History of Christian names

by Charlotte M. Yonge

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.