Robert Ferguson

“ All the names of Germany would tend to come to England, but if Anglo-Saxon England made any names on her own account, they would not go back to Germany. For the tide of men flows ever west-ward, and there was no return current in those days. ”

“ Corruptions may be divided broadly into two kinds, those which proceed from a desire to improve the sound of a name, and those which proceed from a desire to make some kind of sense out of it. The former, which we may call phonetic, generally consists in the introduction of a letter, either to give more of what we may call "backbone" to a word, or else to make it run more smoothly. For the former purpose b or p is often used—thus we have, even in Anglo-Saxon times, trum made into trump, sem into semp, and emas into embas. ”

“ Even Bugg, if he had seen his name under this metaphorical microscope, might have felt himself absolved from changing it into Howard, for Bugg is at least as ancient, and etymologically quite as respectable. It is a name of which great and honourable men of old were not ashamed; there was, for instance, a Buga, minister to Edward of Wessex, who signs his name to many a charter. And there was also an Anglo-Saxon queen, Hrothwaru, who was also called Bucge, which I have elsewhere given reasons for supposing to have been her original name. ”

“ Hence the Americans have Milldolar, Barndollar, and Cashdollar, corruptions of some such German names as Mühlthaler, Bernthaler, and Käsenthaler, signifying an inhabitant respectively of Mühlthal, of Bernthal, and of Käsenthal. It would seem as if a man coming to this new world, where everything around him is changed—presumably for the better—accepts it as, among other things, a part of the new dispensation, that whereas his name has hitherto been, say Käsenthaler, he shall henceforth answer to the name—perhaps not an inauspicious one—of Cashdollar. ”

“ We have seen in a preceding chapter that the earliest Saxon place-names in England are derived from a personal name, and that the idea contained is that of a modified form of common right. We shall find that a very large proportion of the later Anglo-Saxon place-names are also derived from the name of a man, but that the idea contained is now that of individual ownership or occupation. The extent to which English place-names are derived from ancient names of men is, in my judgment, very much greater than is generally supposed. ”

“ There are a few Old German names, mostly of women, in Mam and Mum. And there are also two [Pg 156] Old Frankish women's names, Mamma and Momma (apparently overlooked by Foerstemann) , in the Pol. Irm. It seems difficult to take these names as from anything else than the widely-spread word signifying mother. In an age when names sat much more lightly than they do now, one might fancy such a word superseding a woman's original name. I can even conceive the possibility of such a name, its origin having somewhat passed out of sight, being given in a masculine form to a son. ”

“ Nevertheless, I must say that it seems to me that to assume the compound to be older than the simple looks very much like something that is contrary to first principles, and indeed the very fact that simple names are so often used in place of compounds appears to me to show that they are more natural to men, and that men would generally adopt them if they could. ”

“ The old idea, let me observe, that Armin is properly herman, leader or warrior, has long been given up by the Germans. The name, of which the most correct form is considered to be Irmin, is formed from one single word of which the root is irm, and the meaning of which is, as Grimm observes, entirely obscure. We have then as English surnames Armine, Ermine, and Harmony, the last, [Pg 19] no doubt, a slight corruption, though, as far as the prefix of h is concerned, it is as old as Anglo-Saxon times, for we find "Harmines den," Harmine's valley, in a charter quoted by Kemble. ”

“ But Scott, as a man's name, is, not to say older than the introduction of surnames, but as old probably as the name of the nation itself. To begin with England, it occurs in the thirteenth century, in the Liber Vitæ, where it is the reverse of a surname, Scott Agumdessune (no doubt for Agemundessune) . ”

“ But among the Danes and the Saxon sea-rovers Swan seems to have been common as a man's name, and in this case the idea was more probably that of the way in which the swan rides the waters as the ideal of a rover's life. The eagle, the raven, the swan, the hawk, and the finch seem to be found in the Earningas, the Ræfningas, the Suaningas, the Haucingas, and the Fincingas, among our early settlers, though the two last do not seem to occur in the Teutonic system generally. ”

“ And the animal which it represents is not the insect of insidious repute, but the sturdy boar so much honoured by our Teuton forefathers, ear being, as elsewhere noted, a contraction of evor, boar, so that Earwig is the "boar of battle." Of more humiliating seeming than even Earwig is Flea (vouched for by Lower as an English surname) . And yet it is at all events a name of old descent, for Flea—I do not intend it in any equivocal sense, for the stem is found in Kemble's list of early settlers—came in with the Saxons. ”

“ Now there do seem to be certain name-stems peculiar to Anglo-Saxon England, and one of these is peht or pect, which may be taken to represent Pict. The Teutonic peoples were in the habit of introducing into their nomenclature the names of neighbouring nations even when aliens or enemies. Thus the Hun and the Fin were so introduced, the latter more particularly by the Scandinavians who were their nearest neighbours. There is a tendency among men to invest an enemy upon their borders, of whom they may be in constant dread, with unusual personal characteristics of ferocity or of giant stature. ”

“ There has evidently been some ancient mistake or misappropriation, the origin of which I hope to be able to account for. The names Mald, Maald, Mauld (all names of women) , found in the Liber Vitæ before the introduction of surnames, and the Christian name Maulde, found in the fifteenth century, show the form from which our Maud is immediately derived. Then we have the older forms, Mahald, Mahalt, and Maholt, all also apparently names of women. And in one case, about the twelfth or thirteenth century, the name stands as "Mahald vel Matilda." ”

“ The painters are not quite so strongly represented as the men of letters and science, the two principal names being those of Lionardo (O.G. Leonhard) and of Guido. Guido is one of the Frankish forms to which I have before alluded, and is formed by the prefix of g to the name Wido or Wito,—it was not an uncommon name among the Old Franks, and is found at present among the French as Videau, Viteau, and Guidé. ”

“ Aske or Ashe represents an ancient stem in Teutonic names, perhaps derived from a mythological origin, man being feigned to have been created out of an ash-tree, perhaps from being the wood out of which spears were made (Cf. Asquith, p. 148) . The Ascingas were among the early settlers, and Æsc was the name of the son of Hengest. Hence I take our names, Ash, Aske, and Askey, with several compounds. The Bircingas were also among the early settlers; the stem seems to be birg, supposed to mean protection, and entering into a number of names throughout the Teutonic system. ”

“ Now no one who has given attention to the subject can doubt that Mahald, Mahalt, and [Pg 204] the French form, Mahault, are the same as an Old Frankish Magoald, eighth century, from Gothic magan, posse, valere, and wald power. This is distinctly a man's name; indeed, wald, as an ending, is almost exclusively confined to men's names, as the ending hild, as in Matilda, is to those of women. ”

“ Now the key to the puzzle is this: that the early Frankish converts in the [Pg 199] time of Charlemagne, introduced the name, not only in its Latin form of Elizabeth, but also, and indeed more frequently, in its Hebrew form of Elischeba—it was Elischeba that was made into Isabel and not Elizabeth. Protected by its strong ending, Elizabeth has retained its form unchanged. Elischeba has been entirely lost to sight under a cloud of transformations. ”

“ But to return to Bass, let us see what can be done to bridge the gulf between the princely brewers of to-day and the old potter on the banks of the Rhine. And first, as to Anglo-Saxon England, we find Bass as a mass-priest, and Bassus as a valiant soldier of King Edwin in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as also a Bassa in the genealogy of the Mercian kings. ”

“ For it seems to me that a kind of fashion prevailed, and that while a set of names of a longer and more dignified character were in favour among the great, the mass of the people still, to a great extent, adhered to the shorter and more simple names which their fathers had borne before them. ”

“ Names of a most disreputable appearance are Swearing and Gambling, yet both, when properly inquired into, turn out to be the very synonyms of respectability. Winfarthing again would seem to be derived from the most petty gambling, unless he can be rehabilitated as an Anglo-Saxon Winfrithing (patronymic of Winfrith.) A more unpleasant name than Gumboil (Lower) it would not be easy to find, and yet it represents, debased though be its form, a name borne by many a Frankish warrior, and by a Burgundian king fourteen centuries ago. ”

“ Wake, for instance, may represent an ancient name, either German or Celtic; for the German a sufficient etymon may be found in wak, watchful, while for the Celtic there is nothing, observes Gluck, in the range of extant dialects to which we can reasonably refer it. So Moore represents an ancient stem for names common to the Celts, the Germans, and the Romans, though at least as regards the Germans, the origin seems obscure. ”

“ I venture to suggest that our Eliza, generally and very naturally assumed to be an abbreviation of Elizabeth, is in fact this missing name. Now, for the proofs of Aliza as the representative of Adelgisa, we must refer to the Liber Vitæ of Durham, in which we can trace the changes that have taken place in Adelgisa since the first noble lady of that name laid her gift upon the altar. First we find it contracted into Adeliza, and then, from about the twelfth century into Aaliza and Aliza, the latter name being henceforward rather a common one. ”

“ But a few centuries later, when the simple old Saxon names in a had very much died out, Emma coming in as something quite new, and with the stamp of Norman prestige, became at once, as appears from the Liber Vitæ, a name in favour. As to the etymology, which is considered by the Germans to be obscure, I have elsewhere ventured to suggest Old Northern ymia, stridere; whence the name of the giant Ymir, in Northern mythology. The sense is that of a harsh and loud voice, which suggests huge stature. ”

“ But in regard to the second part of the compound, which is that which governs the name, there are certain words which are only used for women. Some of these are such as from their meaning would not be suitable for anything else, such as trud, from which we have Gertrude and Ermentrude, both of which seem to be of Frankish origin, and to have come to us through the Normans. The Anglo-Saxon form appears to be dryth or thryth, as in Mildthryth, from which comes our Mildred, the only name, as far as I know, in that form. ”

“ But while Adela is a correctly formed feminine, Ethel can hardly be said to be so. Both as a man's name and as a woman's it had usually a vowel-ending, and though this was not invariably the case, yet a name appearing without it would be rather assumed to be a man's name. Adeline is a diminutive like Eveline and [Pg 210] Caroline; it represents the old name Adalina, eighth century, and Adalina, about the twelfth century, in the Liber Vitæ, and comes probably through the French, the ending in e preserving the feminine by lengthening the syllable. ”

“ Dante himself bears a name which, though not in itself German, may yet have been given to Italy by the Germans, while as to his second title, Alighieri, there seems hardly any doubt of its German origin. [52] Dante is a contraction of Durante, which [Pg 150] seems to be derived most naturally from Latin durans, and it might seem something of a paradox to suppose a Latin race to be indebted to the Germans for a Latin name. And yet I think that there are some grounds for supposing it to be a name adopted by the early Frankish converts to Christianity, and by them transmitted to the Italians. ”

“ It would seem, then, that some mistake or confusion has in old times arisen between these two names, and that Mahild, which really represents Matilda, has been set aside in favour of Mahald, an entirely different name. The fact, however, of our having Maude as a surname would rather seem to show that this misappropriation was not universal, for surnames are not—unless it be in some very exceptional cases—taken from the names of women. ”

“ I desire, however, to put forward the above theory as to the origin of compound names rather with a view of raising the question than of expressing a definite conclusion.
The vowel ending in a, i, or o, to which I have referred as in general use in the case of simple names was not used in the case of compounds, unless indeed it happened to be an original part of the second word [Pg 40] as in Frithubodo, from bodo, messenger. Only in the case of women, to mark the sex, the ending in a was given. ”

“ From this point of view Teutonic names would not be translatable, or formed with any view to a meaning, and this is, as it seems to me, what was in fact the case, as a general rule, though I should be very far from laying it down as a universal principle. If names were formed with a view to a meaning, it does not seem very probable that we should have a name compounded with two words, both of which signify war ”