Cover not available
Part of
Sociocultural Dimensions of Lexis and Text in the History of English
Edited by Peter Petré, Hubert Cuyckens and Frauke D'hoedt
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 343] 2018
► pp. 15–40

Chapter 1
Old English ead in Anglo-Saxon given names

A comparative approach to Anglo-Saxon anthroponomy

The Anglo-Saxon name-element ead- was the one of the most common themes used to form dithematic personal names. The overall goal of this paper is to examine the reason for this abundance in anthroponyms such as Eadbald, Eadberht, Eadred. First, the paper addresses the questions of which meaning of Old English ead (wealth, prosperity, happiness, bliss) is present in personal names, and whether there is a hidden message in these names. I look for the ancestral meaning of ead by examining the Old English poetic corpus and then establish lexical and anthroponomical parallels within continental Germanic and other Indo-European traditions: namely Old Greek and Old Slavic. The paper suggests that names formed with Germanic *aud- (etymon of OE ead-), Greek plouto-, and Slavic žir- referred to riches and abundance and were originally used within the inferior stratum of society. Originally, they would have been monothematic and reflected the parents’ desire that their progeny would have a prosperous life. Dithematic anthroponyms, then, containing the ead- element (Eadric, Eadwald, Edmund) emerged during the Heroic Age; they were a later interpretation of ancient poetic epithets describing the lord as a guardian of his people and his land.

Keywords: personal names, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Old Russian, Old Slavic
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Old English ead- and wel- and their cognates in Germanic poetry and anthroponomy
    • 2.1 Ead- in Old English poetry
    • 2.2OE wela, Old Saxon welo, OHG uuóla “riches, prosperity” in poetry and anthroponomy
    • 2.3Weland
    • 2.4Plouton
    • 2.5Greek plouto- anthroponyms
    • 2.6Germanic anthroponyms containing the wel- element: The OE compound eadwela and its Germanic cognates
    • 2.7Anthroponomical implications of the poetic use of ead
  • 3.Slavic žir
    • 3.1The lexeme for “riches” in Slavic languages
    • 3.2Slavic anthroponyms containing the žir- element
    • 3.3The lexeme žir in the Slavic languages
    • 3.4Slavic anthroponyms
  • 4.Dithematic Germanic anthroponyms containing the ead- element
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Data sources
  • References
Published online: 4 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.343.01boi
References

Data sources

ASPR – Krapp, George & Elliott Dobbie 1931–1953 The Anglo-Saxon poetic records: A collective edition. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
BT – Bosworth, Joseph & T. Northcote Toller 1898 [Supplement 1921]. An Anglo-Saxon dictionary (revised by Alistair Campbell 1991, suppl. 1995). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
CASPR – Bessinger, Jess & Philip Smith (eds.) 1978 A concordance to the Anglo-Saxon poetic records. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
CDRCDS – Kostrenčić, Marko (ed.) 1967 Codex diplomaticus regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae, vol. 1. Zagreb: JAZU.Google Scholar
DLV – Rollason, David & Lynda Rollason (eds.) 2007 The Durham Liber Vitae, 3 vols. London: The British Library.Google Scholar
PASE – Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England 2010 [URL] (accessed April, 2014.)
S – Keynes, Simon, Susan Kelly, Sean Miller, Rebecca Rushforth, Emma Connolly, Rory Naismith, David Pelteret, Levi Roach, David Woodman (eds.) 1999– The Electronic Sawyer, a revised, updated, and expanded version of Peter Sawyer’s Anglo-Saxon charters: An annotated list and bibliography, published by the Royal Historical Society in 1968. [URL] (accessed April, 2014.)
Bechtel, Friedrich
1917 Die Historischen Personennamen des Griechischen bis zur Kaiserzeit. Halle: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Böhler, Maria
1931 Die altenglischen Frauennamen. Berlin: Dr. Emil Ebering.Google Scholar
Bradley, Sid A. J.
(ed. & trans.) 1982 Anglo-Saxon poetry. London/Dent: Everyman.Google Scholar
Chantraine, Pierre
1968–1977 Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: Histoire des mots, 4 vols. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar
Colman, Fran
1992 Money talks: Reconstructing Old English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
2014 The grammar of names in Anglo-Saxon England: The linguistics and culture of the Old English onomasticon. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Vries, Jan
1956 [1935–1937] Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, 2 vols. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ellis, Hilda
1943 The road to Hel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Filin, Fedot & Fedor P. Sorokoletov
(eds.) 1965–2008 Slovar’ russkix narodnyx govorov [Dictionary of Russian folk dialects]. Moscow: Nauka.Google Scholar
Förstemann, Ernst
1900 Altdeutsches Namenbuch, Personennamen. Bonn: P. Hanstein’s Verlag.Google Scholar
Fraser, Peter & Elaine Matthews
(eds.) 1987–2010 A lexicon of Greek personal names, 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Gering, Hugo
1903 Vollständiges Wörterbuch zu den Liedern der Edda. Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses.Google Scholar
Gneuss, Helmut
1991 The Old English language. In Malcolm Godden & Michael Lapidge (eds.), The Cambridge companion to Old English literature, 23–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Greule, Albrecht
1996 Morphologie und Wortbildung der Vornamen: Germanisch. In Ernst Eichler, Gerold Hilty, Heinrich Löffler, Hugo Steger & Ladislav Zgusta (eds.), Namenforschung/Name studies/Les noms propres: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Onomastik/An international handbook of onomastics/Manuel international d’onomastique, 1182–1187. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Grímnismál
. In Jónsson, Guðni (ed.) 1949 Eddukvæði Sæmundar-Edda [Poetic Edda]. Reykjavík: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan, HEIMSKRINGLA. [URL] (accessed January, 2017.)
Grimnismol
. In Henry, Adams Bellows 1936 The Poetic Edda (Old Norse–English transl.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. [URL] (accessed January 2017).
Insley, John
2007 The Old English and Scandinavian personal names of the Liber Vitae to 1200. In David Rollason & Lynda Rollason (eds.), The Durham Liber Vitae, vol. 2, 9–12. London: The British Library.Google Scholar
Insley, John & David Rollason
2007 English monothematic names. In David Rollason & Lynda Rollason (eds.), The Durham Liber Vitae, vol. 2, 165–187. London: The British Library.Google Scholar
Insley, John, David Rollason & McClure Peter
2007 English dithematic names. In David Rollason & Lynda Rollason (eds.), The Durham Liber Vitae, vol. 2, 81–162. London: The British LibraryGoogle Scholar
Jakobson, Roman
1950 Slavic mythology. In Maria Leach (ed.), Funk and Wagnalls Standard dicitonary of folklore, mythology and legend, vol. 2, 1025–1028. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.Google Scholar
Kelle, Johann
1889 Untersuchungen zur Überlieferung, Übersetzung, Grammatik der Psalmen Notkers. Berlin: Weidmann.Google Scholar
Khallieva Boiché, Olga
2015 Imja et name: Aux sources de l’anthroponymie germanique, anglo-saxonne et slave. Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne.Google Scholar
Kroonen, Guus
2013 Etymological dictionary of Proto-Germanic. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Lecouteux, Claude
1997 Les nains et les elfes. Paris: Imago.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Winnfried
1986 A Gothic etymological dictionary. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Lühr, Rosemarie
(ed.) 2017 Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, 6 vols. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Mallory, James & Douglas Q. Adams
(eds.) 1997 Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers.Google Scholar
Masson, Olivier, Catherine Dobias & Laurent Dubois
(eds.) 1990 Onomastica graeca selecta, vol. I. Nanterre: Université de Paris X.Google Scholar
Meščerskij, Nikita
(ed. & trans.) 1985 Slovo o polku Igoreve [The tale of Igor]. Leningrad: Sovetskij pisatel’.Google Scholar
Miklosich, Franz
1886 Etymologisches Wörterbuch der slawischen Sprachen. Wien: W. Braumüller.Google Scholar
1927 Die Bildung der slawischen Personen- und Ortsnamen. Heidelberg: C. Winter.Google Scholar
Motz, Lotte
1986 New thoughts on Völundarkviða. Saga-Book of the Viking Society 22. 50–67. London: University College London.Google Scholar
Nedoma, Robert
1988 Die bildlichen und schriftlichen Denkmäler der Wielandsage. Göppingen: Kümmerle.Google Scholar
Nilsson, Martin
1941 Geschichte der griechischen Religion. München: Beck.Google Scholar
Ochs, Ernst
1921 Die Heiligen und die Seligen. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 45. 102–112.Google Scholar
Okasha, Elisabeth
2011 Women’s names in Old English. Surrey: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Piper, Paul
(ed.) 1883 Die Schriften Notkers und seiner Schule, Psalmen und katechetische Denkmäler nach der St. Galler Handschriftengruppe. Freiburg: Mohr.Google Scholar
Pokorny, Julius
1959–1969 Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörtbuch, 2 vols. Bern/München: Francke Verlag.Google Scholar
Redin, Mats
1919 Studies on uncompounded personal names in Old English. Uppsala.Google Scholar
Reichert, Hermann
1987 Lexikon der altgermanischen Namen, 2 vols. Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar
Rosenfeld, Hellmut
1969 Der Name Wieland. Beiträge zur Namenforschung 4. 53–62.Google Scholar
Šanskij, Nikolaj
(ed.) 1962– Etimologičeskij slovar’ russkogo jazyka [Etymological dictionary of Russian language], 10 vols. Moscow: Moscow State University.Google Scholar
Schlimpert, Gerhard
1978 Slawische Personennamen in Mittelalterlichen Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.Google Scholar
Schmid, Hans-Jörg
2016 English morphology and word-formation. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Rüdiger
1973 Indogermanische Dichtersprache und Namengebung. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaf der Universität Innsbruck.Google Scholar
Schramm, Gottfried
1957 Namenschatz und Dichtersprache, Studien zu den Zweigliedrigen personennamen der Germanen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Sehrt, Edward
1962 Notker-Glossar: Ein Althochdeutsch-Lateinisch-Neuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch zu Notkers des Deutschen Schriften. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar
1966 Vollständiges Wörterbuch zum Heliand und zur altsächsischen Genesis. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Sehrt, Edward & Wolfram Legner
1955 Notker-Wortschatz. Halle: VEB Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Sievers, Edward
(ed.) 1872 Tatian, Lateinisch und altdeutsch. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh.Google Scholar
Sreznevskij, Izmail
1893 [1989] Slovar’ drevnerusskogo jazyka [Dictionary of Old Russian]. Moskva: Kniga.Google Scholar
Svoboda, Jan
1964 Staročeská osobní jména a naše příjmení [Old Czech personal names and our surnames]. Prague: Nakladatelství Československé akademie věd.Google Scholar
Taylor, Paul
1963 The structure of Völundarkviða. Neophilologus 47. 228–236. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tvorogov, Oleg
(ed. & trans.) 1997 Slovo o polku Igoreve [The tale of Igor]. St-Peterburg: Nauka.Google Scholar
Vajda, Edward
2001 Semantics. In Edward Vajda, Introduction to linguistics, fall quarter 2001 course materials. Bellingham: Western Washington University. [URL] (13 November, 2015.)
Also in Henry Adams Bellows (Old Norse–English trans 1936 The Poetic Edda. Princeton: Princeton University Press. [URL] (accessed January 2017).
Weisweiler, Josef
1923 Beiträge zur Bedeutungsentwicklung germanischer Wörter für sittliche Begriffe. Indogermanische Forschungen 41. 304–368.Google Scholar
Woolf, Henry Bosley
1939 The Old Germanic principles of name-giving. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.Google Scholar
Zaliznjak, Andrej
2007 Slovo o polku Igoreve. Vzgljad linguista. The tale of Igor: A linguist’s point of view. Moscow: Rukopisnye pamjatniki Drevnej Rusi.Google Scholar