[Heralds] German/Norse name for Destiny

[GeekGrrl]

On Thu, 3 May 2001, Richard Culver wrote:

>
> >What I meant is that 'luck' may be as close as you are going to find in a
> >human name. There is of course a cultural difference between luck and
> >destiny,
> >but I have no evidence Destiny was used in the naming of human beings,
> >while
> >there is evidence 'luck' and 'bad luck' were used.
>
>    Actually I am sure there is a least one really loong word for it
> somewhere. :)

Word, yes. Name, no, to the best of my knowledge. :)

> >My argument is that the meanings of the names did not matter in a literal
> >translative manner.
>
>   A good number probably were literally understood.  Cyneweard meaning
> "kin-ward" was probably an expressed hope.

This example is from another culture/language. As close as Old English and
Old Norse are, they are still far apart enough to differences to arise and
one shouldn't be used to justify the other. :)

>   I have never seen any.  However, the "-dis" does mean "goddess" to a
> degree, it becoming in the plural disir used to reference female ancestors
> and goddesses both.  Freyja is called Vanadis "goddess of the Vanir" in the
> Eddas.
>    Most of the women's name I have read are also high on metaphor
> "sword-dis" as an example (I cannot find that particular name right now.

'Asa' also means 'goddess' and is an actual woman's name, used in
period and documentable as being used to name a human woman. I highly
doubt it was considered that any woman bearing that name was thought to be
an actual goddess. Just as a man named Bjornr was not considered to be an
actual bear, and may in fact not have a single bear-like quality to
him. None of this is justification for using the name of a Norn for a
human woman in the SCA, unless a historical occurance of such can be
documented. There were many gods' names that did not find themselves used
as name-elements in human name construction to the best of our knowledge.

Sunnifa