[Namron] What's in a name

[Ulf Gunnarsson]

Guðmundr wrote:
> and she has a great list of male vikings names. One that I am
> considering is Guðmundr Grímr.  But I am not completely sure if I am
> using the r's at the end of it.  I am also not exactly sure how to
> pronounce it.  It looking at a pronunciation key it sounds like GWod-
> mund Grrim to me.

That 'ð' is an 'eth'.  It has the voiced 'th' sound like in the English
words 'with' and 'the'.  There is another letter, 'thorn' ('þ'), that
has the unvoiced 'th' sound like in the words 'kith' and 'thin'.  The
'r's are there because the names are in the... let's see... oh, it's
something like nominative singular masculine.  Old Norse is one of those
languages with case and gender and such.  The 'r's at the end are
practically silent, I am told, and the 'u' is probably like the 'oo' in
'loom'.  So it would probably be 'Gooth-moond', and 'Greem'.  (See
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/eieol/norol-1-X.html for an intro
to the language.)

> that they didnt use surnames but instead had a given first name and
> then used their fathers, or mothers sometimes, name as a last.  
Yup.  First names are all you need until you have two Toms.  Then you
add something to tell them apart, like Tom Jimmy's son and Tom the
Short.  Old Norse worked the same way.  You would see Lucky Leif, Ketil
Flatnose, and Ulf Gunnarsson.  The patronymics were more common than the
descriptives because these people were _very_ into their geneologies.
Once in a while you would even see a matronymic if the mother was famous
enough.

Gooood luck, Goooothmoond.

Ulf