[Heralds] German/Norse name for Destiny
Jodi McMaster
jodimc at texas.net
Thu May 3 19:58:42 PDT 2001
Richard Culver wrote:
> Yes we are, but people in the SCA need to realize, and I mean more so the
> unstudied, the elder people were much more metaphorical. So the
> translations are literal to the extent they represent really solid cultural
> metaphors.
Excuse me? I hope you aren't trying to imply that Sunnifa and her
sources were representing "unstudied" opinions. It is the
well-researched, studied opinion of the majority of long-time
onomasticians that the view you're advocating is pretty much wrong as to
given names. Names used in the naming pool were just names--that's
pretty much the point. To quote the Academy of S. Gabriel:
Choosing a name by its meaning is a minefield. Most names derive from
very ancient roots which had no apparent meaning to anyone by the Middle
Ages. Consider the name <Thomas>, for example. It derives from an
Aramaic root that meant "twin", but one would hardly expect a man
named <Thomas> today to be a twin. That was equally true in the medieval
world. There are some exceptions, names that were created late enough
that their meanings would have been apparent to people in your
period; but even these names quickly lost their "meaning" and were just
used as names. It's obvious to us, for example, that the name <Heather>
is identical to the word <heather>, but we don't expect a woman named
<Heather> to be grey-green and bushy.
We can certainly tell you the etymological roots of most names, but it's
a mistake to think that they would have had any significance to the
people who used those names in the Middle Ages.
****
Bynames, on the other hand, may or may not have been used literally: the
tall, the blond, the fisherman...whatever. Some may have been used
satirically, like the nickname "Curly" often used for a bald man earlier
this century.
AElfwyn
--
AElfwyn aet Gyrwum
mka Jodi McMaster
AElfwyn's Attic
http://jodimc.home.texas.net
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