Laurel Letter of Pends and Discussion: July 20, 2002

Society for Creative Anachronism
College of Arms

15910 Val Verde Drive
Houston TX, 77083-4921
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herald@sca.org

For the April 2002 meetings, printed July 20, 2002

To all the College of Arms and all others who may read this missive, from François Laurel, Zenobia Wreath, and Mari Pelican, health and good friendship.

NOTE: the LoAR and the Cover Letter are the official documents. That's fortunate in one sense, because last month Laurel Clerk neglected to put one Cover Letter item in the LoPaD. Therefore, this letter contains an issue raised in the April 2002 LoAR for CoA discussion. Daniel apologizes for the oversight. The text in this letter is copied verbatim from that LoAR; it is provided here for convenience.

As with a June LoI (the original Cover Letter was published in June), this issue is currently scheduled for the Laurel meetings in October 2002. Original commentary must be in the College's hands no later than August 31, 2002. Responses and rebuttals to commentary must be in the College's hands no later than September 25, 2002.

The item here is numbered 2 to avoid potential confusion with the Laurel Letter of Intent to Protect item.

  1. Capitalization of Norse Bynames. Issue.

    In Sommelier's Letter of Comment dated December 25, 2001, Gold Phoenix raised the issue of whether descriptive bynames in Old Norse must be in lowercase or whether they may have the first letter capitalized. The current policy requiring the byname to be in lowercase follows the precedent

    Submitted as Emma inn Draumspaki, we have changed the gender of the byname to match the given and changed it to lowercase to match conventional Old Norse spelling. [Emma in draumspaka, 04/00, A-An Tir]

    Gold Phoenix gave examples of descriptive bynames that were capitalized:

    E.V. Gordon's An Introduction to Old Norse is an outstanding scholarly work on the language. It does not (as far as I can see) address the grammar of the byname directly. However, one of the book's strengths is that it provides a number of examples of ON [Old Norse] literature taken from historical sources. The book is not indexed to help find examples of bynames (although it does provide a list of names in general). A partial search through the literature examples shows that in addition to examples where a following descriptive byname is rendered in lower case, there are at least some cases where it is capitalized. These include

    Ragnarr Lo{dh}br{o'}k from Libellus Islandorum; the specific form shown is {I'}varr, Ragnarsson Lo{dh}br{o'}kar (capitalized in the quoted text) (Ivarr, son of Ragnar Shaggybreeches) [IV/13]. Geirr Bassi lists this byname as lo{dh}br{o'}k. (i.e. not capitalized).

    Haraldr inn H{a'}rfagri, capitalized in the same source [IV/18]. Note that another saga, Hrafnkels Saga Freysgo{dh}a, shows his name as Haralds konungs ins h{a'}rfagra (note the case) [VI/1]. Geirr Bassi shows this as inn h{a'}rfagri, again without capitalization.

    Eir{i'}hr Rau{dh}i, with the byname capitalized (in "The Discovery of America by Bjarni Herj{o'}lfsson" (Gr{oe}lendinga {Th}{a'}ttr) [V/17] Geirr Bassi shows it as inn rau{dh}i, or rau{dh}r (most commonly the former, as far as I can see). It is also of some note that the name is in the adjectival form, but without the definite article.

    Gizurr Hv{i'}ti and Geirr Go{dh}i, in Brennu-Nj{a'}ls saga [VII/3]. Both bynames are found in Gordon with the byname capitalized and in Geirr Bassi without capitalization (the former as inn hv{i'}ti).

    While I think I could find other examples, I'll just include {Th}engill Mj{o,}ksiglandi (as indexed) or Mj{o,}k-siglandi (as in the text) for personal interest.

    I note, of course, that both Gordon and Geirr Bassi are working with normalized texts, and thus we are dealing not just with the capitalization practices of the period, but also with how those practices are interpreted by the original transcriptions of the manuscripts (since almost all texts now available are transcriptions made significantly after the original documents), and how they are normalized in their modern texts.

    Very little commentary on this issue has circulated within the College. In looking into this issue, I asked opinions of some heralds who have particular knowledge in the area of Scandinavian languages and/or names. What has become obvious is that the issue is not as simple as it would initially appear.

    As we do not register runic forms of names, an Old Norse name that would have appeared in runes must be registered using the Latin alphabet. Notes about the Codex runicus (http://www.hum.ku.dk/ami/am28.html) at the Arnamagnæn Digitization Project (http://www.hum.ku.dk/ami/amproject.html) discussing this document (which dates to c. 1300) say that this "manuscript is perhaps most notable for its being written entirely in runes. The Latin alphabet, which came to Scandinavia in the wake of Christianity, had completely replaced the older runic system of writing some two centuries before, and this late use of runes can only have been prompted by antiquarian interest." This statement dates the complete replacement of runes by the Latin alphabet to c. 1100, which coincides with the point at which Old Norse was giving way to the regional languages that became Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, et cetera

    Much of our information about Old Norse names comes to us through the various sagas. In examining these sources, we must take into consideration the date of the manuscripts that are the sources for these sagas. A roughly parallel to this situation would be a hypothetical manuscript of Beowulf copied in the 16th C. When examining this document, an important question would be how much normalization and updating occurred when the copy was made. Did the copyist apply 16th C conventions regarding which name elements were capitalized and which were not?

    In response to this topic, Gunnvör silfrahárr (formerly Gunnora Hallakarva) explained that "[w]hen we're discussing the Viking Age itself, all the bynames come from runes, which don't distinguish between upper and lower case. In general, when we transliterate runes into phonetical Roman character equivalents, these are written as all lower case (see for instance, the runic conventions in Nordiskt runnamnslexikon)." Gunnora extracted a sample of names from the Arnamagnæn Digitization Project. In including her list of names below, I have sorted the documents in manuscript date order, but have otherwise left the list unchanged:

    Elucidarius
    AM 674 a 4to
    late 12th C, one of the earliest extant Icelandic vernacular manuscripts.
    http://www.hum.ku.dk/ami/am674a.html
    helgo Aaþþho (holy Aaþi)
    helga Aaþe (holy Aaþi)
    helgö Aoþo (holy Aaþi)

    Ágrip af Noregs konunga sögum
    325 II 4to
    Icelandic mss., 1st to middle of 13th C
    http://www.hum.ku.dk/ami/am325ii.html
    ?somebody? halfdanar (? half-Danish)

    A miscellany produced in a scriptorium
    AM 764 4to
    Icelandic vellum mss. 14th C
    http://www.hum.ku.dk/ami/am764.html
    assur sonr sems noa sonar (Assur, son of Shem, son of Noah)
    philippus postuli (Philip the Apostle)
    tiras son iaphets noa sonar (Tiras, the son of Japhet, the son of Noah)

    A deed, dated September 7, 1371, detailing the sale of the farm Hnútsstaðir í Aðaldal (Þingeyjarsýsla) by the priest Kári Bergþórsson to Bjarni Þórsteinsson.
    AM Dipl. Isl. Fasc. II, 20
    http://www.hum.ku.dk/ami/diploma.html
    biarna þosteins son (Bjarni Þórsteinsson)
    kara ?pft? berþoris (Kári Bergþórsson - the midlle[sic] word is probably a scribal thing that really reads "sonr")

    Marine Jespersdatters Bønnebog (Marine Jespersdatter's Prayer-book)
    AM 421 12mo
    Danish prayer-book, early 16th C
    http://www.hum.ku.dk/ami/am421.html
    marine iespers dotther (Marine, daughter of Jesper)

    Knytlingasaga
    AM 18 fol.
    vellum mss. 1690
    http://www.hum.ku.dk/ami/am18-bg.jpg
    Haraldr kongr (Haraldr the king)
    Otto enn Rauði (Otto the Red)

    The only example of a capitalized descriptive byname in this list is in a manuscript dated to 1690. This is about 600 years after the shift from Old Norse to regional Scandinavian languages occurred.

    Master Pietari forwarded my inquiry on to Lady Johanna af Hucka, Susi Herald, with the comment that she "has been my local source for Scandinavian languages (as she is finishing her M.A. thesis in Scandinavian languages, specialising in onomastics)." Lady Johanna provided the following additional information:

    [I]n the Sagas and similar material we have it is by far more common to write the bynames with the first letter as lowercase. Even Icelandic today still follows this practice. For example my Icelandic history of the Sagas mentions people like "Odd munk Snorrason" (Odd monk Snorri's son) and Áskell godi (Askell Good). Also checking names like Ari and Ólafur provides us with forms like "Ari fródi Thorgilsson" (Ari Wise Thorgil's son) and Ólafur helgi (Saint Olaf, king of Norway, died in battle in 1030).

    [Note: I've replaced some "ed"s with plain d:s and "thorn"s with th; if you need these as examples, I can give you more exact transliterations and bibliographical information, too.]

    So, the earliest dated manuscripts listed above don't capitalize descriptive bynames, and a significant portion do not capitalize given names. Lacking dates for the manuscript sources for the examples cited by Gold Phoenix, we do not know where they fall in comparison to the dates for the manuscripts listed above. The ones showing capitalized descriptive bynames may be of a date consistant with the manuscript shown above, dated to 1690, that includes a capitalized descriptive byname, or they may be of an earlier or later date. Additionally, all examples of capitalized descriptive bynames provided by Gold Phoenix and the one found by Gunnora are the only byname given for that person. In cases where both a descriptive byname and a patronymic are listed, do we know of any examples that have the descriptive byname capitalized?

    This topic will be ruled on at the October Pelican meeting. Original commentary on this issue must be in the College's hands no later than August 31, 2002. Responses and rebuttals to commentary must be in the College's hands no later than September 30, 2002.

Pray know that I remain

In service

François la Flamme
Laurel Principal King of Arms


Created at 2002-07-25T23:48:57