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