine spread throughout the countries influenced by the empire, and the feminine particularly prevalent in Denmark, whither it was carried by German queens. Though the ensuing table places all the forms of Athalaric together, it should be kept in mind that the forms beginning with A are the modern namesakes of the great Goth, those with U and O the votaries of that saint, and Adelrich is considered as a different name from Ulrich.
| English. | French. | Italian. | German. |
| Æthelric | Alaric | Alarico | Adelrich |
| Alaric | Ulric | Ulrico | Alarich |
| Ulrick | Olery | Uadalrich | |
| Ulrich | |||
| Alerk | |||
| Oelric | |||
| Bavarian. | Swedish. | Frisian. | Swiss. |
| Rickel | Alarik | Ulrik | Uoli |
| Ulrik | Olrick | Ueli | |
| Ulerk | Uerech | ||
| Ulk | |||
| Ucko | |||
| Ocko | |||
| Polish. | Bohemian. | Slovak. | Lettish. |
| Ulryk | Ulric | Ureh | Uldriks |
| Oldrich | Ulrih | ||
| FEMININE. | |||
| German. | French. | Roman. | Polish. |
| Ulrike | Ulrique | Ulrica | Ulryka |
The successor of Alaric, who laid him in his river-grave, is known to us as Ataulfus. In his own time he was Athaulf, the Noble-Wolf, and his likeness stands in our own roll of English kings as the father of Alfred, namely, Æthelwulf; but this good old name was dropped in England, while its German cousin, in honour of a sainted bishop of Metz, of the ninth century, became very common in the principalities of the empire, and was imported with the house of Hanover in the barbarous Latin form of Adolphus. Its feminine, coined in Germany, is Adolfine, usually called Dofine, and now extremely common. This may possibly be the source of the Dolphine given as the name of one of the daughters of Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria, as the habit of making barbarous feminines was just beginning in her time.
| English. | French. | Italian. | German | Finn. |
| Ethelwolf | Adolphe | Adolfo | Adolf | Ato |
| Adolphus | Udolfo | Odulf | Atu | |
| Dolph |
Athanagild, or Athalagild, Noble Pledge, was another of these early Goths, and afterwards we meet the same meaning in Adelgis, or Adelchis, the brave son of the last Lombardic king, whose noble spirit, under his misfortunes, is the subject of a fine tragedy of Manzoni. The duke of Beneventum, who made Louis le Debonnaire prisoner, was Adelgis; but it is curious to find the soldiers in the dog-latin poem above alluded to, terming him Adalfieri. Odelgis was old High German.
Æthel was so much used by the royal families of Kent and Wessex, that the diminutive, Ætheling, was latterly applied to designate the heir to the crown, and was thus continued even after the Conquest to the son of Henry I., who perished in the white ship.
Æthelbryht, or Noble Splendour, named our first Christian king of Kent, also a brother of King Alfred’s, and a missionary of the royal blood of Northumbria, who preached in southern Germany, and died about the year 700, at Egmond, where, as St. Adelbrecht, he became patron. His name was taken at baptism by one who became archbishop of Magdeburg, who, in his turn, bestowed it on his pupil, the Bohemian Woyteich, Army-Help. This convert was afterwards bishop of Prague, and was martyred near Dantzic while preaching to the heathen Prussians in 997. Adelbrecht could not fail to become national wherever the saint had set his foot; and when shortened to Albrecht, was adopted by Italy, and thence sent to Jerusalem with a Latin patriarch, who, being beatified, rendered Alberto freshly popular in the South. Albrecht, and the feminines Alberta and Albertine, were, however, almost entirely German, until the late Prince Consort brought the name to England, where it bids fair to become one of the most frequent of national names. Some fancy it comes from Allbright; but the German saints, whence it was taken, are evidently direct from our English Æthelbryht, though in Germany Adelbert and Albrecht are now treated as two separate names. Bela, which belonged to an excellent blind king of Hungary, is believed to be the Magyar form of the name.
| English. | French. | Provençal. | Italian. |
| Ethelbert | Albert | Azalbert | Albert |
| Albert | Aubert | Albertino | |
| Albret | |||
| Aubertin | |||
| German. | Wallachian. | Finn. | Danish. |
| Adalbert | Averkie | Albert | |
| Albrecht | Polish. | Alpu | Bertel |
| Ulbricht | Albert | ||
| Olbracht |
Æthelred, Noble-speech or counsel, the brother of Alfred, was almost canonized by his subjects, and is sometimes called Ethered, whence the Scottish Ethert. The nickname of our last Ethelred was a play on his name “onreade,” not meaning so much tardy as without counsel—Noble-rede the Un-reedy. Ethelred must not be confused with Etheldred, the feminine name, properly Æthelthryth, meaning in Anglo-Saxon the Noble-threatener, connected with the German Ediltrud, or noble maiden. Most likely names ending in trut had been brought to England, and as the Valkyr sense was forgotten, the native meaning of threat was attached to the word, and the spelling adapted to it. St. Æthelthryth was a queen who must have been a very uncomfortable wife, and who, finally, retired into a monastery, getting canonized as St. Etheldreda, and revered as St. Audry. From the gewgaws sold at her fairs some derive the term tawdry; and, at any rate, Awdry has never been extinct as a name among the peasantry, and has of late been revived, though with less popularity than the other more modern contraction, Ethel, which is sometimes in modern times set to stand alone as an independent name. Addy is the common Devonian short for Audrey.
Germans do, however, seem to have used the word without another syllable, for Adilo, or Odilo, was an old name, and Ado and Addo are still current in Friesland, no doubt, the same as the Ade of the Cambrian registers. Adela and Adèle, too, occur very early; indeed, there is reason to think that just as in England the son was the Ætheling, in Frankland the daughter was the Adalheit, or the Adelchen. This word heit is translated as the root of the present German heiter, cheerful, and thus would mean noble cheer; but I suspect it is rather heid, condition, answering to the hood or head at the end of our abstract nouns, e. g. hardihood, and that the princess royal of each little Frankish duchy or county was thus the ‘Nobleness’ thereof.
All the feudal princes of the tenth and eleventh centuries seem to have had an Adelheid to offer in marriage, and to have Latinized her in all manner of ways, while practically they called her Alix (or Alisa in Lombardy), a name that was naturalized in England, when Alix la Belle married Henry I. Alice is our true English form, though it has been twisted into Alicia, and then referred for derivation to the Greek Alexios, so as often to appear in Latin documents of the later middle ages in the form of Alexia; whereas in earlier times, before its origin was forgotten, it is translated by Adelicia, Adelisa, or Adelidis.
| English. | French. | Provençal. | Italian. |
| Adelaide | Adelaide | Azalaïs | Adelaïda |
| Adeline | Adeline | Alisa | |
| Adeliza | Adelais | ||
| Adela | Adèle | ||
| Alice | Alix | ||
| Alicia | Aline | ||
| Elsie | |||
| German. | Netherlands. | Slovak. | Lettish. |
| Adelheid | Adelheid | Adelajda | Audule |
| Adeline | Adelais | Addala | |
| Adele | |||
| Else | |||
| Ilse |
The French made great use of all the forms of the name; the Germans, in honour, perhaps, of the Italian Queen Adelaide—whose adventures before her marriage with the Emperor Otho were so curious—preferred that variety, and from them we received it again with our good Queen Adelaide, from whom it is becoming frequent amongst us. The German Alice is Else, a favourite old peasant word. This same contraction is common in northern England, but gets confused with Elizabeth, as in Scotland, with Alison; and in Ireland, the prevalent Alicia is, perhaps, meant for Aileen, or Helen.
The Adeleve of early Norman times is probably meant for Æthelgifu, Noble-gift, a frequent Saxon lady’s name, which we generally call Ethelgiva.
Æthelwold, the Saxon historian of royal blood, is Noble-power. Æthelheard, or noble resolution, answers to Adelhard, a cousin of Charlemagne, and abbot of Corbie, whom his contemporaries glorified as at once the Augustin, the Antony, and the Jeremiah of his day, and who, being canonized, left Alard and Alert to Friesland, and Aleardo, Alearda to Provence.
Æthelstan, the Noble-stone or jewel, was second only to Alfred in ability and glory, and his name lived on to the Conquest, when it is set down as Adestan and Adstan.
Adelhelm, the Noble-helmet, named the excellent and poetical Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborn, from whom the headland on the Dorset coast was once called St. Aldhelm’s head, but is now corrupted into St. Alban’s head.
Adelgar, or Noble-spear, was chiefly continental, first figuring in the beautiful Scottish ballad of Sir Aldingar, but better known in Lombardy, where Allighero sprang from it, and gave his patronymic to Dante Alighieri. Algarotti was another Italian derivative; and in France, Augier and Augereau; in Germany, Oehlkar, show that it once must have been much in use. It is not always easy, however, to separate between the words from Adel and from Hilda. The remaining varieties are—
| Ger. Adelar—Noble eagle | span | ||
| Ger. Adelbar, Alpero—Noble bear | |||
| Ger. Adelbold; Eng. Æthelbald—Noble prince | |||
| Ger. Odelburga Eng. Æthelburg | | Noble defence | |
| Eng. Æthelburh—Noble pledge | |||
| German. | |||
| Adelfrid Adalfrid Ulfrid Ulfert Olfert |  | Noble peace | |
| Eng. Æthelfledh—Noble increase | |||
| Ger. Adelgard—Noble protection | |||
| Ger. Adelgund; Fr. Adelgonde—Noble war | |||
| Ger. Adelhild—Noble heroine | |||
| Ger. Udalland, Uland—Noble land | |||
| Ger. Adelinde, Odelind; Eng. Ethelind (mod.)—Noble snake | |||
| Ger. Adelmann, Ullman—Noble man | |||
| Ger. Adelmund; Eng. Edelmund (Domes.)—Noble protection | |||
| Ger. Adelmar; Eng. Ethelmar; Fr. Ademar, Adhemar—Noble greatness | |||
| Ger. Adelschalk—Noble servant | |||
| Ger. Adelswind—Noble strength | |||
| Ger. Adeltac—Noble day[[145]] | |||
[145]. Pott; Michaelis; Lappenburg; Butler; Palgrave; Turner[Turner].
Section II.—Command.
The Gothic bidyan has resulted in our verb to bid, the German baten, the Danish byde, besides bote, a messenger, and the budstick, bidding-stick, or summons to the muster.
All these were in the sense of command; but from the same root grew the race of entreating words, the Scandinavian bede, German bitten, and English beg. When these entreaties were devotional, the Germans made the verb beten, and our term for prayer, bede, passed on to the mechanical appliance for counting beads—the beads of the rosary, while the pensioner bound to pray for his benefactor was his bedesman.
It is doubtful whether this, or the Welsh bedaws, life, gave his name to the Venerable Bæda, but no doubt to himself and his contemporaries it suggested the idea of prayer. There is no doubt, however, in the case of Baudhildur, or Bathilda (the commanding heroine), the daughter of king Nidudr, the lady whom Volundr carried off with him when he fled from her mother’s cruelty. After her was called Bathilda, an Anglo-Saxon slave, who was elevated to be the wife of the second Hluodwig, and lived so holy a life, and exerted herself so much to obtain the redemption of slaves, that she was canonized, and, as la reine Bathilde, was greatly venerated in the believing days of France. Denmark also used this name, having probably taken it from England. There ‘Dronning Bothild,’ the wife of king Ejegod, spread the name among the maidens, so that it passed to Norway as Bodild, Bodil, and even to the contraction Boel.
Of English birth, too, was the Commanding-wolf—Bedvuolf, or Bodvulf—who, with his brother, St. Adolf, went, about the end of the sixth century, to seek religious instruction in Gallia-Belgica. Adolf became bishop of Maestricht, and eponym to the Adolphuses. Bodvulf came home, and founded the monastery of Ikano, where he died in 655, and was canonized. The monastery was destroyed by the Danes, and the situation forgotten, but the saint’s relics were carried away by the fugitive monks, and dispersed into various quarters, giving title to four churches in London, besides St. Botolf’s bridge, commonly called Bottlebridge, in Huntingdonshire, and St. Botolf’s town, in Lincolnshire, usually known as Boston, whence was called its American cousin Boston, with little relation to the saint. The tower of the church of St. Botolf, looking forth over the Wash, was a valued landmark, and thence the saint was apparently viewed as a friend of travellers, and connected with the entrances to cities, much as St. Christopher is elsewhere. Camden even supposed him to be Boathulf, or boat helper, and his day, the 17th June, is a market day in Christiania, under the term of Botolsok, or Botsok. In Jutland there is a church of St. Botolv; and in the North the names of Botol and Bottel are kept up; while, in England, there only remain to us the surnames of Bottle and Biddulph. The Old German forms of the two names above-mentioned are Botzhild, Botzulf; and Botzo, or Boso, a Commander, was now and then used as a name with them, as in the instance of the troublesome duke of Burgundy, whom French historians generally call Boson, and who is apt to be translated by böse, wicked.
Boto, Botho, Poto, are also found in Germany, and the very earliest specimen of this class of name is to be found in Botheric, commanding king, the name of the governor whose murder in the hippodrome caused Theodosius to give his bitterly repented command for the massacre of Thessalonica. Now and then bot occurs at the end of a word, as in the Spanish prince Sisebuto, the messenger of victory, or victorious commander.
These are not the same with some that look much like them, derived from the Northern bød, German badu, A.G.S. beado, war. Beadwig, in the Wodenic ancestry, is thus battle war, and the Gothic king of Italy, Totila, is probably made by the Romans from Bødvhar, battle pleader, a name still used in the North as Bødvar. Bødmod, Bødulf, and Bødhild, or Bødvild, have also been in use.[[146]]
[146]. Munch; Michaelis; Pott; Sismondi; Butler; Camden; Le Beau; Kemble.
Section III.—Brightness.
The root brâj furnished the Greek φλέγεεν, Latin flagrare, and Gothic bairht, the Anglo-Saxon beohrt, or byrht, the Old German percht, and Northern bjart.
It is a component of Frank, German, and Anglo-Saxon nomenclature, but is rarely found in genuine Norsk; the only instance in the Landnama-bok is Biartmar, who is noted as of Irish birth, so may have brought an Anglo-Saxon name.
Bertha, the most obvious of all the progeny of biart, has been treated of in her character as a personification of the bright Epiphany night, mixed up with an old epithet of Frigga and with the spinning Holda. So, in Swabia, these legends have formed a masculine, Berchthold, who has become the wild huntsman in that quarter. Berchtvold was really an English prince of the Heptarchy, and Brichtold is in Domesday. Perahtholt is a veritable Old German name, making the modern Bartold—Niebuhr’s name,—the Italian Bertaldo, and French Bertould. Bertalda is not so likely to be the feminine of this word as to come from Berchthilda, like the name of Bertille, a sainted abbess of Chelles.
It is not easy to discover whether the most popular of all thus commencing should be regarded as a single corrupted name, or the produce of two, of which one has the second syllable hramn, a raven, the other rand, a house. The patron saint of all alike is Bertichramnus, bishop of Mans till 623, and his Latinism leaves no doubt that he was Bright-raven. It was chiefly popular in France, whence we must have obtained it, although there is no instance of it in Domesday, and it was especially glorious in the fourteenth century, for the sake of gallant Constable du Guesclin, ‘the eagle of Brittany,’ whom Spanish chroniclers, by a droll perversion of his appellation, called ‘Mosen Beltran Claquin,’ when he came to fight their battles.
| English. | Scotch. | French. | Provençal. | Italian. |
| Bertram | Barthram | Bertrand | Bertran | Bertrando |
| Spanish. | Portuguese. | German. | Lusatian. | Hungarian. |
| Beltran | Bertrao | Bertram | Batram | Bertok |
| Berdrand | Batramusch |
The wolf was sure to accompany the raven; so Perahtolf, or Bertulf, was canonized as an abbot in Artois, and left the German Bertulf, and our own Bardolph, the flaming comrade of Falstaff.
Bertwine, or Bright friend, was the St. Bertin of France, and the Bertuccio of Italy, often found in the old Lombardic towns.
Brihtric was the English earl who so gallantly died in defending England from the Danes in the unhappy days of Ethelred the Unready, and another Brihtric was the unsuccessful suitor of Matilda of Flanders, on whom she wreaked an unworthy vengeance after the Conquest. All the Brihts in Domesday seem to be of Saxon birth, since they use the English instead of the Norman French commencement, which was already Ber, as in the instance of Bertrade de Montfort, Bright speech, the countess of Anjou, who deserted her husband for Philippe I. of France. The remaining forms are—
| Ger. Bertar; Fr. Berthier—Bright warrior | ||
| Eng. |  | Brichteva—Bright gift Bricfrid—Bright peace Brichtmar—Bright fame Brichsteg—Bright warrior Britfleda—Bright increase Brichstan—Bright stone Bricsteg—Bright maid |
| Ger. Bertrud—Bright maid | ||
Bert is one of the most indispensable conclusions among all the German range of names, and is far more common there than as a commencement.
Another word meaning bright, or glittering, is the Northern jar, jor, jer, the German ir. Iring, or Irinc, is a semi-mythological person. Old German tradition declared him to have been the counsellor of Irnvrit of Thuringia, and that when both had been taken by the Franks, he was deceived into slaying his sovereign, after which, in his rage, he killed the victorious Frank, laid him under his master’s body, and then cut his way through the enemy, and returned home.
He appears again in the Nibelungen-noth as the Markgraf Irinch of Tenemarche, or Denmark, in company with Irnvrit of Düringen, i.e. Thuringia: he wounds Hagen, but is slain by him, and lamented over by Kriemhild. His name was sometimes subsequently used, and is, perhaps, what French histories call Harenc.
Jørund is a northern name with a similar prefix, and means a brilliant or glittering man; but it gets called Jøren, and mixed up with Jorgen, or George.[[147]]
[147]. Grimm, Deutcher Mythologie, Deutche Heldensage; Munch; Alban Butler; Sismondi; Ayale-y-z-urita.
Section IV.—War.
In Ulfilas' Bible, ‘the multitude of the heavenly host’ is translated ‘Haryis hunniakundis managei.’ In Anglo-Saxon, an army is here, in old German heri, in the North her, all perhaps coming from the ear, and to hear, as having been summoned, like the legion from being chosen. Thence the leader was the English Heretoga, and German Herzog, finally translated into the Latin dux, and becoming political and territorial. The doings of the herr were expressed by various old words, of which the Scottish to harry is the direct descendant. Heerfurst, or army leader, may be the Ariovistus of Cæsar.
The single warrior was har in the North, hari in Germany, and as ar is often found at the end of names. Many German critics translate the word by the army, instead of the warrior; but Professor Munch considers that the warrior, hari, was the original meaning, and that herjar, his plural, afterwards came to mean the army.
The oldest and most famous of all the family is introduced to us by Tacitus as Chariovalda, a Batavian prince. It is the hardened sound of Harivald, Warrior power, or ‘Army wielder,’ a name that the Germans soon called Heriold, and the North Harald. This soon became one of the most renowned northern names. Harald Harfagre, or the fair-haired, was he who vowed never to trim his locks till he was sole king of Norway, and thus sent Thorer the Silent to Iceland, and Rolf-ganger to Normandy. Harald Krake, king of Sleswig, was baptized in the presence of Louis le Debonnaire, and used the already mentioned vow to forsake Thunner, Scaxnot, and all their works. He afterwards introduced St. Anschar to Denmark, but like all the first Christian kings of Scandinavia, was himself expelled from his realm by his subjects. Harald Hardrada, or the resolute, was the very crown of the poetic sea-kings of Norway, meeting with romantic adventures in Constantinople, singing the praises of his Russian bride all across the sea, exchanging gallant messages with his namesake Harold Godwinson at Stamford Bridge, and dying as poetically as he had lived at the foot of his banner Landwaster. It was from the Danes that Harold came to England with the son of Knut, and to the son of Earl Godwin, the usurper, more than half a Dane in blood and temper, who, because he died in battle with the Normans, is regarded by the popular mind as an English patriot, and has in very modern times had a good many namesakes. Harald, or, as the Frisians call it, Herold, is only properly national in Scandinavia and the islands from Iceland to Man.
Next in note is what the Franks called Charibert, when it belonged to the king of Paris, whose daughter brought Christian doctrine to Kent, and prepared the way for St. Augustine. St. Haribert was archbishop of Cologne about the year 1000, and at that time the name became extremely common among the French nobility. A Norman settler had brought it to England even in the time of Edward the Confessor; and one of the many Herberts founded a family in Wales, which, in the time of Henry V., was one of the first to follow the advice to use one patronymic instead of the whole pedigree of names. It is probably owing to the honours in various kinds of the branches of this family that Herbert has of late years become an exceedingly prevalent Christian name in England. Except that the Frisians call it Harber and Hero, and Italy puts an o at the end, it has no variations. Herman is confused with Eormen; and the other forms are—
Ger. Herberge—Warrior protection
Ger. Herbold—Warrior prince
Nor. Herbrand; Ger. Herbrand—Warrior sword
Nor. Herbjorn—Warrior bear
Ger. Herdegen—Warrior blade
Ger. Hertag—Warrior day
Nor. Hergils—Warrior pledge
Nor. Herlaug—Warrior drink
Nor. Herleik—Warrior sport
Nor. Herleif—Warrior relic
Ger. Herimar—Warrior greatness
Nor. Hermod; Ger. Hermund; Frank. Charimund—Warrior protection
Nor. Herjolf; Ger. Heriulf; Frank. Chariwulf—Warrior wolf
Ger. Heraric—Warrior king
The warrior names were of the fiercest order. Leid (if it do not mean a road) was the same with the word in modern German, meaning hurt or mischief, and expressed spite or violence. The North had Liedulf, afterw—ards contracted into Leiul, and no doubt the Scottish Lyulf, and German Lethard, Lethild, Laidrad, Laidwald, Laidwig.
In the same spirit we have neid or nöt, meaning violence or compulsion, though it has resulted in the German neid, envy, and our need, want. We have it in the name of St. Neot, the relative and rebuker of King Alfred in his haughty days, and the hero of a legend of little fishes daily renewed for his food. Also Nidhard was a great chronicler of Frank history, and left a name surviving as Nyddert, in Friesland, and cut into Nitz, in Germany. There, too, were Notburg and Notger, Nidbert in France, and in the North, Notulf, afterwards written Notto. The terminal nôt is, however, more common.
Wig or Vig is war itself, and is found in the genealogy of Odin. Wægdæg, or War day, is an ancestor of the Deiran kings.
Vigleîk still subsists in the North, and so does Viglaf, relic of war, the same as that of Wiglaf, the chronicler.
The other forms are—
| Ger. Wigbert; Fris. Wicbo—Bright war | |||||
| Nor. Vigbrand—War sword | |||||
| Ger. Wigbald—War prince | |||||
| Ger. Wigburg—War protection | |||||
| Nor. Vigfus—War eagerness | |||||
| German. | Frisian. | Nor. | |||
| Wighard Wichhard Weikard Wigo Wigi Viga | Wygard Wiart Wiert | Vighard | | War firmness | |
| Ger. |  | Wigher, Wicher—Warrior Wighelm—War helmet Wiglind—War serpent Wigmann, Wichman—War man Wigmar—War fame Wigram—War raven | |||
These are almost all German. The terminations in wig are often owing to German pronunciation of the word veh, or vieh, consecration, and sometimes of the northern veig, liquor.
The strange northern name of Snorre, famous for the sake of that Froissart of the North, Snorre Sturleson, comes from snerra, strife.
Styrke is the strong, the same word as that in which the old chroniclers describe William the Conqueror, as ‘so very stark.’ Sterkulv and a few other forms have been found in the North.
Toke is a very curious old name. It seems to mean the mad or raging, and, growing into Tyke or Tyge in Denmark, was the name that was Latinized into Tycho by the celebrated astronomer Brahe, who did not leave his madness behind him with his name. The famous Jomsburg sea-rover, a sort of northern Lycurgus of the tenth century, was Palnatoke, supposed to be properly Toke, the son of Palne. Palne is an unexplained name used by the Danes, and perhaps borrowed from the Wends; but there are a few other instances of it, among them the Anglicized Earl Pallig, the husband of Sweyn’s sister Gunhild, who was killed by Ethelred the Unready.
Thiostr means hardness or harshness, and was in use in the North as Triostulf, since contracted into Kjostol, Thiostvald, Thiostar; and probably Tostig, the ungracious son of Godwine, who brought Harald Hardrada to invade England, took his name from thence.
Section V.—Protection.
Bar—the word for strength—has been most fertile in produce. Its progeny are far too numerous to describe; but the most notable at present in use are the Berg, the strength of the hills, a mountain, and Burg, a fortress.
The names derived from it are, in combination, the bjorg of the North, in the masculine, meaning protector, and borg, the feminine, meaning, perhaps, protection,—the berge of the Germans and burg of the Anglo-Saxons answering to the same. The Anglo-Saxon ladies also bear names ending with burh, also from the same root, and meaning a pledge, the strength of an engagement, and the origin of our verb, to borrow. Burrhed, king of Mercia, bore this name; but instances of it are not very common.
Birger, Byrger, Birge, are the masculines much used in Scandinavia; and the combinations were Biorgulv, Bergthor, Bergthora, the faithful wife of Njal, and Bergliot, the daughter of Thorer the Silent,—the same name that has been already mentioned as the northern one that has been mixed with the Irish Brighid, and which would mean protecting ugliness. Other forms are Bergswain, protecting youth, Berghild, answering to our Mercian princess Burgenhild, and Borgny, apt to be cut down to Borny.
This is the word to which the Burgundians owed their title, as dwellers in burghs, instead of wanderers on the open plain.
Another large race of names comes from the Gothic warjan, Anglo-Saxon warian,—the ‘ware’ of rustic shouts in England like the ‘gare’ of France, the latter syllable of beware and aware, and the wehrer of Germany. The quality of precaution furnished the North with its favourite terminations var and vara, indicating the possession of the prudent virtue that makes a man wary. It does not begin names, but it often ends them, both in the North and Germany, as Geirvar, Hervar, Amalvara, Hildiwara, &c.
The inhabitant was the natural defender, and in Anglo-Saxon and Norsk ware became synonymous with the dweller, as Cantwara, the defenders of Kent, for the Kentishmen; Burgwara, the burghers; and in the North, Vikvarjar, bay defender. Ware, a defender, is thus a commencement in the German Warimunt, Guarding protection, the Vœrmund of the Mercian genealogy, and Vermund of the North, while its surviving representatives in France are Guiremond and Vermont.
Warenheri, or Protecting-warrior, is the Guarniero of Tasso, the Garnier of France, whence this form came to England as a surname after the Edict of Nantes, whilst Warner had been the legitimate descendant of the native Vœrnhare.
Warand, the German participle name, may have assisted in forming Guérin and Warren, unless there was a Warewine to account for it. Warnfrid or Warno, Werinhold and Warnebold, are also German.
The defender was with us the Weard, guard-warden, and weardian was to ward or guard; as in French garde and garder, in the North vördhr, in Germany wart, warten. This is the favourite termination, the ward of England passing the wart of Germany, the vard of the North; but of rare appearance as a commencement, though there is an instance of a German Wartgar, or guardian-spear.
These are extremely like the words taken from to gird, like gerda, gaard, &c., but they are essentially different: watching is here the idea of safety, as enclosure is there.
The termination mund, so common among all the Teuton nations, has been a very great difficulty. Some regard it as the German mund or munths, a mouth. The fact, however, appears to be that mund means a hand in the elder languages, and from a hand was early transferred to him who used his hand in protection.
All the best authorities agree in translating mund as protection; but as mund, a hand, is a feminine noun, the derivation from this source is a little doubtful, as the only lady’s name thus terminated is Rosamond. It is never a prefix.
Names ending in mund, hand, are often confused with those finishing in mod or muth, meaning courage or wrath, the mood of England and muth of Germany. Even in very early times, Thurismund, or Thurismod, would be indifferently written; but mod is not very common, and is apt to shorten into mo, as Thormod, Tormo.
The Germans used to imagine that all their names ending in hulf meant help; but this pleasant faith was destroyed by the northern wolf, and only one real help name is extant, the Helfrich of modern Germany, and Hialfrek of the North, which own an ancient precedent in the old Frank Hialperik or Chilperic.
The pronunciation of ward runs so naturally into hard, that many names, which when traced to their roots, turn out to terminate with ward, are spelt in German and French as if they were hard. The word hard does, however, really enter into the composition of a few names, chiefly German. There is, however, a semi-mythical northern lady called by the amiable name of Harthgrepa, Firm-grip or Hard-claw; and HartheKnad, or, as we call him, Hardicanute, seems to have had this distinguishing epithet added to his father’s name. The most noted of the other forms was Hardwine, Firm friend, the Hardouin of old French chroniclers, called in Italy Ardoino.
- Harding, firm
- Hartrich, firm king
- Hartwig, firm war
- Hartmund, firm protection
- Hartmod, firm spirit.
The names in rand have likewise been a difficulty; but the word is best referred to the Gothic razn, a house, and likewise a shield, from the protection both afford.
Rand is a northern prefix, and its derivatives are not easy to distinguish from those of Regin and Raven. Röndolfr, or House wolf, was certainly a northern name, and the same seems to have belonged to St. Radulphus, bishop of Bourges in 888, and to thirty-eight Radulfs in Domesday Book, then to the good justiciary, Ranulf de Glanville, under Henry II., to the crusading Earl Randle of Chester, and subsequently to many a Randal, Randolf, and Ralf, or, as we foolishly spell the word, Ralph.
The North had Rannveig, House-liquor, by way of a lady, and have shortened her into Rannog and Ronnau, also Rannmod, Randvid, Randve, or Randverr, house consecration.
Fast—in the sense of firm, not of quick—is found in the northern Fastolf, in the Frank queen, Fastrade, Firm council, in Fastburg, Fastmann, Fastmund. Lidvard, an old Norse name, that with us has run into Ledyard, in its own country into Levor, is the gate ward.
Tryggve, a favourite old northern name, is the true or trusty. The same word sometimes serves as a termination, as in Sigtryg or Sihtric.
Section VI.—Power.
Magan is the Gothic and Saxon to be able, whence our defective may, and a number of other words in all the various northern tongues, in especial main or chief. The names from it are chiefly of German origin. Maginfred, or Powerful-peace, was a fine Old German name, which, by the time it came to the brave but unfortunate Sicilian, son of Frederick II., had been worn down to Manfred, whence he was called by his subjects Manfredi, by his French foes Mainfroi, and by his English contemporaries Mainfroy.
Meginhard, main power, was a chronicler of the early ages, and in 1130 appears in the Cambrai registers. The Germans used it as Mainhart, and the English surname Maynard is from it. Meginrat made Meinrad, or powerful council, and Maginhild is still in use in the North as Magnild.
The main land is, in fact, the chief land, the main, the chief sheet of water, or sea, and might and main are so closely connected together, that Maginhild is the most natural step to Mahthild, Main heroine to Might heroine; for maht is really the modern German macht, and our own might, and both these mighty names were in early use in Germany. Mahthild was the wife of the emperor Henry the Fowler, and afterwards became the sainted abbess of Quedlingburg. Another Swabian Mechtild was canonized after being abbess of Adilstetten; and so fashionable did the name become, that all the French maidens, who were not Alix, seem to have been Mahthild; and in Italy it was borne by the Countess Matilda, the friend of Gregory VII., whose bequest was one of the pope’s first steps to the temporal power, and who is introduced by Dante in the flowery fields of Paradise. The Flemings call it Mahault, and thus term the lady, who, as the wife of William the Conqueror, brought it to England. Molde, as the Normans were pleased to term it, was regarded as so decidedly a Norman name, that the Scottish-Saxon Eadgyth was made to assume it, and it continued the regnant royal name until it sunk beneath the influences of the Provençal Alienor. It seems as if Matilde had been freshly introduced in Flanders when Count Philip married Matilda of Portugal; and this, and the old traditional Mehaut, went on side by side, just as in England did the full name Matilda, and the Anglicized Norman contraction Maude. Of late years Maude has been fashionable, though not so near the original, nor so really graceful in sound as Matilda. The earlier Mall and Moll were from Matilda, not Mary, which came much later into use.
| English. | French. | Italian. | Bavarian. |
| Matilda | Mathilde | Matilda | Mechtild |
| Molde | Mahaud | German. | Mechel |
| Mall | Mehaut | Mathilde | Melchel |
| Maud | Hamb. | ||
| Tilda | Tilde | ||
| Tilly | Tille |
Maatfred and Maatulf were old masculines.
From may and might we pass to our other defective auxiliary can. ‘Knowledge is power,’ is an idea deeply rooted in our languages, for the difference between I ken and I can is well-nigh imperceptible. The Sanscrit gna, forming the Greek verb γιγνώσκω (gignosco), reappears in the Latin nosco, and the Anglo-Saxon cnawan. Another Anglo-Saxon form is cunnan, answering to the Danish kjende, Iceland kunna, German kennan. Thence our word cunning, knowing, and cuth, the past participle, known, noted, or dexterous, whence came several North-Anglian names, Cutha, Cuthwealh, Noted power; Cuthred, Noted council; Cuthwine, Noted friend; Cuthburh, Noted pledge; and chief of all Cuthbryht, the great saint of Lindisfarn in his lifetime, of Durham after his death, when the wanderings of his relics rendered his fame so great that Cuthbert is still national among the peasantry of Northumbria and the Lothians.
Kann seems to have been originally a past tense of ken, and the Teutonic mind concluded that to have learnt is to be able, for all adopted the word can without an infinitive, and varied it into past tenses. To be able was likewise to dare, whence the old Teuton kuoni, Frank chuon, Saxon cene, German kuhn, bold.
Be this as it may, a large class of names has arisen from these words of knowledge and action, earliest of the bearers of which should stand Kunimund, king of the Gepidæ, and Chunimund, king of the Suevi, both meaning Able protection. Chuonrath, Able council, or Bold-speech, was also Suevic, and in the form of Konrad, afterwards a world-wide name in the Swabian house of Hohenstaufen, till the last of their generous though impetuous blood was shed on the scaffold of Corradino, as Naples fondly termed its unfortunate young heir, the Conradin of history. Pity for his untimely fate assisted to spread the name through all the German dependencies, and it has become so common that, like Vasili, Tom, and Heinz, Künz has descended to cats. It has the feminine Cunzila; and our old Mercian King Cenred represented it in England.
| English. | French. | Provençal. | Italian. |
| Conrad | Conrade | Cohat | Corrado |
| Cenred | Quenes | Currado | |
| German. | Bavarian. | Swiss. | Swedish. |
| Konrad | Kadl | Chuedli | Konrad |
| Kunz | Kuenl | Kudli | Netherlands. |
| Kurt | Kuenz | Chuedler | Koenraad |
| Kuno | Kunl | Kored | Court |
| Koredli | |||
| Chuered | |||
| Danish. | Russian. | Bohemian. | Slovak. |
| Cort | Konrad | Kunad | Kunsch |
| Kunrat | Lusatian. | ||
| Kondratij | Kunat |
Kunigund, or Bold war, was the name of a daughter of the counts of Luxemburg, who was wife to Henry of Bavaria, the sainted emperor, and shared in his canonization, rendering her name national in Bavaria. Another royal saint reigning in Hungary added to its honours, nor has it ever sunk into disuse.
| French. | Italian. | Portuguese. | German. | Bavarian. |
| Cunigonde | Cunegonda | Cunegundis | Kunigunde | Kunl |
The West Saxon Cenbyrht is the same with the German Kunibert; and Wessex likewise reckoned among her kings Cenfyrth, or able peace, Cenfus, bold impetuosity; while Mercia has Cenhelm and Cenwulf.
Alternating with these are Cynric, Cynebald, Cynewald, Cyneburh, Cynethryth, whose first syllable is cyn, kin, or kind, meaning, of course, kindred or lineage. Some refer Kunibert and Kunigund to this same kin instead of kuhn. This word cyn is one of those regarded as the root of king, cyning, the son of his race or kindred.
Another word seems to have had the same double meaning of ability being strength; for svinn, which is wise in the northern tongues, is in those of central Europe, strong; the English swith, Gothic swinths, German swind; whence the present geschwind, and swift; moreover, swindig is much, or many, in vulgar Dutch, and to swindle is probably to be too much for the victim.
Suintila was an old Gothic king of Spain, Swithbert, one of the early Anglo-Saxon missionaries, especially honoured as the converter of the kindred land of Friesland, where he was revered as St. Swibert. Swithelm was another Saxon form; but the most noted amongst us was Swithun, the bishop of Winchester, tutor to King Alfred, and endowed with many supposed miracles, the best known of which was the forty days' rain, by which, like other honest English saints, he testified his displeasure at having his bones meddled with. The Germans have had Swidburg, Swintfried, Swidger; but in general this has served as a feminine termination, as in Melicent, Frediswid, and in all the many swiths and swinds of the Franks and Goths.
Whether this be the root or not, Svein is in the North a strong youth, generally a servant, but in the form of Svend becoming the favourite name of the kings of Denmark, belonging to him whom Ethelred’s treachery brought down on England, where it was called Swayn, and translated into Latin as Sueno, while Tasso calls the crusading Swend, Sveno. Svinbjorn occurs in Iceland, and is our Swinburn. Svenke, again, is the active or slender youth. It is amusing to see how, from a strong man, the swain became a young man, then a bachelor, then a lover, and, finally, a shepherd.
Another of the mighty words that have been formed into names is vald, the near relative of the Latin valeo. Our verb to wield continues the Anglo-Saxon wealdan, which named the wealds of Kent, nay, and the world itself.
Vald still stands alone in the North, and once was the name of a Frank abbot of Evreux; St. Valdus, in Latin, St. Gaud, in French.
The leading name is, however, Waldheri, Powerful-Warrior appearing as the young prince of Aquitaine, who, in the curious Latin poem which seems to represent the Frankish Nibelungenlied in the south of France, flies from Attila’s court with his fellow-hostage, the Burgundian Hildegunna, and her treasure, and repulses the pursuing Gunther and Hagano. This same Walther was said to have afterwards reigned thirty years in Aquitaine, and, no doubt, the name was already common there, when, about 990, it came to saintly glory, through a monastic saint of that dukedom, who, being followed by two others, caused it to be spread far and wide. Indeed, there are twenty-eight Walters in Domesday, and Cambrai made plentiful use of it in the same form, till, about 1300, the spelling was altered to the French Gautier. Walther von Vogelwied, the Minnesinger, who bequeathed a perpetual dole to the birds of the air at his tomb, well deserved that the memory of his name should be kept up in Germany, and it has always been very popular. Wat, as a contraction, is as old as Rufus’s time, and Water was in use, at least, in Shakespeare’s time, when he shows the prophecy of Suffolk’s death by water fulfilled by the name of his assassin.
| English. | Irish. | French. | Italian. |
| Walter | Thaiter | Waltier | Gualtiero |
| Water | Gualtier | Spanish. | |
| Wat | Wautier | Guttierre | |
| Watty | Gatier | ||
| Wattles | Gautier | ||
| Portuguese. | Netherlands. | Lettish. | Dutch. |
| Gualter | Gualterus | Waters | Wolder |
| Gualterio | Walter | Swiss. | |
| Wouter | Watli |
Waldemar is an old German form imported by the Normans to England, and sometimes supposed to have been carried to Russia, and to have turned into Vladimir; but this has been traced to a genuine Slavonic source, though it is used by the Russians to represent Walter.
This commencement is almost exclusively German; its other varieties are Waldobert, or Walbert, the Gualberto of Italy, Waldrich, and, perhaps, Walpurg, though she is more probably from val, slaughter.
Frodhr, Wise or learned, is sometimes an epithet, but is also used for a name, and Latinized into Frotho. The Germans have it in combination as Frodwin, wise friend, Frodbert and Frodberta, whence the French make Flobert and Floberte.
The root mah, which made the Sanscrit mahat, Zend maz, Greek megas, Latin magnus, Kelt mawr, comes forth again in Teutonic, with mære, or mara, in Anglo-Saxon, with its comparatives mœrre and mœriste, whence our more and most. This same sense of greatness formed the word maara, fame, and maren, to celebrate, both old German, and it is the commencement of the Frank chieftain’s name from whom all the princes of the earlier race were called Meerwings, Merowig, or Famed men, the Meerwig of German writers and Meroveus of Latinity, whence the Merovée of French history.
Our own Anglian Mercians had among their royal line Merowald, Merehelm, and Merewine; but, in general, mer, or mar, is used as a termination rather than a commencement, and then is always masculine. Merohelm is also called Merchelm, so the French saint, ‘Marculphe,’ may have been Merowulf, though he now looks more like Markulf, a border wolf.[wolf.][[148]]
[148]. Munch; Sismondi; Butler; Junius; Kemble; Michaelis; Lappenburg; Mariana; Weber and Jamieson; Donovan.
Section VII.—Affection.
The Teutons had a few names denoting affection. Dyre is the same in Norse as our own word dear, or dyr in Anglo-Saxon. An inlet on the north-west corner of Iceland is still termed Dyrefiord, from one of the first settlers, and Dyre was the hero of a ballad in the Kæmpeviser, answering to the Scottish Katharine Janfarie, the original of young Lochinvar. The old Germans had Dioro and Diura, and the Anglo-Saxons affectionately called the young sons of their nobility Dyrling, or darling.
Leof, the German lieb, beloved, is much used by the Anglo-Saxons. Two bishops, one of Wells, and afterwards primate, the other of Crediton, were called Leofing, or Lyfing. The first was certainly properly Ælfstan, so it is probable that in both instances Leofing was merely an endearing name that grew up with them, and displaced the baptismal one; but its Latin translation, Livingus, shows the origin of the surname of Livingstone.
England also had Leofwine, Beloved friend, the only native name borne by any of the sons of Earl Godwin. An earlier Leofwine was a member of St. Boniface’s mission, and converted many of the heathens on the banks of the Weser; and as St. Lebwin is patron of Deventer, probably occasioned the name of Lubin, which, from being borne by French peasants, crept into pastoral poetry.
Another of the same mission party was Leobgytha, or Dear gift, called also Liuba and Liebe, who was sent for from her convent at Wimborne to found one of the earliest nunneries in Germany. It is probably from her that Lievine became an old Cambrecis name.
Leof seems to have been the special prefix of the earls of Mercia, for we find among them, besides Leofwine, Leofstan and Leofric, the last the best known for the sake of his wife and of Coventry.
The continental instances of the prefix are among the Spanish Goths, Liuva, Leovigildo, and Liuvigotona; and among the Franks, Leobhard, or Liebhard, a saint of Touraine.
The only present survivor of all the varieties is probably, if we exclude the occasional Puritan Love, the Cornish and Devon feminine Lovedy.
Far more universal are the names derived from the old word vinr, or wine, meaning friend or object of love, the same which has left a descendant in the German wonne, affection, and the Scottish adjective winsome. It is a continual termination, as must have been already observed, and we had it as a commencement in our great English missionary Winfrith, or Friend of peace, the Devonian bishop who spread Christianity over Germany, but who is far better known by the Latin surname which he assumed, namely, Bonifacius. Winibald was another of our missionary saints, and Germany has also had Winrad, Winrich, and Winmar, but the Welsh Wenefred must not be confused with it.
Mild, or mild, is exclusively Saxon; nay, almost exclusively Mercian, for it only occurs in one family; that of King Merowald, who named his three daughters Mildgyth, Mildburh, and Mildthryth. All became nuns, the two latter abbesses, one in Shropshire, the other in the isle of Thanet, and they were canonized as Milburga and Mildreda. Milborough, as the first became Anglicized, was found within the last century in Shropshire, and Mildred was never entirely disused; it belonged to the daughter of Burleigh, and has lately been much revived, under the notion that it means mild speech; but red is always masculine, and, as has been before said, thryth commands or threatens, so that Mildthryth is the gently strict.
Section VIII.—Appearance.
Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs was verily named after a beard. Skegg means neither more nor less than a beard, and strange to say, Bardr and Skegg were both fashionable names in the North; indeed, one Icelandic gentleman rejoiced in the euphonious title of Bardr Bla-skegg, or Beard Blue-beard.
But we have an independent name of this class. William de Albini, the second husband of Henry I.’s widow, Alix of Louvaine, wore moustachios, which the Normans called gernons, and thus his usual title was William als Gernons; and as the common ancestor of the Howards and Percys, he left this epithet to them as a baptismal name, one of the most whimsical of the entire roll. From the Percys it came to Algernon Sidney; and partly through his admirers, partly through inheritance, and partly through the love of trisyllables, has become diffused in England.
Faxe meant the hair or tresses, as may be seen in the names of the horses of day and night, Skinfaxi and Hrinfaxi. Two instances of it are found in the Landnama-bok, Faxi, a colonist from the Hebrides, and Faxabrandr, most likely an epithet due to some peculiarity of hair, probably whiteness, or perhaps fieriness; but it was not common, though it came to England to be the surname of Sir Thomas Fairfax.
The name of our excellent friend Wamba in Ivanhoe must probably have been taken from one of the Visigothic kings of Spain, with whom it was most likely a nickname, like that of Louis de Gros in France, for it means nothing but the belly. Epithets like this were not uncommon, and sometimes were treated as names, such as Mucel, or the big, the sobriquet of the earl of the Gevini; or Budde, the pudding, the person who showed Knut the way over the ice. Many of those used in England were Keltic, showing that the undercurrent of Cymric population must still have been strong.
It is remarkable how very few are the Teuton names taken from the complexion—in comparison with the many used by the Kelts, and even by the Romans—either because the Teutons were all alike fair, or because they thought these casual titles unworthy to be names. Bruno was exclusively German, and may perhaps be only a nickname, but it came to honour with the monk of Cologne, who founded the Carthusian order, and has been used ever since; and the North has Sverke, Sverkir, swarthy or dark, a famous name among the vikings.
Far more modern is the name of Blanche. The absence of colour is in all tongues of Western Europe denoted by forms of blec. In Anglo-Saxon, blœc or blac is the colour black, but blœca is a bleak, empty place, and blœcan is to bleach or whiten; blœco, like the German bleich, stands for paleness. It is the same with German and Norse, in the latter of which blakke hund is not a black dog but a white one. All these, however, used their own weiss or white for the pure uncoloured snow; while the negative blœc, or colourless, was adopted by the Romance languages, all abandoning the Latin albus in its favour. It is literally true that our black is the French white; black and blanc are only the absence of colour in its two opposite effects.
Blach, Blacheman, Blancus, and Blancard, all appear in Domesday; but Blanchefleur and Blanche, seem to have been the produce of romance. The mother of Sir Tristrem was Blanchefleur, a possible translation of some of the Keltic Gwenns or Finns, and it probably crept from romance to reality among the poetical people of southern France. The first historical character so called was Blanca of Navarre, the queen of Sancho IV. of Castille, from whom it was bestowed on her granddaughter, that child of Eleanor Plantagenet, whom her uncle, King John, employed as the lure by which to detach Philippe Auguste from the support of Arthur of Brittany. The treaty only bore that the son of Philippe should wed the daughter of Alfonso of Castille; the choice among the sisters was entrusted to ambassadors, and they were guided solely, by the sound of the name borne by the younger, that of the elder sister, Urraca, being considered by them hateful to French ears, and unpronounceable to French lips. John was punished for his policy, for Blanche’s royal English blood was the pretext of the pope in directing against him her husband, Louis the Lion, but no choice could have been a happier one for France, since Blanche of Castille was the first and best of her many queen-regents.
From her the name became very common in France. One of the daughters of Edward I. was so called, probably from her, in honour of his friendship for her son; it became usual among the English nobility, and is most common in Italy, though it is somewhat forgotten in Spain.
| English. | French. | Italian. | Spanish. | Portuguese. |
| Blanch | Blanche | Bianca | Blanca | Branca |
A Swedish heroine called Blenda made this name, from blenden, to dazzle, common in her own country, but it is not known elsewhere.
Koll, with a double l, meaning head, is sometimes used in northern names, but far less commonly than kol, cool, or rather in the act of cooling after great heat. The great blast-bellows with which the gods charitably refreshed the horses of the sun, are called in the Eddaic poetry, isarnkol, or iron coolers, and there may have been some allusion to this in the names of Kol and Kale, which alternated in one of the old northern families. But as the cooling of iron involved its turning black, kolbrünn meant a black breastplate, and was thus used as a by-name; and it may be in this sense of black that kol enters into the composition of Kolbjorn, black bear, Kolgrim, Kolgrima; Kolskegg would thus be black-beard; but Kolbein can hardly be black-leg, so, perhaps, it may refer to the bones being strong as wrought iron; and Kolfinn and its feminine are either cool-white or refer to Finn’s strength. Colbrand is in English romance the name of the Danish giant killed by Guy of Warwick, at Winchester; but the Heptarchy displays a very perplexing set of Cols, as they have been modernized, though they used to be spelt Ceol. There were three Ceolwulfs in Bernicia, Mercia, and Wessex; Ceolred in Mercia, Ceolwald in Wessex, Ceolnoth on the throne of Canterbury. Are these the relatives of the northern kol, cool, or are they ceol, keel, meaning rather a ship than merely the keel, as it does now? Or, on the other hand, are both these, and the northern col, adaptations of the Keltic col or gall, like those already mentioned of Finn? Their exclusive prevalence among the Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons would somewhat favour the notion.
The northern feminine terminal, frid, belongs to this class, and means the fair, or pretty, from the old northern fridhr, though it is most deceitfully like fred, or frey, peace, and is probably from the same root.
Teitr is a northern man’s name, meaning cheerful: Zeiz answers to it in old German; and though the analogue in Anglo-Saxon does not otherwise occur in any Anglo-Saxon work, yet we find from Bede that Æthelburh, the daughter of Æthelbeorht and Bertha, of Kent, who carried her Christianity to her husband, Eadwine, was also called Tâte, by which we may gather that she was particularly lively and cheerful.
Section IX.—Locality.
A large and interesting class of names relate to country, and express the birthplace or the wandering habits of the original bearers.
The word land was one of these. Its primary meaning seems to be the abode of the people. Long ago we spoke of the Greek λαος, prominent in Laodamia, and many other of the like commencement. An almost similar term runs through the Teutonic tongues; the Saxon leod, German leute, Frank liade, Northern lydhr. The leod, or leute, seem to have been the free inhabitants, including all ranks, and thence we have the laity, for the general people, and the lewd, which has sunk from the free to the ignorant, and then to the dissipated.
The great region of these names taken from the people is Germany. Leutpold, the people’s prince, was a canonized Markgraf of Austria, in the days when that family had hardly yet begun its course of marrying into greatness, and making Leutpold better known at every stage, and by each new dialect differently pronounced, till it turned into Leopold, and was confounded with the old lion names. Indeed, in the old Swiss ballad on the battle of Sempach, translated by Scott, Leopold the Handsome is called the Austrian Lion. The recurrence of the name in the modern imperial line has made it European, and the close connection of our own royal family with the wise king of the Belgians has brought it to England. Of course, it has not escaped a modern German Leopoldine.
| English. | French. | Italian. | German. | Slav. |
| Leopold | Léopold | Leopoldo | Luitpold | Leopoldo |
| Leupold | Poldo | |||
| Leopo | Poldi |
Leutgar, the people’s spear, was a good bishop of Antrim, who was speared by the people, or, at least, murdered by them, in the furious wars of the long-haired kings, and was revered as a martyr under the Latin form of Leodigarius. A priest of Chalons was canonized by the same name, which is in France Leguire, and was brought as a territorial surname to England as St. Leger.
Liutgarde seems to have been a Frank saint, but there is no account of her in Alban Butler; but hers is one of the favourite old names at Cambrai. Liutprand, the people’s sword, is one of the chief chroniclers of early French history, and the other forms are Liuther, the only one accepted by the North, and that in the form of Lyder.
Ger. Liutbert; Fries. Liubert—People’s brightness
Ger. Liutberga—People’s protection
Fr. Leodefred, Leufroi—People’s peace
Ger. Liutmar; Fries. Luttmer, Lummer; Fr. Leodemir—People’s
greatness
Ger. Leuthold, Liutold; Ags. Leodwald—People’s power
The land itself was compounded into names chiefly among the Franks, Germans, and Lombards, often as a conclusion, but now and then at the beginning. Lantperaht, or the country’s brightness, is the most noted of these, having been borne by three saints of Maestricht, Lyons, and Venice, and having thus become national in all the countries around; but it is universally corrupted into Lambert, and has been generally derived from a lamb.
| English. | French. | Italian. | German. | Dutch. |
| Lambert | Lambert | Lamberto | Landbert | Lambert |
| Lanbert | Lambert | Lammert |
Landerich, or country’s ruler, was an early Frank saint, who has left Landry to be still frequent among the Flemish and French peasantry.
Landfrang, lord of the country, was the Lombardic Lanfranco, whence the Lanfranc of the archbishop of Canterbury, whom William the Conqueror imposed on the English Church, but who brought in fresh vigour and learning. Landfrid has left the surname Laffert to France; its contraction Lando belonged to a saint, and has the feminines Landine and Landoline. There are also recorded Landolf, Landrad, Landrada, and Landinn.
If Germany and Italy talked of dwellers in the land, the North, with its seas and numerous islets, distinguished the islanders with the word Ey, or Øi, the word that we use to this very day in speaking of Guernsey Jersey, &c., of an eyot in a river; and even in Sodor, that puzzling companion to the Isle of Man, which once was the Sudeyas, or South Isles, the Hebrides.
The most famous northern island name is Eystein, or Øistein, much in use among the early kings, and especially honoured for the sake of the good brother of Sigurd the Crusader, who stayed at home and worked for his people’s good, while Sigurd was killing blue men in the land of the Saracens. The Danish Eystein was turned into Austin, or Augustin, to be more ecclesiastical, and this may be the origin of some of our Austins. Eyulf, or the island wolf, has become, in the course of time, Øiel and Øiuf. Eyvind, who appears in the Landnama-bok with the unpleasant sobriquet of Skalldur Spiller, or the poet spoiler, is supposed to have been the Island Wend, a reminiscence of the Wends on the shores of the Baltic. It was a very common name, and became Øvind and Even, while Eymund, in like manner, was turned into Emund. An island thief was not wanting, as Eythiof; nor an island warrior, as Eyar; also Eyfrey, Eylang; and the ladies Eygerd, Eydis, Eyny, and Eyvar, or, as Saxo calls her, Ofura.
An island is also sometimes holm, whence the northern Holmstein and Holmfrid, with Holmgeir, which gets mixed with Holger.
Persons of mixed birth were drolly called by the actual fractional word half, in Germany Halbwalah, half a foreigner, or half a Wallachian, and Halbtüring or half a Thuringian; and in the North, generally, Halfdan, half a Dane. So early was this in use that there was a mythical king, Halfdan, from whom the name was adopted by many a true-born Dane and Northman, and has been Latinized as Haldanus.
Travellers had their epithets, which probably came to be family names. Lide, Wanderer, was compounded in Haflide, sea wanderer; Vestlide, west wanderer; Vetilide, winter wanderer; and Sumalide, or summer wanderer, which last was current among the lords of the Isles, and kings of Man, in the shape of Somerled, or, in Gaelic, Somhle; but ‘the heirs of mighty Somerled’ did not long keep up his name.
Travellers again had their name from fara, the modern German fahren, and the scarcely disused English to fare, meaning to journey. The most noted instance is Faramund, who, in the guise of Pharamond, is placed at the head of the long-haired Frankish dynasty, far travelled it may be, from the river Yssel whence the Salic stock took the title that was to pass to one peculiar law of succession; also Farabert, Farulf, and Farthegn, contracted into Farten, and Faltin, and then supposed to be a contraction of Falentin, or Valentine. Thegn did, in fact, originally mean a servant, so that Farthegn was either the travelled servant, or the travelled thane. Fargrim appears in Domesday; but these names are not easy to divide from those taken from waren, to beware.
Even the exile had his sorrows commemorated in his children’s names. No doubt if we could meet with the story of the original Erland, we should find that he was born under the same circumstances as Peregrine Bertie, for the name is from the old northern er, out, or away from, and land. Erland is the Outland, the banished man, and he must have been beloved, or celebrated, for Erlendr, as the Icelanders had it, occurs plentifully, with its diminutive Erling, and perhaps the corruption Elling.
The unfortunate Bishop Hatto’s name was anciently Hazzo, and is translated a Hessian.
Viking has been used as a Christian name in Norway in comparatively modern days, in memory of the deeds of the terrible Vikingr of old; but, in spite of the resemblance in sound, it must not be suspected of any relation to sea-kings, being only the inhabitant of a vik, or bay, of course the most convenient abode for a sea-rover.
The sea, haf, or hav, as it was called in the North, named Haflide, Hafthor, and Hafgrim, as well as the mythic hero, Haflok, the Dane, whose life, according to his legend, was saved by his faithful servant Grim, the founder of Grimsby, in Lincolnshire, the native place of our own Sir Henry Havelock, who was bewailed by the Danish school-children as their own ballad hero. The two feminine terminations laug and veig may have been in its honour, but it is much to be feared that they only meant liquor, and at the best were allusions to the costly mead of the gods, the drink of inspiration, or the magic bowls that inflamed the Berserks. Nay, men rejoiced in the name of Ølver or Ølve, meaning neither more nor less than Ale, øl, which acquires a v in the oblique cases and plural. Ø1ver and Olaf have, no doubt, been confounded into the modern Oliver.
Knud, or Knut, a very common northern name, is a very puzzling one. Its origin and nationality are Danish, and it only came to Norway by intermarriages, nor does it appear at all in the Landnamabok. The great Dane who brought it here is called by the chroniclers Canutus, from some notion of making it the Latin hoary, and thus we know him as Canute; but even in Domesday, one landholder in Yorkshire, and another in Derbyshire, are entered as Cnud. The whole North, and the inhabitants of the Hebrides, use the name, which comes from the same root as our knot, and properly means a protuberance, a hill, or barrow.
Section X.—Life.
Life played its part among Teutonic names. One old word conveying this sense was the Gothic ferchvus, Saxon feorh, and Northern fiorh. The Anglo-Saxon feorh also meant youth, and thus passed on to mean a young man.
There are not many names from thence, but one of the few has been a great perplexity, and has been explained in many ways, i. e. the Gothic Ferhonanths, the last syllable being nanth, daring, so that its sense would be, ‘adventuring his life.’ It was the Spanish Goths who used this gallant name, and made it with their Romance tongues into Fernan and Fernando. San Fernando, king of Castille, and father of our own Eleanor, made it a favourite for his royal line; and a younger son of Castille so called, being heir of Aragon, carried it thither, and thence it passed to southern France, where the grandson of old King René was Ferrand or Ferry. Aragon again bestowed it upon Naples; but it was there prolonged into Ferdinando, whilst Spanish elisions had at home turned it to Hernan, as the conqueror of Mexico termed himself. It was bestowed upon the second son of Juana la Loca, who was born in Spain, and long preferred there to his brother, though it was to the imperial throne that he was destined to succeed, and to render his Spanish name national through Germany, where Ferdinand has long been a sore puzzle; sometimes explained by fart, a journey, and sometimes by fried, peace, but never satisfactorily. The contraction Nandel was the shout of the mob in the ears of Ferdinand, the obstinate, narrow-minded man who won his cause by mere force of undivided aim. It is so popular in Spain and Germany as in each to have a feminine, Fernanda and Ferdinandine.
| English. | French. | Spanish. | Italian. |
| Ferdinand | Ferdinand | Fernando | Ferdinando |
| Ferrand | Hernando | Fernando | |
| Ferry | Hernan | Ferrante | |
| German. | Polish. | Lettish. | |
| Ferdinand | Ferdynand | Werlands | |
| Nandl |
Ferahbald and Ferahmund were forgotten old German forms, and Fjorleif was known in the North.
This is, probably, relic of life, as otherwise the word would be a reduplication; but the termination leif or lif is sometimes used, being our very word life.
There are two words which may be said to form names of progress, the German gang, from to go, sometimes commencing as in Gangolf, but more usual at the end of a word; and the Northern stig, from the universal root stig, found in the Greek ἔστιχον, and in our step and stile, also stairs, for the usual sense of the word implies mounting upwards; and the name of the semi-Danish archbishop of Canterbury who crowned Harold, and was one of the Conqueror’s lifelong captives, was the participle Stigand, mounting, and was long extant in the North, as well as the Danish Styge and Stygge.
PART VII.
Names from the Slavonic.
Section I.—Slavonic Races.
The last class of names that have had any influence upon European nomenclature are those borne by the Slavonic race dwelling to the eastward of the Teutons, and scarcely coming into notice before the period of modern history.
Nor, indeed, have they been ever very prominent. Slipping into the regions left empty by the Teutons, or depopulated by the forays of the Tatars, these nations have carried on a life for the most part obscure and industrious, though now and then drawn, either by Mongol fury on the one hand, or by Teuton ambition on the other, into gallant exertions; but a genuine Slavonian has seldom or never extended his power far beyond his own country. Imaginative and poetical, they have nevertheless few ancestral traditions, they have no history previously to coming under the influence of other countries, and their migrations are even less known than those of the early Kelts and Teutons.
All that we do know is that by the time the ten horns of modern empire were developing themselves, there was a long strip of Slavonians, or Wends, extending from the White and Baltic seas down to the Black and Adriatic, making a division between the Teutons and the Tatars, but utterly unable to oppose a barrier when periodical fits of fury and invasion seized upon the wild hordes to the eastward of them.
Wends, or Venedi, seems to have been one universal national term; Slava furnished another. The word, like the Greek κλύα and Teuton hlod, is from the root çru, and denotes fame or glory; and it is constantly employed in the personal names, commencing Slavoljub, glorious love, Slavomir, glorious peace, Slavomil, friend of glory, and terminating Siroslav, far-famed, and many others, usually rendered as slas and slaus.
But just as Geta, the Goth, stood for a bondsman in classical literature, so when the Slav became the captive of the German, his once glorious epithet became the generic term of the thrall, bought and sold, while the derivatives of the Latin servus were reserved for the free hired domestic. Glory had literally turned to slavery, perhaps the more readily because it is the Slav who, of all the Indo-European race, most readily bows beneath the yoke, so that to this day, his forms of courtesy are the most servile, his respectful address the most extravagant, used in Europe.
At our first glimpse of the Slavonic nations, the Danube flowed through the midst of a considerable settlement of them, known to classical writers as Bulgarians, and most savage foes to the Eastern empire, who lost army after army in expeditions against these barbarians.
In the North, two great merchant republics at Kief and Novgorod were conducting the trade of the North, and apparently living an honourable life of industry and self-government.
All around the east and south of the Baltic were other large territories occupied by Slavonians, from Finland to Jutland; and, with few exceptions, most of these lands still own a Slavonian population, though only one has a native government.
The Mongols have, perhaps, chiefly influenced the changes undergone by the Slaves. The great and terrible Tatar invasion of Attila trod them down, but by ruining the Roman empire, established homes for them, especially round the Danube. In the kingdom now called Hungary, there is a large Slavonian population, called Slovak, from the term slov, a word, living mixed with the remains of the Huns, but keeping a separate language.
The mountain-girt lozenge of Bohemia was also a separate kingdom, with its own language, not the same, though nearly related, and more resembling that of the fierce elective kingdom of Poland.
The migrations of the Teutons drove most of the Wends out of Denmark into the marshy and sandy lands at the mouth of the Vistula; and, somewhat later, home quarrels, and fears of the Tatars, impelled the republics of Russia to call in the aid of the Northmen, who quickly put an end to the freedom of the cities, and set up the principality that was the germ of the Russian empire.
The Greek Church converted the Bulgarians about the year 870, and the translations of the liturgy and Scriptures, made for their benefit, have been the authorized version of the Slavonians ever since. The same missionaries, Cyrillus and Methodius, likewise baptized the first Christian king of Bohemia; and in the next century, a Bohemian bishop, Adalbert of Prague, converted Hungary and Poland. But these three realms gave their allegiance to the Western, not the Eastern Church; and though Hungary received much of her civilization from Constantinople, her faith was with Rome. The Norse Grand Princes of Muscovy themselves sought Christianity from Byzantium, and the Russian Church has ever since been the most earnest and conservative of the Eastern Churches.
The Baltic Slavonians held out longest against the Gospel. Missionaries preached to them, and orders of knighthood crusaded against them on far into modern history, and the final period of their conversion and settlement into small duchies or realms, held by the conquering knights, is hardly worth tracing out.
The next step in general Slavonic history is the great Turkish outbreak, which almost crushed Muscovy, and infused a strong Tatar element into the Russian population; and, finally, conquered the Greek empire, and with it the Bulgarian lands, which, though never Mahometanized, have ever since remained under Turkish dominion.
The kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, with the other western Slavonic provinces, were one by one absorbed into the German empire, or by the House of Austria—it made little difference which was the original tenure—all are ‘Austrian’ now, whether willingly or not.
With the same skill, the House of Brandenburg obtained the domains of the Baltic Slaves, and formed the kingdom of Prussia, very Teutonic to the west, and very Slavonic to the east.
Meantime, after a long period of exhaustion, almost of extinction, the Muscovites came forth from the Tatar oppression stronger than ever; and by gradual conquests from their former enemies, at length formed their huge empire of the east.
And Poland, after many a turbulent election, many a summons to German princes to hold the reins of its restless multitude, was finally and unrighteously dismembered and divided, and the cry of its wrongs has ever since rent the ears of Europe.
The existing Slavonian languages are the Russian, the literary language of the great empire; the Livonian, or the language spoken by the persons who are not of Finnish blood in the elbow beneath the Gulf of Finland; the Lettish and Lusatian, used by the old Prussian subjects and their neighbours in Russia; the Polish; the Slovak, spoken in Hungary; the Servian, Illyrian, and Croatian, all representing the old Bulgarian.
Of all these, it is perhaps the Polish that has contributed the most names to the European stock, and they are but few; but there were intermarriages, and friendly intercourse, besides occasional elections to the Polish throne; and, latterly, the dispersion and exile of the Polish nobility carried their names into distant parts of Europe, and gave them a romantic interest.
Bohemia and Hungary sent a few names into the Austrian line, but they soon died out; and Russia uses comparatively few native Slavonic names, but makes chief use of those of the saints of the Greek Church.
Slavonian languages are said to be soft in their own speech, but our letters clumsily render their sounds, and make them of cumbrous length; and the few names that have been adopted have been severely mangled.
They are, for the most part, grand and poetical compounds, often exactly corresponding to Greek or Teutonic names, and with others more poetical than those in either of these other languages, such as Danica, the Morning star; Zwezdana, or in Russian, Swetlana, a Star; Zora, Zorana, Zorica, the Slovak Aurora; and Zorislava, the Dawn of glory; Golubica, the Dove; Lala, the Tulip. The Slaves use likewise the amaranth, or everlasting flower, as a name both for men and women, namely, Smiljan and Smiljana; and while a man may be called Dubislav, or Oak fame, the Servians and Illyrians call their daughters after fruits,—Grozdana, Rich in grapes; Jagoda, the Strawberry; and Kupina, or Kupiena, the Gooseberry.[[149]]
[149]. Kombst, (in Johnson’s) Physical Atlas; Max Muller, Lectures; Le Beau, Bas Empire; Schleicher, Sprachen Europen; Zeuss, Deutschen und die Nachbar Stamme.
Section II.—Slavonian Mythology.
The Slavonians had a polytheistic religion, answering, in spirit, to that of the other Indo-European nations; but as they had no mythic literature, like Greece and Scandinavia, we are dependent for information upon popular ballads and superstitions, eked out by the notices of missionaries and statements of conquerors; and it is not easy to perceive whether their myths were an independent branch of the general stock, or only the Teutonic religion under another dress.
The divine word, in all the various nations, is Bog. It was used for God, both in the old heathen times, and afterwards in its full sense, when Christianity became known to them. It enters into numerous names, both before and after Christianity. The most noted is Bogislav, or God’s glory, which was borne by many a Pole and old Prussian; and, in 1627, it finished off the old Slavonic line of dukes of Pomerania, from whom that state came to the acquisitive house of Brandenburg. The historical Latinism of the name is Bogislaus; and it is still current in Illyria as Bogosav.
Theophilus is literally translated by Bogoljub or Bogoje in Illyria, and Bohumil in Bohemia. This makes it probable that Robert Guiscard thence took the name of his eldest son, Bohemond, giving it a Norman termination. The mother is called Alvareda, and she is said to have been divorced on the score of consanguinity; but it is not improbable that this was a mere excuse of the wily duke of Calabria for ridding himself of an Illyrian wife. Bohemond is said to have been called after a giant of romance; but the giant has not as yet transpired, and may have been, after all, a Slavonic divinity. Bohemond, or Boemondo, as Tasso calls him, was the Ulysses of the first Crusade, and left a grandson namesake.
Theodorus and Theodora are answered by Bogdan and Bogdana, both spelt with h in Bohemia—Bohdan, Bohdana, and in Illyria Bozidar, Bozidara; and, as has been already said, the Divine birth-night, Christmas, is commemorated by Slovak children being called Bozo. Bogohval is Thank God, Bogoboj, God’s battle, all names in use in Poland and the kindred nations before the general names of Europe displaced the native growth.
The word does not answer to either Deus or God, but is related to the Sanscrit bhagas, destiny.
The word ljube, Love, is rather a favourite in the affectionate Slavonic nomenclature. At the outset of Bohemian history we come on the beautiful legend of Queen Libussa, or the darling. She succeeded her father in 618, governed alone for fourteen years, then, finding her people discontented, sought the wisest man in her domains for a husband, and found him, like Cincinnatus, at the plough, when he not only retained his homely cloak, iron table, and bark sandals, as marks of his origin, but bade them be produced at all future royal elections. His name, Przemysl, or the thoughtful, was continued in his line, though chroniclers cut its dreadful knot of consonants by calling it Premislaus and the next ensuing namesake Germanized himself as Ottokar. He was afterwards elected king of Poland, where the name was used, with the feminine Przemyslava.
Russia has the feminine Ljubov, Love, fondly termed Lubuika, and, in families where French is spoken, called Aimée, though this more properly translates Ljubka and Ljubnia. The Slovaks have Ljuboslav and its feminine, and the Polish Lubomirsky is Peace-loving. The Russian Ljubov is chiefly used in allusion to the Christian grace of love; and Faith, or Vjera, and Hope, Nadezna, are both, likewise, very popular at the present day, the latter usually Frenchified into Nadine; while the Serbs have Nada, or Nadan.
The Slaves of Rugen had a terrible deity called Sviatovid, or the luminous, who was considered to answer to Mars, or Tyr, and had a temple at Acron, and an image with seven heads, which must have much resembled Indian idols. A white horse was sacred to him, and was supposed to be ridden by him during the night, and to communicate auguries by the manner in which it leaped over lances that were arranged in its path. Human sacrifices were offered to this deity both in Rugen and Bohemia; and when his image was at length overthrown, St. Vitus, from the resemblance of sound, was confounded with him by the populace, and Svantovit, as they called both alike, was still the tutelary genius of the place. Svetozor, Dawn of light, and Svetlana, a Russian lady’s name still in use, are connected with light, the first syllable of his name.
Conjoined with Sviatovid, and lying on a purple bed in the temple in Rugen, was the seven-headed Rugevid, or Ranovid (whose name is explained by reference to the Sanscrit rana, blood-thirsty); and likewise Radegost, the god of hospitality, from rad, prosperous, and gose, a guest, the word so often encountered. Several names began with the first syllable—Rada, Radak, Radan, Radinko, Radmir, Radivoj, Radko, Radman, Radmil, Radoje, Radoslav; and the Illyrians have the hospitable name of Gostomil, or Guest love: indeed, gost forms the end of many Slavonic names, in accordance with the ready and courteous welcome always offered by this people.
Davor is another war god, whose name seems of very near kindred to Mavors, or Mars, and who left Davorinn, Davroslav, and Davroslava, as names.
Tikla was the old Slavonic goddess of good luck, and, being confounded with St. Thekla, made this latter name popular in Poland, Russia, and Hungary; and, in like manner, Zenovia, the huntress goddess, conduced to make Zenobia, and Zizi, its contraction, common in Russia.
The fire god was Znitch; and though he does not show any direct namesakes, yet there are sundry fire-names in his honour, such as the Slovak Vatroslav and Illyrian Ognoslav, both signifying fire glory. Possibly, too, the Russian Mitrofan may be connected with the old Persian mithras, or sacred fire; though in history it figures in Greek ecclesiastical guise, as the Patriarch Metrophanes.[[150]]
[150]. Tooke, Russia; Eichioff, Tableau de la Littérature du Nord au Moyen Age; Zeuss, Deutschen und die Nachbar Stamme; Universal History.
Section III.—Warlike Names.
Few more Slavonic names remain to be mentioned, and these more for their correspondence with those of other races than for much intrinsic interest.
Very few are known beyond their own limits. Stanislav, or Camp glory, is the most universal, and is one of the very few found in the Roman calendar, which has two Polish saints thus named. The first, Stanislav Sczepanowski, Bishop of Cracow, was one of the many prelates of the eleventh century who had to fight the battle of Church against king, and he was happy in that his cause was that of morality as well as discipline. Having excommunicated King Boleslav for carrying off the wife of one of the nobles, he was murdered by the king in his own cathedral; and Gregory VII. being the reigning Pope, his martyrdom was an effectual seed of submission to the Church. The wretched king died by his own hand, and the bishop became a Slavonian Becket, was enshrined at Cracow, and thought to work miracles. His name was, of course, national, and was again canonized in the person of Stanislav Kostka, one of the early Jesuits who guided the reaction of Roman Catholicism in Poland. The name has even been used in France, chiefly for the sake of the father of the Polish queen of Louis XV., and afterwards from the influx of Poles after the partition of their kingdom.
| English. | French. | Portuguese. | Italian. |
| Stanislaus | Stanislas | Estanislau | Stanislao |
| German. | Bavarian. | Polish. | Illyrian. |
| Stanislav | Stanes | Stanislav | Stanisav |
| Lettish. | Stanisl | Stach | Stanko |
| Stanislavs | Stanel | Stas | |
| Stachis | Stanerl |
Much in the same spirit is the Russian Boris, from the old Slavonian borotj, to fight. It has never been uncommon in Muscovy, and belonged to the brother-in-law of Ivan the Terrible, Boris Goudenoff, who was regent for his imbecile nephew Feodor; and, after assassinating the hopeful younger brother, Dmitri, reigned as czar, till dethroned by a counterfeit Dmitri. Borka and Borinka are the contractions, and Borivor was the first Christian duke of Bohemia.
Bron, a weapon, forms Bronislav and Bronislava. Voj is the general Slavonic term for war, and is a very frequent termination. Vojtach, the Polish Vojciech, and Lithuanian Waitkus, all mean warrior.
It is a curious feature in nomenclature how strongly glory and fame are the leading notion of the entire race, whose national title of glory has had such a fall. Slav is an inevitable termination; voj almost as constantly used; and even the tenderest commencements are forced to love war, and to love fame. The old Russian Mstisslav glories in vengeance (mest), but is usually recorded as Mistislaus; Rostislav increases glory; Vratislav, Glowing glory, names not only the Wratislaus of history, but the city of Breslaw. The Slovak Vekoslav, and Vekoslava, are Eternal fame.
The two animals used in Slavonic names are warlike; Vuk, the wolf, and Bravac, the wild boar; but both these are very possibly adopted from the German Wulf and Eber.
Section IV.—Names of Might.
Boleje, strong or great, answers to the Teuton mer, and Boleslav is great glory. Boleslav Chrobry, the second Christian prince of Poland, was a devout savage and great conqueror, both in Russia and Bohemia. He was the first Pole to assume the title of king; and after his death, in 1025, there are many instances of his name in both Poland and Bohemia.
In this latter country it had, however, a far more sinister fame. Borivor and Ludmilla, the first Christian prince and princess of that duchy, had two grandsons, Boleslav and Vesteslav, or Venceslav, the first a heathen, the latter a Christian. Boleslav stirred up the pagan population against his brother, and murdered him while praying in church at Prague, on the 28th of September, 644, thus conferring on him the honour of a patron saint and centre of legends. The House of Luxemburg obtained the kingdom of Bohemia by marriage, and Venceslav was introduced among their appellations in the form of Wenzel; and the crazy and furious Bohemian king of that name sat for a few unhappy years on the imperial throne; but in spite of the odium of that memory, the name of good King Wenceslas, as we call it, held its ground, and contracts into Vacslav and Vaclav. Some say that it is crown glory, from vienice; others deduce the prefix from vest, the superlative of veliku, great, which furnished the Bulgarian Velika, Veleslav, Velimir.
The familiar root that has been so often encountered in valeo, wield, &c., in the sense of power, gives the prefix vlad to various favourite Slavonic names. The Russian Vladimir, being of the race of Rurik, is sometimes seized upon as Waldemar; and, in fact, there is little difference in the sense of the first syllable. He is a great national saint, since it was his marriage with the Greek Princess Anna that obtained for the Byzantine Church her mighty Muscovite daughter; and in honour of him, Vladimir has been perpetually used in Russia, shortened into Volodia, and expanded into Volodinka by way of endearment.
The national saint of Hungary was Vladislav, who was the restorer of the faith that had almost faded away after the death of the sainted King Stephen, and was chosen as leader of a crusade, which was prevented by his death in 1095. His name, and that of his many votaries, have sorely puzzled Latin and Teutonic tongues; when not content, like the French, to term him St. Lancelot, his countrymen call themselves after him Laszlo, or Laczko, the Illyrians Lako, the Letts Wendis; but chroniclers vary between Uladislaus and Ladislaus in Hungary and Poland; and when the Angevin connection brought down a king from Hungary to revenge the death of his brother upon Giovanni of Naples, the Italians called him Ladislao; and as Ladislas we recognize the last native Hungarian king, brother-in-law to Charles V. Vladislavka is a feminine, contracting into Valeska, which is still borne by Polish young ladies. Vladivoj is another of the same class, and sve, all, with the verb vladati, to rule, has formed Vsevolad and Svevlad, All ruler, and Vseslav, All fame.
Possibly there may be some connection here with the deity Volos, Weles, or Veless, invoked under these names by the Slaves, Bohemians, and Russians, as witness of their oaths, and likewise as guardian of flocks. Possibly the Roman Pales may be the same deity under another form; but the name of Volos is still applied to shepherds, and comes, no doubt, from the Slavonic vlas, or Russian volos, the same word as wool.
The word mir at the end of Vladimir is somewhat doubtful. It may mean peace, or it may mean the world; and in like manner the Slovak Miroslav stands in doubt between world-fame or peaceful-fame.
Purvan, Purvançe, is the Bulgarian first, whether used in the sense of chief or of first-born does not appear; but, at any rate, bearing a most eastern sound with it.
We are familiar with the Russian ukase, from ukasat, to show forth; and kaze in Polish has the same sense of command. Kazimir is thus Command of peace, a noble title for a prince, and essentially national in Poland, where it was endeared by the fame of three of the best of the earlier sovereigns. It has the feminine Kasimira, and is one of the very few Slavonic names used by Teutons. Intermarriages introduced it among the German princes; and Johann Kasimir, a son of the Pfalzgraf of the Rhine, was a noted commander in the war of the Revolt of the Netherlands, and received the Garter from Queen Elizabeth. He was commonly called Prince Kasimir, and his namesakes spread in Germany; and either for the sake of the sound, or Polish sympathies, Casimir was somewhat fashionable in France.
| French. | Polish. | Bohemian. | Lettish. |
| Casimir | Kazimir | Kazimir | Kasimirs |
| German. | Kazimierz | Kasche | |
| Kasimir | Kaschis | ||
| Kaschuk |
Kol, council, formed Koloman, somewhat noted in early Slavonic history.
Jar, pronounced as beginning with y, means strength or firmness. Jaromir, Firm peace, was prince of Bohemia in 999. Jaropolk, firm government, was the last heathen grand prince of Muscovy; and this name, with Jaroslav, is very frequent in the early annals of the House of Rurik.
From lid, the people, (our old friends hleute and λαος,) came Ljudomir and Ludmilla, who was the first Christian duchess in Bohemia, and was strangled by her heathen daughter-in-law, Dragotina, the mother of Boleslav and Venceslav, leaving a sainted name much used among all Slavonian women, and called at home Lida and Lidiska; in Russia, Ljudmila. Lidvina was likewise Bohemian, from Vina, an old goddess.
Section V.—Names of Virtue.
Words signifying goodness are far from uncommon in this class of nomenclature. Dobry, good, has a worthy family. Dobrija, sometimes called Dobrowka, was the Bohemian princess whose marriage, like those of Clotilda, Bertha, and Anna, brought religion into her new country. Her husband, Miczslav, of Poland, had been born blind, but recovered his sight at seven years old. He had seven wives while still a heathen, but was told that he would have no children unless he began afresh with a Christian lady. He demanded the Czech princess. She brought St. Adalbert, of Prague, with her; and Mistislaus, as he is generally called in history, is counted as the first Polish Christian king, in the year 970. So national was the name, that the Poles altered Maria of Muscovy to Dobrija, on her marriage with Kasimir, their king. The other names of this commencement are Illyrian—Dobrogast, Dobroljub, Dobroslav, and its feminine Dobrovoj, Dobrvok, Dobrutin, and Dobrotina, Good guest, Good love, Good glory, Good war, Good wolf, and Beneficent.
Ssvätyj, holy, and polk, government, are the component parts of the old Russian Sviatopolk, often found among the early race of Rurik. Holy glory, Sviatoslav, was the inappropriate name of the son of the Christian princess Olga, the same who refused baptism, believing that all the converts were cowards, and that he should lose the support of the war gods and of his followers.
The Illyrian blag, good, makes Blagorod, Good birth, also, as usual, Blagovoj, Blagoslav, Blagodvor, Blagogost, and the contraction Blagoje.
Prav is upright, a connection, it may be, of probus, and it has formed the Slavonic Upravda, and the Illyrian Pravdoslav, Pravdoslava, Pravoje. It is, perhaps, the same with the Wend prib, which formed the name Pribislava. The Danes amalgamated the Wend pred into their own names as Predbiorn, or Preban.
Çast, or cest, is honour. The first letter, ç, should be pronounced z; it is rather a favourite with Poland and Bohemia. Çastibog exactly answers to the Greek Timotheus, as does Çastimir to the modern German Ehrenfried, very possibly a translation from it. Çastislav is the most popular form, like all else ending in slav, and has shortened into Çaslav, Çaislav, Cestislav, Ceslav.
Of the same sound is the first letter of çist, pure, whence Çistav and Çistislav. From tverd, firm, we have Tverdko, Tverdimir, Tverdislav.
Section VI.—Names of Affection.
The Slavonian nature has much in common with the Irish, and there is much of caressing and personal affection. Ljub, as has been seen, is a favourite element in names, and dragi, dear, does a considerable part. Dragomira, or Dear[Dear] peace, was the name of the heathen mother of Boleslav and Venceslav. Dragoslav, or dear glory, is Russian, and Poland and Bohemia have used Dragan, Draganka, Dragoj, Dragojila, Dragioila, Dragnja, Dragotin, Dragotinka, Dragilika, Dragija.
Duschinka is the tender epithet which, in Russia, a serf applies to her lady in addressing her. It is properly the diminutive of Duscha, happy, which is sometimes a Christian name in Russia, as well as in Illyria, where it is called Dusa and Dusica. Stastny is the Bohemian word for happy, and is sometimes used as a name. Blazena, meaning happy, in these tongues, is used as the South Slavonic equivalent for Beatrice.
Another word for love is mil. Mila and Milica are the feminines, meaning lovely, or amiable, Milan the masculine; but all these are now confounded with the numerous progeny of the Latin Æmilius. Mil is a favourite termination, and is found loving war and glory—Milovoj and Miloslav.
Cedoljub and Cedomil are both most loving names, the first half of the name signifying a child, so that they signify ‘child-love,’ or ‘filial affection.’
Brotherly love is likewise honoured as nowhere else, save in the Greek Philadelphus, which exactly renders Bratoljub, from brata, a word of the universal family likeness whence ἀδελφός and hermano are the only noted variations. Brajan and Bragican also belong to brotherhood.
Deva is a maiden, whence Devoslav and Devoslava, probably formed, or at least used, in honour of the Blessed Virgin.
Section VII.—Names from the Appearance.
A few names of extremely personal application exist, such as the Servian Mrena, white in the eyes, and Mladen, young, and the highly uncomplimentary Illyrian Smoljan and Smoljana, from smoljo, an overhanging nose, probably a continuation of the nickname of some favoured individual.
Krasan, beautiful, however, was used in names, as Krasimir, Krasislav, Krasomil, &c.; and zlata, golden, though once used in Zlatoust, as a literal translation of Chrysostomos, in other names may, it is hoped, be employed to denote beauty; or else Zlatoljub, with its contractions Zlatoje and Zlatko, would be a most avaricious name. Zlata, Zlatana, Zlatibor, and Zlatislav, are also used.
Tiho, silent, is a curious prefix. Tihomil, Silent love, and Tihomir, Silent peace, are clear enough; but Tihoslav, Silent glory, is a puzzling compound, probably only arising from the habit of ending everything with slav.
It is remarkable, however, that there is an entire absence of the names of complexion so common among the Kelts and Romans.
CONCLUSION.
MODERN NOMENCLATURE.
It still remains to cast a passing glance over the countries of the European commonwealth, and observe the various classes of names that have prevailed in them. It is only possible to do this, with my present information, very broadly and generally. In fact, every province has its own peculiar nomenclature; and the more remote the place the more characteristic the names, and, therefore, the most curious are the least accessible. It is the tendency of diffused civilization to diminish variations, and up to a certain point, at least, to assimilate all to one model, and this process for many years affected the educated and aristocratic community, although latterly a desire for distinctiveness and pride in the individual peculiarities of race and family, have arisen; but, on the other hand, the class below, which used to be full of individualities, has now reached the imitative stage, and is rapidly laying aside all national and provincial characteristics, The European nobility, except where some old family name has been preserved as an heirloom, thus cease, about the sixteenth century, to bear national names; but all are on one level of John, Henry, Frederick, Charles, Louisa, &c., while the native names come to light among citizens and peasants; but now, while the gentleman looks back for the most distinctive name in his remote ancestry, and proudly bestows it on his child, the mechanic or labourer shrinks from the remark and misunderstanding that have followed his old traditional baptismal name, and calls his son by the least[least] remarkable one he can find, or by one culled from literature. These remarks apply chiefly to England, but also, in great measure, to the town population of France, and to all other places which are much affected by the universal fusion of national ideas and general intercourse of the present day.
Section I.—Greece.
Modern Greece has the most direct inheritance from the ancient, classical, and old Christian names. True, her population has undergone changes which leave but little of the proud old Ionian or Dorian blood; but her language has been victorious over the barbarous speech of her conquerors, and Latins and Bulgarians became Greek beneath her influence.
The inhabitants of her peninsulas and islands are, then, with few exceptions, called by Greek names. The exceptions are, in the first place, in favour of the Hebrew names that are in universal use, not only the never-failing Joannes and Maria, but Isaakos, David, Elias, and others, for whom the Greek Church has inculcated more constant veneration than has the Latin. Next there are the few Latin names that were accepted by the Greeks during the existence of the Byzantine empire, and either through martyrs or by favourite sovereigns, recommended themselves to the love of posterity; but these are few in number, and Konstantinos is the only distinguished one. And, lastly, an extremely small proportion have been picked up by intercourse with the Western nations, but without taking root.
The mass of Greek names belongs to the class that I have called ‘Greek Christian,’ being those that were chiefly current in the years of persecution and martyrdom—some old hereditary ones from ancient time, others coined with the stamp of the Faith. These, with others expressive of favourite ideas, such as Macharios, Blessed, Sophia, Wisdom, Zoe, Life, were the staple of the Greeks until the modern revival brought forward the old heroic and historical names; and Achilles, Alkibiades, Themistokles, &c., are again in familiar use.
In a list of names used at the present day in the Ionian Islands, I find seventeen men and four women of the old historical and heroic class; the four ladies being Kalliope, Arethusa, Euphrosyne, and Aspasia; and, perhaps, Psyche and Olympias ought to be added to these: twenty-three male and nineteen female of the Christian Greek class: two Hebrew, i. e. Joannes and Jakobos, of men; three of women, Maria, Anna, and Martha. Paulos and Konstantinos, and perhaps Maura, alone represent the Latin, and Artorioos the Kelt, probably borrowed from some Englishman.
Surnames are inherited from the Latin nomina, and began earlier in Constantinople than anywhere else. They are divided between the patronymic, ending, as of old, in ides, the local, and the permanent nickname.
Section II.—Russia.
The European portion of the vast empire of Russia is nationally Slavonic, but much mixed with Tatar; and the high nobility is descended, at least according to tradition, from the Norsemen. The royal line is, through intermarriages, almost Germanized. The Church continues the faith, practice, and ritual of the Greek Church, but in the old Slavonic tongue, from which the spoken language has much deviated.
The Greek element greatly predominates in the nomenclature: native saints have contributed a few Slavonic specimens, and a very few inherited from the Norsemen occur; but the race of Rurik seem very quickly to have adopted Russian names. The Tatar population hardly contributes a Christian name to history, and the Germans almost always, on their marriage with the Russian imperial family, assumed native, i. e. Greek or Roman-Greek, names. The present fashions in nomenclature are, however, best explained in the following letter from an English lady residing in Russia:—
'Children (and grown-up persons in their own family) are, I may say, universally called by their diminutives. In society the Christian name and patronymic are made use of, and you seldom hear a person addressed by his family name, though he may be spoken of in the third person as “Romanoff,” or “Romanova” (surnames take the gender and number of their bearers), except by his superiors, such as a general to his young officers, &c.
'The patronymic is formed by the addition of vitch, or evitch, to the Christian name of a person’s father; as Constantine Petrovitch, Alexander Andréevitch, in the masculine; and of ovna, or evna, in the feminine, Olga Petrovna, Elizavetta Andréovna.
'I would call your attention to the error that is generally made in the newspapers, where these patronymics are spelt with a W, whereas they really are spelt and pronounced with a V.
'The diminutives can always be traced to the root, being derived from the first, or the accented syllable, of the full name, with the termination of a little fond syllable, sha, ia, inka, otchka, oushka; for instance, Mária, Másha, Mashinka—Olga, Olinka, Olitchka: Ian, John, Vanoushka, Vanka—Alexandre, Alexandra, Sasha, Sashinka. Not in one diminutive are there such glaring differences of spelling and sound, as Dick for Richard, Polly for Mary, Patty for Martha.
'Perhaps it is not superfluous to mention, that there are diminutives of reproach as well as of affection; if you scold Olga, she becomes Olka; Ivan, Vanka; and so on. This form, however, is seldom made use of by well-educated people, except in fun; though there are some who do not hesitate to make free use of it in their kitchens and nurseries, in a private sort of a manner. Among the lower orders, and especially in the country, it is not considered reproachful, but is the general form of appellation. You observe, that this is formed by the addition of ka to the principal syllable.
'I find, on attentive search in the “Monument of Faith,” a sort of devotional book of prayer and meditations applied to every day of the year, and with the names and a short-biography of each saint, that there are 822 men’s names and 204 women’s in the Russian calendar. Of these, you will be surprised to hear twelve only are really Slavonic. Unfortunately I am unable to inform you of their meanings, notwithstanding every inquiry among the few educated inhabitants of this little out-of-the-way town; but if ever I have an opportunity of seeing a real “Sclavonophile,” as searchers into Russian antiquities are called, I will not fail to ask about it. The names are as follows:—
- ‘1 Boris (m.), grand duke; murdered in 1015.
- ‘2 Gleb (m.), brother to Boris; murdered in 1016.
- ‘3 Vetcheslav (m.), Duke Chetsky.
- ‘4 Vladimir (m.), grand duke; baptized in 988 (1st Christian grand duke).
- ‘5 Vsévolod (m.), duke; he changed his name to Gabriel when baptized; died in 1138.
- ‘6 Igor (m.), grand duke of Tchernigoff, 1147. (Norse.)
- ‘7 Razóomnik (m.); this name is taken from rázoom, which means sense, wisdom, and signifies a wise, sensible person.
- ‘8 Olga (f.), grand duchess, god-mother to Vladimir. She was the first Christian duchess. (Norse.)
- ‘9 Ludmilla (f.), god-mother to Vsevold, and martyred in the cause of Christianity.
- ‘10 Véra (f.), means faith.
- ‘11 Nadéjda (f.), hope.
- ‘12 Lubov, charity, love.
‘All the other names are of Greek, Latin, or Hebrew origin (with a very few exceptions, of which I will speak afterwards), and though they generally differ in termination, yet they are to be recognized instantly. I observe that in Greek names K is used, and not the sound of S, as in Kiril, Kiprian (Cyril, Cyprian). Also that Th takes the sound of F, as Féodore, Fomá (Theodore, Thomas). But the Th is represented by a letter distinct from that by which Ph or F are represented, the former being written Θ and the latter Ø, but both have exactly the same sound. U sometimes becomes V when used in the middle of names, as Evgenia (Eugenia), Evstafi (Eustace). B in many instances becomes V, as in Vasili (Basil), Varvara (Barbara), Varfolomey (Bartholomew).
‘The names of other origin are very few, viz.:—
'Avenir—Indian;
Arisa—Arabian;
Daria—Persian;
Sadof—Persian;
Erminigeld—Gothic.
‘German names, I may say, are not to be found in the Russo-Greek calendar.
‘When I say that there are 1026 Christian names in the calendar, I must explain that the number of saints is infinitely greater; there being from two or three to twenty or thirty every day of the year, the 29th of February included. There are sixty-one St. John’s days, thirty St. Peter’s, twenty-seven St. Féodor’s, twenty-four St. Alexandre’s, eighteen St. Gregory’s, sixteen St. Vasili’s, twelve St. André’s, ten St. Constantine’s, &c.
‘Sometimes the same saint is fêted two or three times in the year, but the different saints of the same name are very many. The female saints are in less number. Maria and Anna each occur ten times in the year, Euphrosinia six times, Féodora eight, and so on. In proportion to the number of saints so are the names of the population; so that Ivan is the most common; next, I think, comes Vasili, André, Pëtre, Nicolas (Nikolâï), Alexandre.
‘The lower orders have no idea of dates; they always reckon by the saints’ days. Ask a woman the age of her baby, she will say, “Well, I suppose it is about thirty weeks old.” “What is its name?” “Ivan.” “Which Ivan?” you ask, your calculations being defeated by the sixty-one St. Johns. “Why, the Ivan that ‘lives’ four days after dirty Prascóvia.” You then understand that the child must have been born about the 10th or 12th October, as the blessed saint is irreverently called “dirty Prascóvia” from falling on the 14th October, a very muddy time of the year in holy Russia.
‘One name only can be given at baptism, and it must be taken from the orthodox calendar. German, French, and English names not to be found there cannot be bestowed, nor can a surname, as in England.’
Section III.—Italy.
Italy, like Greece, has her classical inheritance. Her Lucio, Marco, Tito, Giulio, bear appellations borne by their Oscan or Sabine forefathers, even before Rome was a city; but mingled with this ancient stream there have been such an infinite number of other currents, that no land has undergone more influences, or has a more remarkable variety of personal names.
In the decay of the Roman Empire, and the growth of the Church, the old prænomina were a good deal set aside, by the heathen in his search for heroic-sounding titles, by the Christian in his veneration for the martyrs and saints of his Church. So the prosaic matter-of-fact three-storied name of the Roman was varied by importations, generally of Christian Greek, but now and then of heroic Greek; and as the Christian element predominated, the Hebrew apostle or prophet suggested the name of the young Roman. Barbarians, acquiring rights of citizenship, ceased to adopt the nomen of their patron, retaining appellations that a Scipio or Cato would have thought only fit to be led in a triumph, but still putting on a Latin finish and regarding them as Roman. But these—disgraceful as they are now regarded—were the days that stamped the Roman impress on the world, and marked the whole South of Europe with an indelible. print of Latin civilization and language.
Goths, Vandals, Gepidæ, and Lombards came on northern Italy one after the other; and the Lombards established a permanent kingdom that deeply influenced the north of the peninsula and Teutonized its nobility. The towns were less open to their influence; and Venice remained the Roman and partly Byzantine city she was from her source—using a language where her g is still the Greek ζ, and christening her children by the names of later Rome in its Christian days, only with the predominance of the national saint, Marco, the guardian of the city ever since his bones were stolen from Alexandria. The recurring ano, or ani, of Venetian surnames is the adoptive anus of Rome—republican Rome—whose truest representative the merchant city was till her shameful degradation and final ruin.
The Italian element in the population of Cisalpine Gaul continued far too strong for the Lombardic conquerors, and ere long had taught them its own language. If they wrote, it was in their best approach to classical Latin; when they spoke, it was in the dialectic Latin of the provinces farther broken by the inability of the victors to learn the case terminations, which were settled by making, in the first declensions, all the singular masculines end in o, and plurals in i, all the feminines in a and e; in the others, striking a balance and calling all ite. But though the speech was Latin, the Lombard kept his old Teutonic name—Adelgiso, Astolfo, or the like, and handed it on to his son, softened, indeed, but with its northern form clearly traceable. Time went on, and the Lombardic kingdom was fused into the Holy Roman Empire. The towns remained self-governing, self-protecting old Roman municipalities; the Lombardic nobles, if they had a strong mountain fastness, lived like eagles in their nests and were the terror of all; if they had but a small home on the plains, were forced to make terms with the citizens and accept their privileges as a favour. Thus came the Teuton element into the cities, and old Lombardic names were borne by Florentine and Milanese citizens. The Roman nomina so far were preserved that a whole family would be called after its founder, whether by his name or nickname. The noted man might be originally Giacopo, but called Lapo for short. His children were, collectively, Lapi; a single one would be either Bindo Lapo, or, latterly, dei Lapi, one of the Lapi. Sometimes office gave a surname, as Cancelliero, when the family became Cancellieri. One of these Cancellieri was twice married; and one of the wives being yclept Bianca, her children were called Bianchi; their half-brothers Neri, merely as the reverse; and thence arose the two famous party words of the Guelfs of Florence. Latterly, when these names in i were recognized as surnames, it was usual to christen a boy by the singular, and thus we have Pellegrino Pellegrini, Cavaliere Cavalieri, and many other like instances, familiar to the readers of Dante and of old Italian history. Dante’s own names—the first contracted from a Latin participle, the second the direct patronymic from his father—Alighiero, the Teutonic noble spear, form a fit instance of the mixed tongue, which he first reduced to the dignity of a written language. Those were its days of vigour and originality; of fresh name-coining from its own resources,—Gemma, Fiamma, Brancaleone, Vinciguerra, Cacciaguido—words not merely of commonplace tradition, but original invention.
Meantime southern Italy had been under other influences. Long remaining a province of the Eastern empire, Calabria, Apulia, and Sicily were the marauding ground of the Saracens, till the gallant Norman race of Hauteville came to their deliverance, and imposed on them a Norman-French royalty and nobility, with their strange compound of French and Northern names—Robert and Roger, Tancred and William, Ferabras and Drogo, the latter certainly Frank, as it belonged to an illegitimate son of Charlemagne. It was brought to England by Dru de Baladon, a follower of the Conqueror; and we find it again in Sir Drew Drury, the keeper of Mary of Scotland. It may be related to the Anglo-Saxon dry, a sorcerer, and dreist, the German skilful, but its derivation is uncertain.
When the Norman influence waned, the Swabian power gave a few German names to the Two Sicilies, but was less influential than either the French in Naples or the Aragonese in Sicily, where the one strewed Carlo, the other Fernando and Alfonso.
All this time the Christian name was the prominent one, more used and esteemed than titles throughout all ranks. Men and women would be simply spoken of as Giovanni or Beatrice, or more often, by contractions, Vanni or Bice, Massuccio, or Cecca, now and then with Ser or Monna (signor or madonna) added as titles of respect.
All the time, what may be called the Roman Catholic influence on nomenclature was growing in its great centre. The city of martyrs was filled with churches where the remains of the saint gave the title, and was thought to give the sanctity, and these suggested names to natives and pilgrims alike. Cecilia, Sebastiano, Lucia, &c., and more than can be enumerated, won their popularity from owning a church that served as a station in the pilgrimages, and thus influenced the world. Relics brought to Rome, and then bestowed as a gift upon princes, carried their saints' epithets far and wide; and when Constantinople was in her decay, and purchased the aid of Western sovereigns by gifts of her sacred stores, the Greek and Eastern saints had their names widely diffused, as Anna, Adriano, &c. Moreover, the feasts of different events in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary began to tell on Italian names, and Annunciata, and later, Assunta, were the produce.
Francesco is the most universal name of native Italian fabrication. It is one of what may be called the names spread by religious orders, all of which originate in Italy; Benedetto, oldest of all and universal in Romanist lands; Augustino, never very popular; Domenico, not uncommon in Italy, but most used in gloomy Spain; Francesco and Clara, both really universal in Protestant as well as Roman Catholic lands.
The revival of classical literature, produced partly by the influx of Greek scholars after the fall of Constantinople, partly by the vigour of Boccaccio and Petrarch, brought a classical influence to bear on Italy, of which her names are more redolent than those elsewhere. Emilia, Virgilio, Olimpia, Ercole, Fabrizio, all arose and flourished in Italy, and have never since been dropped, though the Romanist influence has gone on growing, and others have affected parts of the country.
Romance had some influence—Orlando, Oliviero, Rinaldo, Ruggiero—and the more remote Lancilotto, Ginevra, Isolda, Tristano, all became popular through literature; and the great manufacture of Italian novels, no doubt, tended to keep others in vogue.
The French and German wars in Italy, the erection of the Lombardic republics into little tyrannical duchies, and the Spanish conquest of Naples, all tended to destroy much of the individuality of Italian nomenclature, and reduce that of the historical characters to the general European level. And this tendency has increased rather than diminished, as Spain devoured the North, and ‘balance of power’ struggled for Austrian interests, and established Bourbon kingdoms and duchies. The old national names were not utterly discarded; there was still a Lombardic flavour in the North, a classical one in the old cities, a Norman one in Sicily; but the favourite commonplace names predominated in the noblesse, and titles began to conceal them. Moreover, the women were all Maria, and many of the men likewise; and the same rule at present holds good, though of late the favourites have become Filomena and Concetta—in honour, the one of the new saint, the other of the new dogma of Rome.
The House of Savoy, which is just now the hope of Italy, always had its own peculiar class of names—Humbert, Amé, Filiberto, Emanuele, Vittore, and these are likely to become the most popular in liberal Italy.
Section IV.—Spain.
Spain has many peculiarities of her own, to which I would fain do greater justice than is in my power. Celtiberian at first, she seems to have become entirely Latin, except in those perplexing Basque provinces, where the language remains a riddle to philologists. One Spanish name is claimed by Zamacola as Basque, i. e. Muño, with its feminine Muña, or Munila; and for want of a more satisfactory history, one is inclined to suppose that Gaston, or Gastone, must be likewise Basque. It first comes to light as Gascon among the counts of Foix and Béarn, from whom the son of Henri IV. derived it, and made it French.
Rome Latinized the Spanish speech for ever, and left many an old Latin name, which, however, went on chiefly among the lower orders, while the Suevi and the Goths ruled as nobles and kings, bringing with them their Teutonic names, to be softened down to the dignified Romance tongue, which took the Latin accusative for its stately plurals in os and es. It is likely that the Latin element was working upwards at the time of the Mahometan conquest, since the traitor Julian, his daughter Florinda, the first patriot king, Pelayo, all have classically derived names; and some of these occur in the early royal pedigrees of the Asturias and Navarre, and the lords of Biscay, as these small mountain territories proclaimed their freedom and Christianity. Here we find Sancho (Sanctus), Eneco (Ignatius), Lope, Manse, Fortunio, Adoncia, Teresa, Felicia, all undoubtedly Latin and Greek; and curiously, too, here are the first instances of double Christian names, probably the remnant of the Latin style. Eneco Aristo, Inigo Sancho, Garcias Sancho, and the like, are frequent before the year 1000; and the Cid’s enemy, Lain Calvo, is supposed to be Flavius Calvus. The Goths, however, left a far stronger impression on the nomenclature than on the language. Alfonso, Fernando, Rodrigo, Berengario, Fruela, Ramiro, Ermesinda, are undoubtedly theirs; but other very early names continue extremely doubtful, such as Ximen and Ximena, Urraca, Elvira, or Gelvira, Alvaro, Bermudo, Ordoño, Velasquita, all appearing in the earliest days of the little Christian kingdoms, though not in the palmy times of the Gothic monarchy. These names have been already mentioned, with the derivations to which they may possibly belong; but they are far from being satisfactorily accounted for. The simple patronymic ez was in constant use, and formed many surnames.
As the five kingdoms expanded and came into greater intercourse with Europe, the more remarkable names gradually were discarded; but Alfonso, Fernando, Rodrigo, Alvar, Gonzalo, were still national, and the two first constantly royal, till the House of Trastamare brought Enrique and Juan into fashion in Castille. The favourite saint was James the Great, or, more truly, Santiago de Compostella, in honour of whom Diego and his son Diaz are to be found in very early times. Maria, too, seems to have been in use in Spain sooner than elsewhere, and Pedro was in high favour in the fourteenth century, as it has continued ever since.
Aragon and Portugal had variations from the Castillian standard of language; and Portugal now claims to have a distinct tongue, chiefly distinguished by the absence of the Moorish guttural; and in nomenclature, by the close adherence to classic spelling, and by the terminations which would in Spanish be in on, or un, being in aŏ, the contraction of nho. Aragonese has been absorbed in Castillian, and Catalan is only considered as a dialect.
After Aragon and Castille had become united, and, crushing the Moors and devouring Navarre, were a grand European power, their sovereigns lost all their nationality. French, or rather Flemish, Charles, and Greek Philip, translated as Carlo and Felipe, reigned on their throne as the House of Austria, while the native Fernando went off to be the German Ferdinand. Isabel, the Spanish version of either Jezebel, or Elizabeth, did retain her popularity, but hardly in equal measure with the universal Maria; and as the Inquisition Romanized the national mind more and more, the attribute names of Mercedes and Dolores, and even the idolatrous Pilar, and Guadalupe, from a famous shrine, were invented. These were given in conjunction with Maria, and used for convenience' sake. Literary names seem to have been few or none, and the saint, or rather the Romanist, nomenclature, was more unmitigated in Spain and her great western colonies than anywhere else; even in Italy, where the classics and romance always exerted their power. In the Spanish colonies, even divine names are used, without an idea of profanity.
The use of the Christian name in speech has, however, never been dropped, even under the French influence of the Bourbon monarchy; and Don Martin, Doña Luisa, &c., would still be the proper title of every Spanish gentleman or lady.
The Spanish names that have spread most extensively have been Fernando in Germany, Iñigo and Teresa throughout all Roman Catholic countries, for the sake of the two Spanish saints who revived their old half-forgotten sound.
Section V.—France.
France, the most influential of European countries for evil or for good, can hardly be properly spoken of as one, in nation or language. Yet that one dialect of hers that has contrived to be the most universal tongue of Europe, that character, which by its vivacity and earnestness, and, perhaps, above all, by its hard, rigid consistency, has impressed its ideas on all other nations, and too often dragged them in its wake, though both only belonging to a fraction of the population, are still, in general estimation, the French, and their importance undeniable. Dislike, despise, struggle as we will, we are still influenced, through imitation and vanity, and the deference of the weaker majority, in matters of conventional taste.
Old Gaul had its brave Keltic inhabitants, and its race in Brittany, unsubdued by even Rome, were only united to the rest of the country by the marriage of their heiress, only subdued by gradual legalized tampering with their privileges. Even in the Keltic province, however, genuine Keltic names are nearly gone; though Hervé, Guennolé, Yvain, Arzur, are still found in their catalogues; and in France, Généviève, by her protection of Paris, left her ancient name for perpetual honour and imitation.
The Roman overflow came early and lasted long; it left a language and manners strongly impressed, and the names seem to have been according to Latin forms and rules. Dionysius, Pothinus, Martinus, Hilarius, are all found among the Gauls in the end of the Roman sway; and when the Franks had burst over the country and held the north of the Loire, whenever a Gaul comes to the surface, he is called by a Roman name—Gregorius, Sidonius Apollinaris, Germanus, Eligius.
Southern Gaul was, indeed, never Frank. The cities were Roman municipalities, shut their gates, and took what care of themselves they could; while the Hlodvehs and Meervehs, the Hilperics, and Hildeberts ravaged over the stony country, which still called itself Provincia. And there, though Burgundians on the east, and Goths from the Pyrenees, gradually contrived to erect little dukedoms and counties, and hold them under the empire established by Charlemagne, the country was still peopled by the Romanized Gaul, and the Langue d’oc was spoken and sung. This was the centre of the softened classic names, Yolande and Constance, Alienor and Delphine, while the legends of St. Marthe and of the Martyrs of Lyons supplied provincial saints. The rich literature, chiefly of amatory songs, died away, and the current remains of the language are now unwritten, falling further and further into patois, and varying more from one another. One of its curious peculiarities is to make o a feminine termination; Dido is there short for Marguerite, Zino for Theresine, &c.
A great number of French surnames are still Roman, such as Chauvin (Calvinus), Godon (Claudius), Marat, Salvin, and many more, showing that Latin nomenclature must long have been prevalent among the mass of the people, though as history is only concerned with the court, we hear chiefly of the Franks around the unsteady thrones of Neustria and Austrasia. The High German of these kingdoms, as used by the Meerwings, was extremely harsh; Hlodveh and Hlodhild, Hlother and Hlodvald, were their rough legacies; but, despised as was the name and cheap the blood of the Roman among them, his civilization was conquering his victors; and when the Karlings, with their middle class cultivation, subdued the effete line of Meerveh, they spoke Latin as freely as Frankish, and the names they bore had softened; Ludovicus and Lotharius, Carolus and Emma in Latin, or in German, Ludwe and Lothar, Karl and Emme. And now, among the many saints that were fostered by the religious government and missionary spirit of Frankland, arose the founders of the chief stock names of Europe—Robert, Richard, Henry, Williaume, Walther, Bernard, Bertram, Eberhard, and the like.
When, in the next generation, Germany, Lorraine, and France fell apart, the latter country was beginning to speak the Langue d’oui, retaining the Latin spelling, but disregarding it in speech, as though the scholar had written correctly, but the speaker had disregarded the declension, and dropped the case endings alike of Latin and Teutonic. And so Karl was Charles, and Lodwe Louis, long before the counts of Paris, with their assimilation of the Cymric Hu to the Teuton Hugur, had thrust the Karlings down into Lorraine, and commenced the true French dynasty in their small territory between the Seine and Loire.
Already had the Northmen settled themselves in Neustria, and, taking the broken Frank names and mangled Latin speech for badges of civilization and Christianity, had made them their own, and infused such vigour into the French people, that from that moment their national character and literature begin to develop.
Then it was that France exercised a genuine and honourable leadership of Europe. Her language being the briefest form of Latin, was, perhaps, the most readily understood of the broken Romance dialects; and though Rome had the headship of the Church, and Germany the nominal empire of the West, France had the moral chieftainship.
The Pope did but sanction the Crusades; it was France that planned them. Frenchmen were the connecting link between the Lorrainer Godfrey, the Norman Robert, the Sicilian Tancred, the Provençal Raymond, the Flemish Baldwin. The kingdom of Jerusalem, though founded by the Lorrainer, was essentially French; the religious orders of knighthood were chiefly French; the whole idea and language of chivalry were French; and perhaps rightly, for France has at times shown that rare and noble spirit that can exalt a man for his personal qualities, instead of his rank, even in his own lifetime. The nation that could appreciate its St. Bernard, its Du Guesclin, its Bayard, deserved, while that temper was in it, to be a leader of the civilized world.
England was in these earlier days regarded as a foreign and semi-barbarous realm held by a French duke or count, while southern France was divided into independent fiefs of the empire. The names began to be affected by reverence for saints, and fast included more and more of the specially popular patrons, such as Jean, Jaques, Simon, Philippe. They became common to all the lands that felt the central crusading impulse, and the daughters of French princes, Alix, Matilde, the Provençal Constance, Alienor, Isabel, Marguérite, were married into all parts of Europe, and introduced their names into their new countries, often backed up by legends of their patrons.
Normandy lapsed to France through King John’s crime and weakness, and the persecution of the Albigenses, and the narrower views of the popes, changed the Crusades to a mere conquest of the Langue d’oc by the Langue d’oui, completed by the marriages of the brothers of St. Louis; and though Provence continued a fief of the empire, and the property of the Angevin kings of Naples, yet their French royal blood united it more closely to the central kingdom, and the transplanting of the papal court to Avignon, gave a French tinge to the cardinalate which it only recovered from at the expense of the Great Schism.
Philippe le Bel was the last able sovereign of France of the vigorous early middle ages; but the brilliant character of the nobility still carried men’s minds captive, and influenced the English even through the century of deadly wars that followed the accession of the House of Valois, and ended by leaving Louis XI. king of the entire French soil.
The ensuing century was that when the influence of France on other nations was at the lowest ebb. Exhausting herself first by attacks on Italy, and then by her savage civil wars, she required all the ability of Henri IV. and of Richelieu to rouse her from her depression, and make her be respected among the nations. Meantime, her nomenclature had varied little from the original set of names in use in the tenth century; dropping a few obsolete ones, taking up a few saintly ones, recommended by fresh relics, and occasionally choosing a romantic one, but very scantily; François was her only notable adoption. The habit of making feminines to male names seems to have spread in France about the eighteenth century, rather narrowing than widening the choice. Jeanne seems to have been the first to undergo this treatment; Philippine was not long after, then Jacqueline, and, indeed, it may have been the habit—as it is still among the peasantry of the South—always to give the father’s name to the eldest child, putting a feminine to it for a girl.
With the cinque-cento came a few names of literature, of which Diane was the most permanent; and the Huguenots made extensive use of Scripture names—Isaac, Gédéon, Benjamin, and many more; but the Christian name was quickly falling out of fashion. People were, of course, christened, but it is often difficult to discover their names. The old habit of addressing the knight as Sire Jehan, or Sire Pierre, and speaking of him as le Beau Sieur, had been entirely dropped. Even his surname was often out of sight, and he was called after some estate—as le Sieur Pierre Terrail was to the whole world Chevalier Bayard. Nay, even in the signature, the Christian name was omitted, unless from some very urgent need of distinction. Henri de Lorraine, eldest son of the duke of Guise, signs himself Le Guisard in a letter to the Dauphin Henri, son of François I. Married ladies wrote themselves by their maiden joined to their married title, and scarcely were even little children in the higher orders called by one of the many names that it had become the custom to bestow on them, in hopes of conciliating as many saints and as many sponsors as possible,—sometimes a whole city, as when the Fronde-born son of Madame de Longueville had all Paris for his godmother, and was baptized Charles Paris.
Now and then, however, literature, chiefly that of the ponderous romances of the Scudéry school, influenced a name, as Athenaïs or Sylvie; but, in general, these magnificent appellations were more used as sobriquets under which to draw up characters of acquaintances than really given to children. Esther is, however, said to have been much promoted by the tragedy of Racine.
The Bourbons, with their many faults, have had two true kings of men among them—Henri IV. and Louis XIV.—men with greatness enough to stamp the Bourbon defects where their greatness left no likeness.
There is something very significant in the fact, that these were the days when it was fashionable to forget the simple baptismal name. There was little distinction in it, if it had been remembered; Louis or Marie always formed part of it, with half-a-dozen others besides. As to the populace, nobody knows anything of them under Louis XIV.: they were ground down to nothing.
The lower depth, under Louis XV., brought a reaction of simplicity; but it was the simplicity of casting off all trammels—the classicalism of the Encyclopædists. Christian names are mentioned again, and were chosen much for literary association. Emile and Julie, for the sake of Rousseau; and, from Roman history, Jules and Camille, and many another, clipped down to that shortened form by which France always appropriated the words of other nations, and often taught us the same practice.
The Revolution stripped every one down to their genuine two names, and woe to the owners of those which bore an aristocratic sound, or even meaning. Thenceforth French nomenclature, among the educated classes and those whom they influence, has been pretty much a matter of taste. Devotion, where it exists, is satisfied by the insertion of Marie, and anything that happens to be in vogue is added to it. Josephine flourished much in the first Bonaparté days; but Napoléon was too imperial, too peculiar, to be given without special warrant from its owner; nor are politically-given names numerous: there are more taken from popular novels or dramas, or merely from their sound. Zephyrine, Coralie, Zaidée, Zénobie, Malvine, Séraphine, prevail not only among the ladies, but among the maid-servants of Paris; and men have, latterly, been fancifully named by appellations brought in from other countries, never native to France—Gustave, Alfred, Ernest, Oswald, &c. Moreover, the tendency to denude words of their final syllable is being given up. The names in us and in a are let alone, in spelling, at least; and some of our feminine English contractions, such as Fanny, have been absolutely admitted.
All this, however, very little affects the peasantry, or the provinces. Patron saints and hereditary family names, contracted to the utmost, are still used there; and a rich harvest might be gathered by comparison of the forms in Keltic, Latin, Gascon, or German, in France.
Section VI.—Great Britain.
The waning space demands brevity; otherwise, the appellations of our own countrymen and women are a study in themselves; but they must here be treated of in general terms, rather than in detail.
The Keltic inhabitants of the two islands bore names that their descendants have, in many instances, never ceased to bear and to cherish. The Gael of Ireland and Scotland have always had their Niel and Brighd, their Fergus and Angus; Aodh, Ardh, and Bryan, Eachan, Conan, the most ancient of all traditional names, continuing without interval on the same soil, excepting a few of the more favoured Greek and old Italian.
The Cymry, in their western mountains, have a few equally permanent. Caradoc, Bronwen, Arianwen, Llud, and the many forms of Gwen, are extremely ancient, and have never dropped into disuse. In both branches of the race there was a large mass of poetical and heroic myth to endear these appellations to the people; and it is one of the peculiar features of our islands to be more susceptible than any other nation to these influences on nomenclature. Is it from the under-current of the imaginative Kelt that this tendency has been derived?
Rome held England for four hundred years; and though Welsh survived her grasp and retained its Keltic character, instead of becoming a Romance tongue, it was considerably imbued with Latin phraseology; and the assumption of Latin names by the British princes, with the assimilation of their own, has left a peculiar class of Welsh classic names not to be paralleled elsewhere, except, perhaps, in Wallachia. Cystenian, Elin, Emrys, Iolo, Aneurin, Ermin, Gruffydd, Kay, are of these; and there are many more, such as March, Tristrem, Einiawn, Geraint, which lie in doubt between the classic and the Cymric, and are, probably, originally the latter, but assimilated to those of their Latin models and masters. It was these Romanized Kelts who supplied the few martyrs and many saints of Britain; whose Albanus, Aaron, and Julius left their foreign names to British love, and whose Patricius founded the glorious missionary Church of Ireland, and made his name the national one. His pupils, Brighde and Columba, made theirs almost equally venerated, though none of these saintly titles were, at first, adopted in the Gadhaelic Churches without the reverent prefix Gille, or Mael, which are compounded with all the favourite saintly names of the Keltic calendar.
Again, the semi-Roman Kelts were the origin of the Knights of the Round Table. Arthur’s own name, though thorough Keltic, is claimed by Greek. Lancelot is probably a French version of the Latin translation of Maelgwn; and the traces of Latin are here and there visible in the nomenclature of the brave men who, no doubt, aimed rather at being Roman citizens than mediæval knights.
The great Low German influx made our island English, and brought our veritable national names. An immense variety existed among the Anglo-Saxons, consisting of different combinations, generally with some favourite prefix, in each family—Sige, Æthel, Ead, Hilde, Cuth, Ælf, and the terminations, generally, beorht, red, volf, veald, frith, or, for women, thrythe, hilde, gifu, or burh. The like were in use in the Low German settlements on the Continent, especially in Holland and Friesland.
Christianity, slowly spreading through the agency of the Roman Church on the one hand and the Keltic on the other, did not set aside the old names. It set its seal of sanctity on a few which have become our genuine national and native ones. Eadward, Eadmund, Eadwine, Wilfrith, Æadgifu, Æthelthryth, Mildthryth, Osveald, and Osmund, have been the most enduring of these; and Æthelbyrht we sent out to Germany, to come back to us as Albert.
The remains of the Danish invasions are traceable rather in surnames than Christian names. The permanent ones left by them were chiefly in insular Scotland and Ireland. Torquil, Somerled, Ivor, Ronald, Halbert, are Scottish relics of the invaders; and in Ireland, Amlaidh, Redmond, Ulick.
But it was the Normans, Norsemen in a French dress, that brought us the French rather than Frank names that are most common with us. Among the thirty kings who have reigned since the Conquest, there have been ten Christian names, and of these but two are Saxon English, three are Norman Frank, two French Hebrew, one French Greek, one French, one Anglicized German Greek. Strictly speaking, Richard is Saxon, and began with a native English saint; but it was its adoption by Normans that made it popular after the Conquest; and it came in company with William, Henry, Robert, Walter, Gilbert, all in perpetual use ever since. Alberic, Bertram, Baldwin, Randolf, Roger, Herbert, Hubert, Reginald, Hugh, Norman, Nigel, and many others less universally kept up, came at the same time; and Adelheid and Mathilda were imported by the ladies; but, in general, there were more men’s names than women’s then planted, probably on account of William’s policy of marrying Normans to English women.
Scripture names were very few. There are only two Johns in Domesday Book, and one is a Dane; but the saints were beginning to be somewhat followed; Eustace was predominant; Cecily, Lucy, Agnes, Constance, were already in use; and in the migration, Brittany contributed Tiffany, in honour of the Epiphany. At the same time she sent us her native Alan, Brian, and Aveline; and vernacular French gave Aimée and afterwards Algernon.
It was a time of contractions. Between English and French, names were oddly twisted; Alberic into Aubrey, Randolf into Ralph, Ethelthryth into Awdry, Eadgifu into Edith, Mathilda into Maude, Adelheid into Alice.
Saint and Scripture names seem to have been promoted by the crusading impulse, but proceeded slowly. The Angevins brought us the French Geoffrey and Fulk, and their Provençal marriages bestowed on us the Provençal version of Helena—Eleanor, as we have learnt to call their Alienor, in addition to the old Cymric form Elayne. Thence, too, came Isabel, together with Blanche, Beatrice, and other soft names current in poetical Provence. Jehan, as it was called when Lackland bore it, and its feminine Jehanne, seem to have been likewise introductions of our Aquitanian queen.
The Lowland Scots had been much influenced by the Anglo-Saxons, whose tongue prevailed throughout the Lothians; and after the fall of Macbeth, and the marriage of Malcolm Ceanmore, English names were much adopted in Scotland. Cuthbert has been the most lasting of the old Northumbrian class. The good Queen Margaret, and her sister Christian, owed their Greek names, without a doubt, to their foreign birth and Hungarian mother, and these, with Alexander, Euphemia, and George, forthwith took root in Scotland, and became national. Probably Margaret likewise brought the habit, then more eastern than western, of using saintly names, for her son was David; and from this time seems to have begun the fashion of using an equivalent for the Keltic name. David itself, beloved for the sake of the good king, is the equivalent of Dathi, a name borne by an Irish king before the Scottish migration. David I., nearly related to the Empress Maude, and owning the earldom of Northumbria in right of his wife, was almost an English baron; and the intercourse with England during his reign and those of his five successors, made the Lowland nobles almost one with the Northumbrian barons, and carried sundry Norman names across the border, where they became more at home than even in England; such as Alan, Walter, Norman, Nigel, and Robert.
Henry II. was taking advantage of the earl of Pembroke’s expedition to Ireland, and the English Pale was established, bringing with it to Erin the favourite Norman names, to be worn by the newly-implanted nobles, and Iricized gradually with their owners. Cicely became Sheelah; Margaret, Mairgreg; Edward, Eudbaird; and, on the other hand, the Irish dressed themselves for civilization by taking English names. Finghin turned to Florence, and Ruadh to Roderick, &c.
Henry III. had been made something like an Englishman by his father’s loss of Normandy; and in his veneration for English saints, he called his sons after the two royal saints most beloved in England, Edward and Edmund; and the death of the elder children of Edward I. having brought the latter a second time to the throne, it was thenceforth in honour. Thomas owed its popularity to Becket, who was so christened from his birth on the feast of the Apostle, St. Thomas, and, in effect, saintly names were becoming more and more the fashion. Mary was beginning to be esteemed as the most honourable one a woman could bear; and legends in quaint metrical English rendered Agnes, Barbara, Katharine, Margaret, and Cecily well known and in constant use.
The romances of chivalry began to have their influence. Lionel and Roland, Tristram, Ysolda, Lancelot, and Guenever, were all the produce of the revival of the tales of Arthur’s court, arrayed in their feudal and chivalrous dress, and other romances contributed a few. Diggory is a highly romantic name, derived from an old metrical tale of a knight, properly called D'Egaré, the wanderer, or the almost lost, one of the many versions of the story of the father and unknown son. Esclairmonde came out of Huon de Bourdeaux; Lillias, such a favourite in Scotland, came out of the tale of Sir Eger, Sir Graham, and Sir Graysteel; Lillian out of the story of Roswal and Lillian; and Grizel began to flourish from the time Chaucer made her patience known.
The Scots, by their alliance with France, were led to import French terminations, such as the diminutives Janet and Annot; also the foreign Cosmo, and perhaps likewise Esmé.
Meantime we obtained fresh importations from abroad. Anne came with the Queen of Richard II.; Elizabeth from the German connections of Elizabeth Woodville’s mother, Jaquetta of Luxemburg; Gertrude was taken from Germany; Francis and Frances caught from France; and Arthur was revived for his eldest son by the first Tudor; Jane instead of Joan began, too, in the Tudor times.
But when the Reformation came, the whole system of nomenclature received a sudden shock. Patron saints were thrown to the winds; and though many families adhered to the hereditary habits, others took entirely new fashions. Then, Camden says, began the fashion of giving surnames as Christian names; as with Guildford Dudley, Egremont Ratcliffe, Douglas Sheffield; and in Ireland, Sidney, as a girl’s name, in honour of the lord deputy, Sir Henry, the father of Sir Philip, from whom, on the other hand, Sydney became a common English boy’s name.
Then, likewise, the classical taste came forth, and bestowed all manner of fanciful varieties; Homer, Virgil, Horatius, Lalage, Cassandra, Diana, Virginia, Julius, &c., &c., all are found from this time forward; and here and there, owing to some ancestor of high worth, specimens have been handed on in families.
The more pious betook themselves to abstract qualities; Faith, Hope, Charity, Prudence and Patience, Modesty, Love, Gift, Temperance, Mercy, all of which, even to the present day, sometimes are used, but chiefly by the peasantry, or in old Nonconformist families.
Between the dates 1500 and 1600 began the full employment of Scripture names, chosen often by opening the Bible at haphazard, and taking the first name that presented itself, sometimes, however, by juster admiration of the character. Thus began our use of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Rachel, Joseph, Benjamin, Josiah, Gershom, Gamaliel, &c.; and others more quaint and peculiar. The Puritan clergy absolutely objected to giving unedifying names. A minister was cited before Archbishop Whitgift for refusing to christen a child Richard. The Bible was ransacked for uncommon names only found in the genealogies, and parish registers show the strangest varieties, such as Hope still, Dust and Ashes, Thankful, Repent, Accepted, Hold-the-Truth, &c. These were chiefly given at the baptisms in the latter days of Elizabeth and the reign of James I. They were the real, not assumed, names of the Ironsides, but they were not perpetuated. A man called Fight-against-Sin would have too much pity for his son to transmit such a name to him. Original is, however, a family name still handed on in Lincolnshire. Probably it was at first Original Sin. The most curious varieties of names were certainly used in the 17th century. The register of the scholars admitted to Merchant Taylors' school between 1562 and 1699 shows Isebrand, Jasper, Jermyn, Polydore, Cæsar, Olyffe, Erasmus, Esme, Ursein, Innocent, Praise, Polycarpe, Tryamour, and a Sacheverell, Filgate, admitted in 1673.
Comparatively few of these Puritan names were used in Scotland; but several were for sound’s sake adopted in Ireland as equivalents; Jeremiah for Diarmaid; Timothy for Tadhgh; Grace for Graine.
Charles was first made popular through loyalty to King Charles I., who had received it in the vain hope that it would be more fortunate than the hereditary James, itself brought into Scotland seven generations back by a vow of Annaple Drummond, mother of the first unfortunate James. English registers very scantily show either Charles or James before the Stuart days, but they have ever since been extremely popular. Henrietta, brought by the French queen, speedily became popular, and with Frances, Lucy, Mary, Anne, Catherine, and Elizabeth, seem to have been predominant among the ladies; but all were contracted, as Harriet, Fanny, Molly, Nanny, Kitty, Betty. The French suppression of the Christian name considerably affected the taste of the Restoration; noblemen dropped it out of their signature; the knight’s wife discarded it with the prefix Dame; married daughters and sisters were mentioned by the surname only; young spinsters foolishly adopted Miss with the surname instead of Mistress with the Christian; but the loss was not so universal as in France, for custom still retained the old titles of knights and of the daughters and younger sons of the higher ranks of the nobility. The usual fashion was, in imitation of the French, for ladies to call themselves and be addressed in poetry by some of the Arcadian or romantic terms, a few of which have crept into nomenclature; Amanda, Ophelia, Aspasia, Cordelia, Phyllis, Chloe, Sylvia, and the like.
The love of a finish in a was coming in with Queen Anne’s Augustan age. The soft e, affectionate ie or y, that had been natural to our tongues ever since they had been smoothed by Norman-French, was twisted up into an Italian ia: Alice must needs be Alicia; Lettice, Letitia; Cecily, Cecilia; Olive, Olivia; Lucy, Lucinda; and no heroine could be deemed worthy of figuring in narrative without a flourish at the end of her name. Good Queen Anne herself had an a tacked on to make her ‘Great Anna’; Queen Bess must needs be Great Eliza; and Mary was erected into Maria; Nassau had lately been invented for William III.’s godchildren of both sexes; and Anne, after French precedent, made masculine for his successor’s godsons. Belinda, originally the property of the wife of Orlando, was chosen by Pope for his heroine of Rape of the Lock; Clarissa was fabricated out of the Italian Clarice by Richardson; and Pamela was adopted by him out of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, as a recommendation to the maid-servant whom he made his heroine; and these, as names of literature, all took a certain hold. Pamela is still not uncommon among the lower classes.
In the mean time the House of Brunswick had brought in the regnant names of German taste—George, of which, thanks to our national patron, we had already made an English word, Frederick, Ernest, Adolphus—a horrible English Latinism of good old German, Augustus, an adoption of German classic taste; and, among the ladies, generally clumsy feminines of essentially masculine names—Caroline, Charlotte, Wilhelmina, Frederica, Louisa, together with the less incorrectly formed Augusta, Sophia, and Amelia.
This ornamental taste flourished, among the higher classes, up to the second decade of the nineteenth century, when the affectations, of which it was one sample, were on the decline, under the growing influence of the chivalrous school of Scott, and of the simplicity upheld by Wordsworth. The fine names began to grow vulgar, and people either betook themselves to the hereditary ones of their families, or picked and chose from the literature then in fashion.
Two names, for the sake of our heroes by sea and land, came into prominence—Horatio and Arthur, the latter transcending the former in popularity in proportion to the longer career and more varied excellences of its owner. Womankind had come back to their Ellen, Mary, and Lucy; and it was not till the archaic influence had gone on much longer that the present crop sprang up, of Alice and Edith, Gertrude, Florence, and Constance, copied again and again, in fact and in fiction, and with them the Herbert and Reginald, Wilfrid and Maurice, formerly only kept up in a few old families. It is an improvement, but in most cases at the expense of nothing but imitation, the sound and the fashion being the only guides. After all, nomenclature cannot be otherwise than imitative, but the results are most curious and interesting, when it is either the continuation of old hereditary names, like the Algernon of the Howards or the Aubrey of the de Veres, or else the record of some deeply felt event, like the Giustina of Venice, in honour of the battle of Lepanto, or our own Arthur, in memory of the deeds of our great duke.
Names are often an index to family habits and temper. Unpretending households go on for generations with the same set, sometimes adopting one brought in by marriage, but soon dropping it out if it is too fine. Romantic people reflect the impressions of popular literature in their children’s names; enthusiastic ones mark popular incidents,—Navarino, Maida, Alma, have all been inflicted in honour of battles. Another class always have an assortment of the fashionable type—Augusta, Amelia, and Matilda, of old; Edith and Kate at present.
Nonconformity leaves its mark in its virtue names and its Scripture names, the latter sometimes of the wildest kind. Talithacumi was the daughter of a Baptist. A clergyman has been desired to christen a boy ‘Alas,’ the parents supposing that ‘Alas! my brother,’ was a call on the name of the disobedient prophet. There is a floating tradition of ‘Acts’ being chosen for a fifth son, whose elder brothers had been called after the four Evangelists; and even of Beelzebub being uttered by a godfather at the font.
Among other such names may be mentioned ‘Elibris,’ which some people persisted belonged to their family, for it was in their grandfather’s books: and so it was, being e libris (from the books), the old Latin manner of commencing an inscription in a book. Sarsaparilla was called from a scrap of newspaper. ‘Valuable and serviceable’ is also said to have been intended for a child, on the authority of an engraving in an old watch; and an unfortunate pair of twins were presented for the imposition of Jupiter and Orion, because their parents thought them pretty names, and ‘had heard on them.’
Double names came gradually in from the Stuart days, but only grew really frequent in the present century; and the habit of calling girls by both, now so common among the lower classes in towns, is very recent.
With many families it is a convenient custom to christen the sons by the mother’s maiden name in addition to their first individual name; but the whole conversion of surnames into Christian names is exclusively English, and is impossible on the Continent, as state and church both refuse to register what is not recognized as in use. Of English surnames we need say nothing; they have been fully treated of in other works, and as any one may be used in baptism, at any time, the mention of them would be endless.
In speaking of England we include not only our colonies but America. There our habits are exaggerated. There is much less of the hereditary; much more of the Puritan and literary vein. Scripture names, here conspicuous, such as Hephzibah, Noah, Obadiah, Hiram, are there common-place. Virtues of all kinds flourish, and coinages are sometimes to be found, even such as ‘Happen to be,’ because the parents happened to be in Canada at the time of the birth.
‘Peabody Duty perhaps keeps a store,
With washing tubs, and wigs, and wafers stocked;
And Dr. Quackenbox proclaims the cure
Of such as are with any illness docked:
Dish Alcibiades holds out a lure
Of sundry articles, all nicely cooked;
And Phocion Aristides Franklin Tibbs,
Sells ribbons, laces, caps, and slobbering-bibs.’
The Roman and Greek influence has been strong, producing Cato, Scipio, Leonidas, &c.; but the habit of calling negroes by such euphonious epithets has rather discouraged them among the other classes, and the romantic, perhaps, predominates with women, the Scriptural with men. The French origin of many in the Southern States, and the Dutch in New England, can sometimes be traced in names.
Section VII.—Germany.
What was said of Frankish applies equally to old High German, of which Frankish was a dialect, scarcely distinguishable with our scanty sources of information.
We have seen Frankish extinguished in Latin in the West; but in the East we find it developing and triumphing. The great central lands of Europe were held by the Franks and Suevi, with the half civilized Lombards to their south, and a long slip of Burgundians on the Rhine and the Alps, all speakers of the harsh High German, all Christians by the seventh century, but using the traditional nomenclature, often that of the Nibelungenlied. The Low Germans, speaking what is best represented by Anglo-Saxon literature, were in the northerly flats and marshes, and were still heathens when the Franks, under Charlemagne conquered them, and the Anglo-Saxon mission of Boniface began their conversion.
The coronation of Charles by the pope was intended to establish the headship of a confederacy of sovereigns, one of them to be the Kaisar, and that one to be appointed by the choice of the superior ones among the rest. This chieftainship remained at first with the Karlingen; but after they had become feeble it remained, during four reigns, with the house of Saxony, those princes who established the strange power of the empire over Italy, and held the papal elections in their hands. It was under them that Germany became a confederation, absolutely separate from her old companion France.
There is not much to say of German nomenclature. She little varied her old traditional names. Otto, Heinrich, and Konrad, constantly appeared from the first; and the High German, as the literary tongue, has had the moulding of all the recognized forms.
The Low German continued to be spoken, and became, in time, Dutch and Frisian, as well as the popular dialect of Saxony and West Prussia. The Frisian names are, indeed, much what English ones would be now if there had been no external influences.
In spite of being the central empire, the German people long resisted improvement and amalgamation. The merchant cities were, indeed, far in advance, and the emperors were, of necessity, cultivated men, up to the ordinary mark of their contemporary sovereigns; but the nobility continued surly and boorish, little accessible to chivalrous ideas, and their unchanging names—Ulrich, Adelbert, Eberhard, marking how little they were affected by the general impressions of Europe. A few names, like Wenceslav, or Boleslav, came in by marriage with their Polish, Bohemian, and Hungarian neighbours; and Hungary, now and then, was the medium of the introduction of one used at Constantinople, such as Sophia, Anne, Elisabeth, which, for the sake of the sainted Landgraffinn of Thuringia, became a universal favourite. Friedrich came in with the Swabian dynasty; Rudolf and Leopold, with the house of Hapsburg.
Holland and the cluster of surrounding fiefs meanwhile had a fluctuating succession, with lines of counts continually coming to an end, and others acceding who were connected with the French or English courts. The consequence was, that the gentlemen of these territories gained a strong French tinge of civilization, especially in Flanders, where the Walloons were a still remaining island of Belgæ. The Flemish chivalry became highly celebrated, and, under the French counts of Hainault and Flanders, and dukes of Burgundy, acquired a tone, which made their names and language chiefly those of France, and tinctured that of the peasantry and artisans, so as to distinguish them from the Hollanders. Andreas, Adrianus, Cornelius, saints imported by the French dukes, were both in Holland and the Netherlands, however, the leading names, together with Philip, which was derived from the French royal family. The Dutch artificers and merchants had their own sturdy, precise, business-like character—their German or saintly names, several of which are to be found among our eastern English, in consequence of the intercourse which the wool trade established, and the various settlements of Dutch and Flemish manufacturers in England.
The revival of classical scholarship in the fifteenth century was considerably felt in the great universities of the Netherlands and of Germany, and its chief influence on nomenclature is shown in the introduction of classical names; namely, Julius and Augustus, and the Emperior Friedrich’s notable compound of Maximus Æmilianus into Maximilian, but far more in finishing every other name off with the Latin us. Some were restorations to the original form; Adrianus, Paulus, and the ever memorable Martinus; but others were adaptations of very un-Latin sounds. Poppo turned to Poppius; Wolf to Wolfius; Ernst to Ernestus; Jobst, instead of going back to Justinus, made himself Jobstius; Franz, Franciscus. The surnames were even more unmanageable, being often either nicknames or local; but they underwent the same fate; Pott was Pottus; Bernau, Bernavius; while others translated them, as in the already-mentioned instance of Erasmus, from Gerhardson, and the well-known transformation of Schwarzerd into Melancthon. The Danish antiquary Broby (bridge town), figures as Pontoppidan; Och became Bos; Heilman, Severtus; Goldmann, Chrysander; Neumann, Neander; and as to the trades, Schmidt was Faber; Müller, Molitor; Schneider, Sartorius; Schuster, Sutorius; Kellner, Cellarius.
The German Christian names did not permanently retain this affectation; but the Netherlanders, owing probably to the great resort to their universities, retained it long and in popular speech, so that in many Dutch contractions, the us is still used, as in Janus for Adrianus; Rasmus for Erasmus; and almost always the full baptismal name includes the classical suffix. The surnames, of course, adhered, and are many of them constantly heard in Germany and Holland, while others have come to England chiefly with the fugitives from the persecution that caused the revolt of the Netherlands. The Latin left in Dacia and long spoken in Hungary must have assisted to classicalize the Germans even on their Slavonic side.
The Reformation did not so much alter German as English nomenclature. The Lutherans, following their master’s principle of altering only what was absolutely necessary, long retained their hereditary allegiance to their saints, and did not break out into unaccustomed names, though they modified the old Gottleip into Gottlieb. Some of their sects of Germany however, invented various religious names; Gottseimitdir, Gottlob, Traugott, Treuhold, Lebrecht, Tugendreich, and probably such others as Erdmuth and Ehrenpreis were results of this revival of native manufacture. A few Scriptural names came up among the Calvinists, but do not seem to have taken a firm hold.
This was the land of the double Christian name. It was common among the princes of Germany, before the close of the fifteenth century, long before France and Italy showed more than an occasional specimen. It was probably necessitated, by way of distinction, by the large families all of the same rank in the little German states. They seem to have set the fashion which has gradually prevailed more and more in Europe; indeed, there are some double names that have so grown together as to be recognized companions, such as Annstine for Anne Christine, Anngrethe for Anne Margarethe. At present it is the custom in almost all royal families to give the most preposterous number of Christian names, of which one, or at most two, is retained as serviceable, &c.
A few Slavonic names crept in; chiefly Wenzel from Bohemia; Kasimir from the Prussian Wends; Stanislas from Poland; and the house of Austria, when gaining permanent hold of the empire, spread the names derived from their various connections; the Spanish Ferdinand, and Flemish Karl and Philipp, besides their hereditary Leopold and Rudolf, and invented Maximilian.
The counter-reformation brought the Jesuit Ignaz and Franz into the lands where the Reformation was extinguished, and canonized Stanislav. Under the horrors of the Thirty Years' War, Germany retrograded in every respect; and when she began to emerge from her state of depression, the brilliance of the French court rendered it her model, which she followed with almost abject submission. Every one who could talked French, and was called by as French a name as might be; the royal Fritz became Fédéric, and little Hanne, Jeannette, the French ine and ette were liberally tacked to men’s names to make them feminine, and whatever polish the country possessed was French.
This lasted till the horrors of the Revolution, and the aggressions that followed it, awoke Germany to a sense of her own powers and duties as a nation. Her poets and great men were thoroughly national in spirit; and though, after the long and destructive contest, she emerged with her grand Holy Roman Empire torn to shreds, her electoral princes turned into petty kings, her noble Hanse towns mostly crushed and absorbed in the new states, her Kaisar merely the Markgraf of Austria, enriched by the spoils of Lombardy and the Slavonic kingdoms, yet she had recovered the true loyalty to the fatherland and its institutions, cared again for her literature and her language, and had an enthusiasm for her own antiquities, a desire to develop her own powers.
German names, to a degree, reflect this. They have ceased to ape Latin or French. So far as any are literary, they come from their own national literature; but as in most of the states only ordinary names are registered, the variety is not great. More and more German names pass to England in each generation, and become naturalized there; but the same proportion of English do not seem to be returned.
Bavaria, having been always Roman Catholic, has more saintly names than most other parts of Germany, and, in particular, uses those of some of the less popular apostles, who probably have been kept under her notice by the great miracle plays.
Switzerland, once part of the empire, though free for five hundred years back, is a cluster of varying tongues, races, languages, and religions,—Kelt and Roman, Swabian and Burgundian, Romanist, Lutheran, Calvinist, German, French, Italian. Names and contractions must vary here; but only those on the German side have fallen in my way, those about Berne, which are chiefly remarkable for the Ours and Ursel, in honour of the bears, and Salome among the women; the diminutive always in li.
Section VIII.—Scandinavia.
Grand old Northmen! They had their own character, and never lost it; they had their own nomenclature, and kept it with the purity of an unconquered race.
The few influences that affected their nomenclature were, in the first place, in some pre-historic time, the Gaelic. Thence, when Albin and Lochlinn seem to have been on friendly terms, they derived Njal, Kormak, Kylan, Kjartan, Mælkoln, and, perhaps, Brigitte. Next, in Denmark, a few Wend names were picked up; and, in fact, Denmark being partly peopled by Angles, and always more exposed, first to Slavonic, and then to German influences, than the North, has been less entirely national in names.
In the great piratical days the Northmen and Danes left their names and patronymics to the northern isles, from Iceland to Man, and even in part to Neustria and Italy. Oggiero and Tancredi, in the choicest Italian poems, are specimens of the wideness of their fame. Our own population, in the north-east of England, is far more Scandinavian than Anglian, and bears the impress in dialect in manners, and in surnames, though the baptismal ones that led to them are, in general, gone out of use.
Christianity did not greatly alter the old northern names, though it introduced those of the universally honoured saints. But the clergy thought it desirable—and chiefly in Denmark—to take more ecclesiastical names to answer to their own; so Dagfinn was David; Sölmund, Solomon; Sigmund, Simon; and several ladies seem to have followed their example, so that Astrida and Griotgard both became Margarethe, and Bergliot Brigitte.
The popular nomenclature has included all the favourite saints with the individual contractions of the country. The royal lines have been influenced by the dynasties that have reigned. Gustaf grew national in Sweden after the disruption of the union of Calmar, and Denmark alternated between Christiern and Friedrich; but the main body of the people are constant to Olaf and Eirik, Ingeborg and Gudrun; and in the Norwegian valleys the old immediate patronymic of the father is still in use. Linnea as a feminine from Linnæus, the Latinism of their great natural historian’s surname is a modern invention. Linne itself means a lime tree.
The Northmen have hitherto been the most impressing, and least impressed from without, of all the European nations; and thus their names are the great key to those of the South.
Section IX.—Comparative Nomenclature.
Before entirely quitting our subject, it may be interesting to make a rapid comparison of the spirit of nomenclature, and the significative appellations that have prevailed most in each branch of the civilized family which we have been considering.
For instance—of religious names, the Hebrew race alone, and that at a comparatively late period, assumed such directly Divine appellations, as Eli, Elijah, Adonijah, Joel. The most analogous to these in spirit would be the heathen Teutonic ones, Osgod, Asthor, Aasir; but these were, probably, rather assertions of descent than direct proclamations of glory.
The very obvious and appropriate Gift of God is in all branches save the Keltic.
| Hebrew. | Greek. | Teutonic. | Persian. |
| Jonathan | Theodoros | Godgifu | Megabyzus |
| Elnathan | Dorotheus | Gottgabe | i.e. |
| Nathanael | Latin. | (late) | Bagabukhsha |
| Mattaniah | Adeodatus | Slavonic. | |
| Nethaniah | (late) | Bogdan |
Servant of God is everywhere but among Latins and the Slaves.
| Hebrew. | Greek. | Teutonic. | Keltic. | Sanscrit. |
| Obadiah | Theodoulas | Gottschalk | Giolla-De | Devadasa |
Greek and Gaelic likewise own the Service of Christ, by Christopheros (Christbearer), Gilchrist, and Malise; and the Arabic has Abd-Allah, and Abd-el-Kadir, servant of the Almighty. The name of the late Sultan, Abdul Medschid, signified the servant of the All-Famed.
| THE LOVE OF GOD, OR BELOVED OF GOD. | ||||||||||||
| Greek. | Latin. | Teutonic | Slavonic. | Persian. | ||||||||
| Theophilus | Amadeus | Gottlieb | Bogomil | Bagadaushta | ||||||||
| Philotheus | (late) | |||||||||||
| HONOURING GOD. | ||||||||||||
| Greek. | Slavonic. | Persian. | ||||||||||
| Timotheus | Çastibog | Megabazus | ||||||||||
| GOD'S JUDGMENT. | ||||||||||||
| Heb. | Greek. | |||||||||||
| Daniel | Theokritus | |||||||||||
| Jehoshaphat | ||||||||||||
| Jehoiachim | ||||||||||||
| GOD'S GLORY. | ||||||||||||
| Greek. | Slavonic. | |||||||||||
| Theokles | Bogoslav | |||||||||||
| GOD'S GLORY. | ||||||||||||
| Hebrew. | German. | |||||||||||
| Eleazar | Gotthilf | |||||||||||
The Greek and Slavonic have by far the most directly religious names, next to the Hebrew, from having been less pledged to hereditary names, and the time of the conversion. The Gaelic devotion was almost all expressed in the Giolla and Mael prefix.
Idol names are of course numerous, but comparison between them is not easy, as they vary with different mythologies. One point is remarkable, that the Supreme God, whether Zeus, Jupiter, Divas, or Woden, never has so many votaries as his vassal gods. Zeno, Jovius, and, perhaps, the Grim of the North, are almost exceptions. The Phœnician Baal had, indeed, many namesakes, and the Persian Ormuzd, giver of life, had several, of whom the pope, called Hormisdas, was one. In general, Ares, Mars, Thor, and Ranovit, the warlike gods, or the friendly Demeter and Gerda, the beneficent Athene, the brilliant Artemis, and Irish Brighde, the queens of heaven, Hera, Juno, Frigga, are chosen for namesakes. Mithras in Persia, and Apollo in Greece, have their share; but, in general, the sun is not very popular, though Aurora and Zora honour the dawn; and the North has various Dags.
Of animals the choice is much smaller than would have been expected. The lion’s home is, of course, the East, and Sinha, his Sanscrit title, is represented by the Singh, so familiar in the names of Hindu chiefs. The Arabs have Arslan in many combinations; the Greeks introduced Leo, which has been followed by the Romans, and come into the rest of Europe; but many as were the lion names of Greece and later Rome, Leonard, and, perhaps, Lionel, alone are of European growth.
The elephant is utterly unrepresented, unless we accept the tradition, that the cognomen of Cæsar arose from his African name. Persia has a few leopards, such as Chitratachna.
The bear does not show himself in favourable colours in the South, and Ursus and Ursula are more likely to be translations of the northern Biorn—so extremely common—than original Latin names. The Erse, however, owns him as Mahon.
The wolf is the really popular animal. Even the Hebrews knew Zeeb through the Midianites, the Greeks used Lycos in all sorts of forms, the Romans had many a Lupus, the Teutons have Wolf in every possible combination, the Slaves Vuk; the Kelts alone avoid the great enemy of the fold, whose frequency is almost inexplicable. The Kelts are, however, the namesakes of the dog, the Cu and Con, so much loathed in other lands, that only a stray Danish Hund, Italian Cane, and the one Hebrew Caleb, unite in bearing his name in honour of his faithful qualities.
The horse is, of course, neglected in Judea, where his use was forbidden; but in Sanscrit was found Vradaçva, owning great horses; and the horse flourished all over Persia. Aspamithras, horse’s friend, Aspachava, rich in horses, Vishtaspa, and many more, commemorate the animal; and in Greece, Hippolytus, Hippodamos, Hippomedon, Hipparchus, and many more, showed that riding was the glory of the Hellenes. Rome has no representative of her equus, except in Equitius, a doubtful name, more likely to be named in honour of the equestrian order, than direct from the animal. Marcus may, however, be from the word that formed the Keltic March, which, with Eachan and Eochaid, and many more, represent the love of horses among the Kelts, answering to the Eporedorix, mentioned by Cæsar. The Slaves have apparently no horse names; but many of our modern Roses are properly horses, and Jostein, Rosmund, and various other forms, keep up the horse’s fame in northern Europe.
Rome dealt, to a curious degree, in the most homely domestic names; Mus, the surname of the devoted Decius, was, probably, really a mouse; for while the swine of other nations never descend below the savage wild boar of the forest—Eber, Baezan, Bravac, the Romans have indeed one Aper, but their others are but domestic pigs, Verres, Porcius, Scrofa.
Goats flourished in Greece in honour of the Ægis, and of Zeus goats, and Ægidios, with others, there arose; but Sichelgaita, and a few northern Geits, alone reflect them. The chamois, or mountain goat, named Tabitha or Dorcas, and is paralleled by an occasional masculine Hirsch, or stag, in Germany.
The sheep appears to be solely represented by Rachael, for though the lamb has laid claim to both Agnes and Lambert, it is only through a delusion of sound.
Serpents, as Orm and Lind, are peculiar to the North.
The eagle figures in Aias, Ajax, Aquila, the Russian Orlof, and many an Arn of the Teutons. It is rather surprising not to find him among the Gael; but the raven, like the wolf, is the fashionable creature, as an attendant upon slaughter—Oreb, Corvus, Morvren, Fiachra, Rafn, he croaks his name over the plunderer everywhere but among the Greeks and Slaves.
The swan has Gelges in Ireland, Svanwhit in the North; the dove named Jonah, Jemima in Palestine, Columba in Christian Latinity, Golubica in Illyria; but gentle birds are, in general, entirely neglected, unless the Greek Philomela, which properly means loving honey, were named after the nightingale. The Latin Gallus may possibly be a cock; but Genserich is not the gander king, as he was so long supposed to be.
The bee had Deborah in Hebrew, and Melissa in Greek; but, in general, insects are not popular, though Vespasian is said to come from a wasp; and among fishes, the dolphin has the only namesakes in Romance tongues, probably blunders from Delphi.
Plants were now and then commemorated; Tamar, a palm tree, Hadassah, a myrtle, are among the scanty eastern examples. Rome had a Robur, and Illyria Dobruslav, in honour of the oak; but the Slaves have almost the only genuine flower names. Rhoda is, indeed, a true Greek Rose, but the modern ones are mistakes for hross, a horse. Violet, probably, rose out of Valens, and Lilias from Cæcilius, Oliver from Olaf. Primrose, Ivy, Eglantine, &c., have been invented in modern books at least, and so has Amaranth.
Passing to qualities, goodness is found in many an Agathos of the Greeks, with his superlative Aristos, but early Rome chiefly dealt in Valens, leaving Bonus and Melior for her later inventors to use. The goods of the Teutons are rather doubtful between the names of the Deity and of war, but in passing them, the relation between Gustaf and Scipio should be observed. The Slaves have many compounds of both Dobry and Blago, and the Irish, Alma.
Love is everywhere. David represents it in Hebrew, Agape and Phile in Greek; but the grim Roman never used the compounds of his amo, only left them to form many a gentle modern name—Amabel, Aimée, Amy. Caradoc was the old Cymric, and Aiffe the Gadhaelic, beloved; and Wine and Leof in the German races, Ljubov, Libusa, Milica in the Slavonic, proved the warm hearts of the people. Indeed, the Slavonic names are the tenderest of all, owning Bratoljub and Çedomil, fraternal and parental love, unparalleled except by the satirical surnames of the Alexandrian kings.
Purity—a Christian idea—is found in Agnes and Katherine, both Greek; perhaps, too, Devoslava, or maiden glory, with the Slaves. Holiness is in the Hieronymus and Hagios of heathen Greece, meaning a holy name, and in the northern Ercen and Vieh, at the beginning and end of names, the Sviato of the Slavonians.
Peace, always lovely and longed-for, names both Absalom and Solomon, and after them many an eastern Selim and Selima. Greece had Irene and Irenæus, but not till Christian days, and the Roman Pacificus was a very modern invention; but the Friedrich, &c., of the North, and Miroslav of the Slav, were much more ancient.
The soul is to be found in Greece, as Psyche, and nowhere else but in the Welsh Enid. Life, however, figured at Rome, as Vitalis, and in the Teutonic nations as the prefix fjor; and the Greek Zoë kept it up in honour of the oldest of all female names, Eve.
Grace is the Hebrew Hannah or Anna, and the charis in Greek compounds. Eucharis would not answer amiss to the Adelheid, or noble cheer, of Teuton damsels. Abigail, or father’s joy, Zenobia, father’s ornament, are in the same spirit.
Eu, meaning both happy and rich, wealthy in its best sense, is exactly followed by the Northern ad and Anglo-Saxon ead. Eulalia and Eulogios are the same as Edred, Euphrasia would answer to Odny, Eucharis and Aine likewise have the same sense of gladness. Eugenois is, perhaps, rather in the sense of Olaf, or of the host of Adels and Ethels. Patrocles and Cleopatra, both meaning the father’s fame, have nothing exactly analogous to them in the Teuton and Keltic world.
Royalty is found in the Syriac Malchus, the Persian Kshahtra, or Xerxes, the Malek of the Arab, the early Archos, Basileus, and Tyrannos of the late Greek; even the Roman Regulus, with Tigearnach among the Kelts, and Rik in its compounds in the Teutonic world. The loftiness and strength of the royal power is expressed in the Persian prefix arta, first cousin to our Keltic Art and Arthur, akin to the root that forms Ares, Arius, Arteinus, and many more familiar names from the superlative Aristos. It is the idea of strength and manhood, perhaps akin to the Latin vir and Keltic fear. Boleslav is the Wendic name, filling up the cycle of strength and manly virtue.
Majesty and greatness are commemorated by closely resembling words—the Persian Mathista or Masistes, Megas and Megalos in their Greek compounds, Latin Magnus and Maximus, Keltic Mor, Teutonic Mer; it is only the Velika of the Slav that does not follow the same root. The crown names Stephanas and Venceslas, or crown glory.
Justice and judgment are the prevalent ideas in the Hebrew Dan and Shaphat, Greek Archos, Dike, and Krite, Latin Justinus, Northern Ragn; perhaps, too, in the Irish Phelim and Slavonic Upravda. Damo, to tame, is in many Greek names; and ward, or protection, answers to the Latin Titus.
Venerable is the Persian Arsaces, with Augustus and Sebastian. Power figures in Vladimir and Waldemar, and the many forms of wald; and, on the other hand, the people assert themselves in the Laos and Demos of Greece, the leutfolk and theod of the Teuton, and even the ljud of the Slave. The lover of his people may be found under the various titles of Demophilos, Publicola, Theodwine, and the Slavonic feminine Ludmila; their ruler, as Democritus, or Archilaus, or Theodoric; their tamer, as Laodamos; their justice, as Laodike.
Boulos, council, finds a parallel in the Teuton raad; but Sophia, wisdom, is far too cultivated for an analogy among the name-makers of the rude North.
But fame and glory were more popular than wisdom and justice. Slava rings through the names of the Wends, and klas through the Greeks; while hluod and hruod form half the leading names of Germanized Europe.
Clara is the late Latin name best implying fame, but answering best to Bertha, bright, like the Phlegon of Greece, and Barsines of Persia, which are all from one root. Lucius, light, translates some of these.
Conquest, that most desired of events to a warlike nation, is the Nike of the Greeks. Nikias, Victor, Sige, Cobhflaith, are all identical in meaning; and the Greek and Teuton have again and again curiously similar compounds. Nicephorous and Sigebot, Nikoboulous and Sigfred, Stratonice would perhaps be paralleled by Sighilda. Nicolas has not an exact likeness, because the Teutons never place either sige or theod at the end of a word.
War itself has absorbed the Teuton spear, and is ger in our Teuton lands. But the Greek mache, and Teuton hadu, the Kelt cath, and the Slav boj or voj, all are in common use. Telemachus, or distant battle, is best represented by Siroslav, or distant glory. Stratos, meaning both army and camp, Kleostralos and Stratokles, answer to Stanislav; and Cadwaladyr, in sound as well as sense, to Haduvald.
Cathair, the Irish battle-slaughter, has likeness in the Teutonic derivatives of Val, but the North stands alone in honouring the Thiof with namesakes.
The hero, the warrior himself, the Hero as he really is of Greece, the Landnama-bok of our Teutons, the Landnama-bok and Landnama-bok and Landnama-bok of Ireland, the Landnama-bok of the Roman, has namesakes in hosts. Herakles himself was not far removed from Herbert, Robert, or Lothaire, in meaning; and Sigeher is the conquering warrior, as Nikostratos is the victorious army.
In fact, warlike names are exhausting in similarity and multitude, and our readers will discover many more for themselves. The peaceful ones are far more characteristic.
See how the ocean figures in Pelagios, in Morvan, Muircheartash, Haflide,—all the formation of maritime nations, while the Slaves have no sea names at all, and the Latin Marina is mere late coinage. It is the Welsh, however, who have the most sea names: Guenever, Bronwen, Dwynwen, &c.
The earth makes Georgos and Agricola, and its cultivators have in Greece commemorated their harvest with Eustaches and Theresa; in Illyria, their vintage with Grozdana; but though the old farmer citizens of Rome were called Faber, Lentulus, Cicero, and the like, produce of their fields, these were much too homely for our fierce Teuton ancestry.
Gold is not in much favour; Chryseis, Aurelia, Orflath, and Zlata, just represent it; and silver is to be found in Argyro, Argentine, and Arianwen; but iron nowhere but with the Germanic races, Eisambart, &c., in accordance with the weapon names in which they alone delight. Nor are jewels many,—Esmeralda, Jasper (perhaps), Margaret, Ligach, are almost their only representatives. Spices we have as Kezia, Muriel, and strangest of all, Kerenhappuch, a box of stibium for the eyes. Whether the Stein of the North is to be regarded as a jewel does not seem clear, but it is more according to the temper of the owners to regard it as answering to Petros, a rock. Veig, Laug, and Øl, represent liquors, and are one of the peculiarities of the North.
Beauty is less common than might have been expected. Kallista is the leading owner of the word in Greece, but the Latin bella must not be claimed for it, and, in spite of the ny and fridhr of the North, it is the Kelts who deal most in names of beauty,—Findelbh, Graine, and more than can here be specified.
Indeed, complexion names are chiefly found among the Kelts and Romans. The white, Albanus and Finn, (which last Finn passed to the North,) with Gwenn in Wales and Brittany; the light-haired, Flavius, Rufus, Ruadh, and Dearg. Fulvius, Niger, and Dubh, with the answering Swerker, paralleled only by the late Greek Melania have very few answering names in other lands, though the Bruno of Germany corresponds to Don, and the Blond, now Blount, of England is said to be meant to translate Fulvius.
On exceptional names, from the circumstances of the birth, we have not here dwelt. They were accidental, and never became national, except from the fame of some bearer of one. The names derived from places are almost all Latin, at first cognomina, then taken at baptism by converts. The number names are likewise Latin. Those of high Christian ideas, like Anastasius, Ambrosius, Alethea, are generally Greek; and when Latins as Benedictus, the blessed, and Beatrix, the blesser, are apt to be renderings of the Greek. The early Latin names are the least explicable, and the least resembling those of other nations; the Keltic are the most poetical; the Slavonic either tender or warlike; the Greek and the Teutonic are the most analogous to one another in sense, and are the most in use, except the more endeared and wide-spread of the Hebrew,—John and Mary deservedly have the pre-eminence in the Christian world above all others.
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By THOMAS FOWLER.
WORDSWORTH.
By F. W. H. MYERS.
DRYDEN.
By G. SAINTSBURY.
LANDOR.
By Professor SIDNEY COLVIN.
CHARLES LAMB.
By Rev. A. AINGER.
BENTLEY.
By Professor R. C. JEBB.
DICKENS.
By Professor A. W. WARD.
MACAULAY.
By J. C. MORISON.
DE QUINCEY.
By Professor MASSON.
MILTON.
By MARK PATTISON.
HAWTHORNE.
By HENRY JAMES.
SOUTHEY.
By Professor DOWDEN.
CHAUCER.
By Professor A. W. WARD.
GRAY.
By EDMUND W. GOSSE.
SWIFT.
By LESLIE STEPHEN.
STERNE.
By H. D. TRAILL.
FIELDING.
By AUSTIN DOBSON.
SHERIDAN.
By Mrs. OLIPHANT.
ADDISON.
By W. J. COURTHOPE.
BACON.
By the Very Rev. the Dean of St. Paul’s.
COLERIDGE.
By H. D. TRAILL.
⁂ Other Volumes to follow.
Transcriber’s Note
The author seems to distinguish between ‘Slave’ and ‘Slavonic’ (usually abbreviated as ‘Slav’). ‘Slave’ seems to indicate ethnic rather than language groups.
Please consult the [author’s note] about the typographical conventions she observes there.
The lengthy index of names (the Glossary) at the beginning of the text appears to be a work in progress, and few pains were taken to perfect it here.
- Many names are out of alphabetic order and remain so here.
- The punctuation in the Glossary is somewhat haphazard or unclear, and has been regularized without further notice.
- There are incomplete entries, which may skip the meaning, page references, or both. Missing page references may or may not indicate that they do or do not appear in the text.
- Some entries include a question mark, indicating some uncertainty in the author or editor’s mind.
Each entry is given as printed, save where there are obvious discrepancies between the Glossary and the referenced text. These are resolved based on the context, as noted below.
Notes
| [xxv.45] | As an example, ‘Anuerin’, which has no page reference, is mentioned multiple times as a Welsh bard, and the name appears once in a list of Welsh names, but is not otherwise remarked upon. |
| [xliii.5] | The entry for ‘Coralie’ ends with a comma, without a page reference. The name appears on p. [456]. |
| [xlv.27] | In the Glossary, ‘Darius’ includes a page number (followed by a question mark) which refers to a section on Persian names, where only ‘Cyrus’ is discussed. |
| [lxii.6] | There are two entries for ‘Gandolf’, once as a ‘primary form’ (capitalized) and once in ‘Roman type’ as a form ‘since assumed’. |
| [lxxxiii.31] | The Lusatian name ‘Jjewa’ is not on p. 11 of the text, which mentions only ‘Hejba or Hejbka’. |
| [xciii.15] | Loiseach appears only on p. [133], and not on p. [405], as printed. The page reference was corrected. |
| [cxviii.23] | An out-of-order entry for ‘Marl’ is duplicated in the proper order. |
| [78.50] | The reference to ‘his’ father seems incorrect, since his wife would be grateful to Phillip II of Spain (husband of Queen Mary, and hence ‘King Consort’)for interceding in the life of her father. |
| [100.19] | The epsilon in Θεκλα (Thekla) on p. 100 was printed with an invalid circumflex (~). |
| [290.26] | The Anglo-Saxon O character in ‘Ocscetyl’ is printed, seemingly intentionally, with an interior triangular mark  . |
| [305.43] | The author gives a rune as ‘thorn’ resembling a capital Greek lambda (Λ). The thorn rune is actually  . |
Other errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and are noted here. The references are to the page and line, or indicates that the issue appears in a footnote in the original.
Corrections
| [vi.32] | far greater difficulties[.] for | Removed. |
| [xxi.1] | Teu[,/.] elf ruler, | Replaced. |
| [xxiii.4] | Sl[o/a]v. Gr. helper | Replaced. |
| [xxiii.52] | Fr. with w[h]iskers | Inserted. |
| [xxiv.5] | Ama[ oe/deo], | Corrupted. |
| [xxv.35] | Andreze[k/j] | Replaced (probable). |
| [xxxi.14] | Baldetrud, [m/f]. | Replaced. |
| [xxxiv.19] | Bérang[erè/ère] | Replaced. |
| [lx.32] | Fra[ncy/cyn]tje | Transposed. |
| [lx.44] | Fran[z/s]je | Replaced. |
| [lxxiii.2] | Netherland | Added. |
| [lxxiv.15] | H[e/é]lène | Replaced. |
| [lxxix.22] | I[ñ]igo | Restored. |
| [lxxxiii.9] | Jo[a]qui[n/m]a | From p. 37. |
| [xci.47] | Le[a/o]nhardine | Replaced. |
| [cxiii.12] | Radeg[u/o]nda | Replaced. |
| [cxxvi.18] | Swanh[wite/vit] | Replaced. |
| [cxxxii.7] | Tone[e]k | Removed. |
| [cxlii] | remembrance of the [Lord] | Restored. |
| [cxliii.8] | Zlati[d/b]or | Replaced. |
| [cxliii.11] | Zlatolju[d/b] | Replaced. |
| [13.12] | Atalik, [(]fatherlike or paternal,) | Removed. |
| [14.42] | Rebekah’s two daughters-in-law | Removed. |
| [27.23] | is used els[e]where | Inserted. |
| [29.34] | are men[it/ti]oned in the pedigree | Transposed. |
| [30.35] | N[eu/ue]stra Señora del Pilar | Transposed. |
| [30.41] | a vision of N[eu/ue]stra Señora | Transposed. |
| [36.note] | Deutsch[a/e] Mythologie | Replaced. |
| [43.9] | pa[rt/tr]iarch St. Joannes the Silent | Transposed. |
| [60.23] | a maiden[)] | Added. |
| [65.17] | still more magnificent | Removed. |
| [65.40] | the deacon[n]ess | Removed. |
| [67.46] | the hateful A[c]quitanian grandmother | Removed. |
| [72.19] | and ὄρνυμ[υ/ι] (to raise) | Replaced. |
| [86.14] | Andreje[e]k | Removed (probable). |
| [88.14] | [Feminine] | Presumed. |
| [88.44] | Ε[ὔ/ὐ]στᾶθηος (steadfast) | Diacritic removed. |
| [93.41] | Attalus Phila[l]dephus | Inserted. |
| [95.14] | feminine Λα[ό/ο]δ[α/ά]μεία | Misplaced diacritics. |
| [95.31] | Κλ[έ/ε]οπ[α/ά]τρα | Misplaced diacritics. |
| [138.36] | merged this unwield[l]y title | Removed. |
| [167.48] | that[.] after having served | Removed. |
| [187.note] | Michaelis[,/.] | Replaced. |
| [191.40] | and to France, a[t/s] St. Hilaire. | Replaced. |
| [222.note] | Deutsch[a/e] Mythologie | Replaced. |
| [227.12] | to interp[r]et his Keltic speech | Inserted. |
| [231.39] | Lear and [Mananàn/Mănănnán] | Replaced. |
| [256.35] | mild-tempered or peac[e]able man | Inserted. |
| [275.47] | one of the kings of Ireland[,/.] | Replaced. |
| [277.13] | who had quar[r]elled about | Added. |
| [285.30] | and thus passed away[.] | Added. |
| [295.26] | Freygerdur [ö/o]f the North | Replaced. |
| [314.45] | drawn from Wil[eh/he]lm | Transposed. |
| [328.12] | the Thuringian Irmanfrit, or Ir[u/n]vrit | Replaced. |
| [334.12] | rime or frost [name/mane] | Transposed. |
| [367.5] | by the Markgraf Rudiger[.] | Added. |
| [368.42] | the same whose de | Inserted. |
| [377.37] | ‘the Confessor[’] | Added. |
| [378.26] | Ric[k/h] kettle | Replaced. |
| [379.30] | in the Nieb[e]lungenlied | Added. |
| [405.28] | Eri[e/c] | Probable. |
| [407.note] | Récits des Temps Mérovingien | Added. |
| [408.18] | that which i[n]dentifies his appellation | Removed. |
| [413.note] | Turn[n]er | Removed. |
| [426.5] | a border wolf[.] | Added. |
| [444.23] | [B/D]ear peace | Replaced. |
| [446.24] | by the l[e]ast remarkable one | Inserted. |