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.
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 │ —————— │Fridko │ │ │Gödel │ Dutch. │ │ │ │ │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]
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Footnote 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 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 │Prydikis │Wettrikki │ │ ———————— │Wrizzis │Priczus │Wetu │ │ Hungarian. │Wridriks │ ———————— │Wetukka │ │Fridrik │Pridriks │ Greek. │ │ │ │ │Φρεσδερικος │ │ ├───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┤ │ FEMININE. │ ├───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┤ │ English. │ French. │ Portuguese │ Italian. │ │Frederica │Frédérigue │Frederica │Federica │ │Freddie │ │ │Feriga │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ German. │ Swiss. │ Polish. │ Bohemian. │ │Fridrike │Fredrika │Frydryka │Bedriska │ │Fritze │ ———————— │ │ │ │Fritzinn │ Greek. │ │ │ │Rike │Φρεδερική │ │ │ │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 │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘
Footnote 108:
‘We-we’ is the name now given by the South Sea Islanders to the French.
Footnote 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]
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Footnote 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 │ ————————— │Hedda │ │ │Havoisia │ Italian. │ │ │ │Avice │Edvige │ │ │ │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]
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Footnote 111:
Grimm; Luning; Munter; Munch; Blackwell, Mallet; Ellis, Domesday; Dugdale.
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 │ ———————— │ ———————— │Enzio │ │Halkin │ Breton. │ Portuguese. │Arriguccio │ │Hawkin │Hery │Enrique │Arrigozzo │ │ │ │ │Guccio │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ German. │ Dutch. │ Danish. │ Frisian. │ │Heimirich │Hendrik │Hendrik │Enrik │ │Heinrich │Hendricus │ ———————— │ ———————— │ │Hein │Heintje │ Swedish. │ Polish. │ │Heine │ │Henrik │Henryk │ │Heinz │ │ │ │ │Heinecke │ │ │ │ │Henke │ │ │ │ │Henning │ │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Bohemian. │ Lett. │ Lithuanian. │ │ │Jindrich │Indrikis │Endrikis │ │ │ │Indes │Endruttis │ │ │ │Induls │ │ │ ├───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┤ │ FEMININE. │ ├───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┤ │ English. │ French. │ Spanish. │ Swedish. │ │Henrietta │Henriette │Enriqueta │Henrika │ │Harriet │ ———————— │ ———————— │ ———————— │ │Harriot │ Italian. │ Portuguese. │ German. │ │Harty │Enrichetta │Henriqueta │Henriette │ │Hatty │ │ │Jette │ │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]
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Footnote 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 │ ————————— │ ————————— │ │Wilmot │Minette │ Portuguese. │ Swedish. │ │Mina │Mimi │Guilhermma │Vilhelmine │ │Minella │Guillette │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ German. │ Swiss. │ Lithuanian. │ Dutch. │ │Wilhelmine │Mimmoli │Myne │Willemyn │ │Helmine │Mimmeli │Mynette │Willempje │ │Mine │ ————————— │ │ │ │Minchen │ Polish. │ │ │ │Minna │Minka │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘
Old Camden’s account of it is too quaint not to be here inserted: “William, gerne. For sweeter sound drawn from 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 _sur_name 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]
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Footnote 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 │ │ └────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘
Footnote 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]
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Footnote 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]
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Footnote 116:
Luning; Munch; Grimm; Tooke; Liddell and Scott; Landnama-bok.
Footnote 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]
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Footnote 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, 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]
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Footnote 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]
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Footnote 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.
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.
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]
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Footnote 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]
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Footnote 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 │ │ —————— │ ————— │ —————— │Eppo │ │ French. │ Dutch. │ Lett. │Ebbo │ │Evraud │ │ │Ebo │ │Ebles │Everhard │Ewarts │Ebilo │ │ │Evert │Ebbo │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 │ │ ———————— │ ———————— │Berns │Perent │ │ Slovak. │ Hungarian. │ │ │ │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]
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Footnote 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]
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Footnote 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, } or Angrim, Arngrimur, } eagle mask; Arnkatla, } eagle cauldron; Arnkjell, } Arnlaug, eagle liquor; Arnleif, eagle relic; Arnliotr, eagle wanderer; Arnmodur } eagle wrath; or Armodr,}} 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]
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Footnote 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]
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Footnote 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
Stein, } Sten (Dan.), } stone. Steinarna, stone eagle. Steinbjorn, stone bear. Steinfinn, white stone. Steingrimm, stone helmet. Steinhar, } stone warrior. Steinar, } Steinthor, } stone of Thor. Steindor, }
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, }stone helmet. Hallgrima,} Hallkell, }stone kettle. Halkatla, } Hallmund, stone protection. Hallthor, } Haldor, }stone of Thor. Haldora, } Hallvard, }stone guard. Halvor, }
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]
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Footnote 127:
Grimm; Munch; Dasent; Int. to Nial Saga; Weber and Jamieson; Spanish Heraldry (Quarterly Review).
Footnote 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.