CHAPTER III

.

NAMES FROM OBJECTS CONNECTED WITH MYTHOLOGY.

SECTION I.—_Day._

The rich imagination of the North could not fail to preserve the Eastern myths of natural appearances and animals with their myths, and these ideas are as usual reflected in the names of the race.

In the _Edda_, Nôtt, or night, the dark, one of the Jotun, is the wife of Dellingr, the brilliant and beautiful, one of the Æsir, and their son is Dag or Day. Mother and son each have a chariot in which they career round the sky, in pursuit of one another. The horse of Day is Shinfaxi, of shining mane; the horse of Night is Hrimfaxi, rime or frost mane.

Day had many namesakes, though more often at the end than the beginning of a word.

Dago, Tago, or Tajo, was a Gothic bishop of Zaragoza, whom King Chindaswintha sent to Rome about 640, to bring home a copy of St. Gregory’s _Comment on the Book of Job_, which had been dedicated to a King of Spain, one of the Suevi, but had been lost in the irruption of the Arian Goths. The Roman clergy had been equally careless. Pope Theodorus could not lay his hands upon the manuscript; and the search became so tedious, that finally Bishop Tajo betook himself to prayer, and obtained a special vision of the holy Pope Gregory himself, who directed him to the depository of the manuscript.

This same Dagr figures in the _Landnama-bok_; and the North has Dagfinn, perhaps once an allusion to the resplendent glory of Odin, but usually translated white as day. Dagulf, or Daulf, day-wolf, was no doubt in allusion to the wolf Sköll, who hunts the sun daily round the sky, and will eat her up at last; whence to this day a parhelion is called in Sweden a sun-wolf, Sololf. Eclipses are caused when the wolf gains on the sun, who has no namesakes in Teuton nomenclature, the few that sound like it being from another source, namely, _Salv_ or _sölv_, anointing or healing. The feminine _ny_, though meaning the new moon when standing alone, is only the adjective new, and means fresh and fair, so that the northern Dagny is, fair as day. The Norse ladies also have Dagheid or Dageid, cheerful as day.

Dagobert, or bright as day, was that long-haired king who, next to Clovis, impressed the French imagination. He was the employer of the great goldsmith St. Eloi, and the throne or chair of King Dagobert, ascribed to that great artificer, is still in existence. A successor in the _fainéant_ times was canonized, and together the two Dagoberts, making one, have become the theme first of heroic and then of burlesque in France. It was Takaperaht in Old German; and there, too, Tagarat, or Dagrad, is to be found; but in general, _dag_ or _tac_ comes at the end of words.

Dagmar—the favourite queen of the Danes, whose only fault was lacing her sleeves on a Sunday—is called only by her epithet, Danes' joy. Her true name was Margaret of Bohemia, and the Danish princess Dagmar, who was christened after her, was on her Russian marriage called Marie.[121]

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Footnote 121:

Blackwell, Mallet; Munch; Butler; Grimm; Thierry; Michaelis.

SECTION II.—_The Wolf._

It is for the place that he occupies in the Teutonic imagination, rather than for his own merits, that the wolf stands foremost among the creatures that have supplied Teutonic names.

He is also the most universal. Zeeb, Lycos, and Lupus, have been already mentioned; and the midnight prowler, as the most terrible animal of Europe, held his place in imaginations, whence the lion and tiger faded for want of personal acquaintance. The French have no less than forty-nine proverbs about wolves, many no doubt remains of the beast epic.

Wolves called Geri and Freki sat on either side of Odin’s throne, and devoured his share of the bears' flesh of Valhalla, a banquet he was too ethereal to require. Wolves chase the sun and moon round their daily courses; and a terrible wolf called Mangarmr, or moon-gorger, is to devour the moon at the coming of the wolf-age, which, in the _Voluspa_, shadows the last days of the world. Fenris, the wolf of the abyss, is the son of Loki; and though bound by the Æsir at the cost of Tyr’s right hand, will finally break loose, destroy Odin himself, and only be rent asunder by Vidur in his resistless shoes.

Nevertheless, _ulf_, _vulf_, _wolf_ was highly popular as a name-root; perhaps more common at the end than the beginning of a word, but often standing alone. It was the diminutive Vulfila that was the right name of that good bishop whose Mæso-Gothic version of the Gospels goes by his Latinism of Ulphilas.

Ulf was twenty-three times in the _Landnama-bok_; and _ulf_ in every possible form ravaged the coasts of Europe. _Wolf_ was again the hereditary prefix in the House of Bavaria, where the dukes varied between Wolf and Wolfart, till Wolfen became the designation of the family, and a legend was invented to account for it. An ancestress had, it was said, given birth to twelve infants all at once, and in the spirit of the child who, being shown his twin brothers, asked “Which shall we keep,” sent her maid to dispose of the eleven unnecessary ones in the river. The father met her, and asked what she had in her apron. “Only whelps,” she answered; but he was not to be thus put off, made an inspection, saved the children’s lives, and called them the Wolfen, or wolf-whelps! The _Book of Heroes_, however, makes the Wolfings descend from the brave Sir Hildebrand, and be so called from a wolf on their shield granted them by the Emperor Wolfdietrich, in remembrance of an adventure of his own infancy, when he had been carried off by a she-wolf to her den, and remained there unhurt—whence his name of Wolfdietrich. The male line of the Wolfen, however, in time became extinct, and the heiress married one of the Italian House of Este, which adopted the German Wolf in the Italianized form of Guelfo, and constantly used it as a name. Thence when the popes set up Otto d'Este, one of the Wolfen of Bavaria, as anti-emperor in opposition to the House of Hohenstaufen, his

## partisans were called Welfen; those of the Fredericks, Waiblingen, from

the Swabian castle of Waibling. The Italian cities rang with the fierce cries of Guelfo and Zibelino, for the pope or the emperor, and Europe learnt to identify the Guelph with the cause of the Church; the Ghibelline with that of the State, when the origin of the words had long been forgotten.

One of the Bavarian Wolfen d'Este became Duke of Brunswick Luneburg, and from him descended the Hanoverian line of English sovereigns, who in the time of Revolution thence were said to be properly sumamed Guelf, or even Whelps, with about as much correctness as when Louis XVI. was styled Louis Capet.

We had a wolf among our sovereigns in the days of the Heptarchy, in Vulfhere, king of Mercia, the same as the northern Ulfar, and German Wolfer, meaning wolf-warrior. Also Vulfhilda was a sainted abbess in England, while Ulvhildur colonized Iceland. We had also Vulfred, Vulfnoth, Vulfstein, better known as St. Wulstan, the admirable bishop of Worcester. These English wolves of ours have a great inclination to lapse into sheep’s clothing and become wool, in which form we use them in the harmless surnames of Woolgar, Woolstone, Woolmer, Wolsey.

Ulfketill, or Ulfkjell, as odd a compound as can well be found, was one of the pirates who invested England, but is a peaceable inhabitant in Domesday, where Ulf swarms, as Ulfac, Ulfeg, Ulfert, Ulfener, Ulfric; just as he does in the Iceland Domesday, as Ulfhedinn, Ulfherdur, Ufliotr.

In Germany, Wolfgang, perhaps best rendered as Wolf-progress, was a sainted bishop of Ratisbon, in the tenth century, whence this strange name flourished, and, coming to Göthe, became prized by all his admirers. There, too, is Wolfram, the wolf-raven, Wolfrad, and Wolfert.

Some have translated _ulf_, or _wolf_, at the end of a word by help; but this is impossible, as though _hulf_ is help in German, the _f_ is the property of that language alone.

A few of the Danes seem to have learnt to respect the qualities of the magnificent Irish wolf-hound, whose qualities are highly praised in the _Heimskringla_. Then they took to calling themselves Hunde; and a son of Sigurd, Earl of Orkney, is called both Hvalp and Hund. The name of Hundolf is, however, supposed to be either hardened from Hun, or else to be from a word meaning booty or plunder, so as to mean the wolf of plunder.[122]

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Footnote 122:

Grimm; Turner, _Anglo-Saxons_; Blackwell, Mallet; _Dictionnaire des Proverbes Français_; Sismondi, _Republiques Italianes_; Anderson, _Genealogies_; Lappenburn, _Anglo-Saxons_; Alban Butler; Marryat, _Jutland_; Pott.

SECTION III.—_Eber, the Boar._

The boar, whom we found so popular in Roman nomenclature, is equally so among the southern Teutons, among whom the tusky boar was one of the prime beasts of chase. The Romans apparently viewed him and his titles in their domestic aspect; but the Teutons honoured the fierce _Eber_ of their forests as their highest and most dangerous prey, and gave him a place among their mythology.

Freyr had a boar with golden bristles, called Gullenbörsti, and when the corn waved in the wind, the saying was, “Freyr’s boar is passing by.” Epurhelm, an old German name, was thus an appeal to the protection of Freyr.

The boar Sehrimnar was likewise the future feast of the brave in Valhall, daily hunted and eaten, and as often resuscitated for the next day’s sport and banquet. Scandinavia lay too far north for his porcine majesty; and the Norsemen had no personal acquaintance with him in their daily life, whatever they might look forward to; and thus _Eber_, the wild boar, does not figure in their nomenclature, and scarcely among our own insular Saxons, though he is said to have ranged our forests.

But turning to the Goths, we fall at once upon Ebroinus, an evident classicalism of Eberwine, not so much the boar’s friend, as Freyr’s friend. Ebrimuth, another early Goth, is wild boar’s mood or wrath, and in Visigothic Spain we find Eborico, namely, Eberik, boar ruler.

Frankland produced the formidable compound of boarwolf, Eberulf; but its two owners grew up monastic saints in the sixth and seventh centuries, and were honoured by the French as SS. Evrault, Evrols, Evrou, or Evraud. The second of these saints was a native of Normandy, and is patron of the abbey of Fontévraud, the burial-place of Henry II. and Richard Cœur de Lion, and the noblest nunnery in France.

It is difficult, however, to distinguish between the forms of the French Eberulf, and the German Eberhard, who was abbot of Einsiedlen in 934; indeed, it is highly probable that the Norman St. Evrhault, though derived from a saint Latinized as Eberulfus, and in German called Erulf, was supposed to be the same as Eberhard, and that this accounts for the English form of Everard, which sprung up from the four Evrards of the Domesday roll after the Conquest. Eberhard hardly reaches the rank of saint in the Roman calendar; but his exertions in a great famine that ravaged Alsace, Burgundy, and Upper Germany, in 942, account for the nationality of his name in all that region.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ Italian. │ Frisian. │ German. │ │Everard │Everardo │Evart │Eberhard │ │Ewart │Eberardo │Evert │Ebert │ │ │Ebbo │ │Ewart │ │ —————— │ ————— │ —————— │Eppo │ │ French. │ Dutch. │ Lett. │Ebbo │ │Evraud │ │ │Ebo │ │Ebles │Everhard │Ewarts │Ebilo │ │ │Evert │Ebbo │Ebin │ │ │ │ │Etto │ │ │ │ │Uffo │ │ │ │ │Uppo │ │ │ │ │Appo │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The Germans likewise have a feminine from this ‘boarfirm’ word Eberbardine, contracted into Ebertine, or Ebba, and in Frisian, Ebbe or Jebbe. I am afraid these German forms do not certainly account for the Saxon Ebba, or Æbbe, sister of St. Oswald, and foundress of the famous priory of Coldingham. However, England had one St. Eberhilda, who was a pupil of St. Wilfrid, and foundress of a monastery called Everidisham, the locality of which cannot be discovered; but the abbess must have left an impression on the ladies of the North, to judge by the frequency of the occurrence of Everilda, which, with the contractions of Averilla and Averil, is not yet extinct.

Offa, the Low German legendary hero—is very probably called by a contraction of the wild boar. His name is repeated by the king of Mercia, who seems to have borrowed somewhat of the legend in his story, and Offa was not extinct even in Domesday.

Ebermund, a Neustrian Frank of Meerwing days, was founder of Fontenoy Abbey, and was honoured as St. Evrémond, whence the territorial surname familiar to readers of French memoirs.

St. Evre, who is frankly Latinized into Sanctus Aper, was the seventh bishop of Toul, where the register of bishops presents a curious succession of wild beasts, and some of the Ebbos and Affos of Germany may be his rightful property, though they are now all turned over to the charitable Eberhard of Einsiedlen. Eburbero, or Boar-bear, seems to have been a German invention.

SECTION IV.—_The Bear._

The bear does not enter into the legends of the _Edda_, but he enjoyed immense regard in the North, and was looked on as a sort of ancestor, to whom, when he was killed, polite apologies were always made, and who is still called by the pet name of the Wise Man, rather than by his own proper term. Even in France he was mysteriously alluded to as le _vieux_ or le _grand père_; and probably the Swiss veneration for the bears of Berne partly originated in the general devotion to the deliberate and almost human-looking plantigrade.

The Anglo-Saxons made Beorn the great-grandson of Wuotan, and the ancestor of the kings of Beornland; in Latin Bernicia, or Beornia, afterwards the earldom that gave title to Richard, son of William I. Legend again declared that the stout old Earl Siward Bìorn was actually the offspring of a bear, and that the ears of his parent might have been found concealed beneath his matted locks.

Norway and Iceland are, as in duty bound, the land of bears, but the Pyrenees had their share likewise; and if the North has Bjornulf, the same bear-wolf reigned over Gothic Spain in the form of Vernulfo; and in the Asturias and Navarre, the bear’s mood was dreaded as Bermudo, or Vermudo, and his protecting hand sought as Veremundo.

In the Pyrenees, too, flourished the bear-spear, the same with the northern Bjorngjer, though southern tongues made Berenger and Berengario, in which forms it was owned by many a mountain king of Navarre and count of Roussillon, Barcelona, or Toulouse. There, too, it formed the feminine Berenguela, and this, as princesses' names always do, travelled farther; for Berenguela was queen of Castille, and mother of St. Fernando; another Berenguela, or Berangère, as French tongues called her, is familiar to us under that most incorrect historical title of Berengaria, the bride of Richard Cœur de Lion. Another Berenguela, who from Portugal married the king of Denmark, so misconducted herself that Bjorngard or Berngard, the Danish version of her name, stands for an abandoned woman.

Biorn of the fiery eyes was appropriately named by Fouqué; for the _Landnama-bok_ shows forty-two Biorns, and the name is still common in Norway and Iceland, where also are found still, as man’s names, Bersi and Besse, also titles of the bear, and Bera by way of feminine. Bjornhedinn is also northern, and there are numerous varieties of compounds, one of them rather of late date being Bjornstern, bear-star, probably in reference to the Pole-star. One of the present authors in Norway bears the fierce name of Bjornsternja Bjornsen.

The most famous of all the bears is, however, of Frank growth. Some have tried to resolve it into Bairn-heart, child-hearted; but though _barn_ is of most ancient lineage, found even in Ulfilas’s Gospels, all analogy is against the interpretation; and there can be no doubt that when the first historical Biornhard was named, his parents would much have preferred his having the resolution of a bear rather than the heart of a child.

That first was an uncle of Charlemagne, and from him it was that the mountain, erst of Jupiter, was termed of Bernard, even before a second Bernard, surnamed De Menthon, fled from his home for love of a monastic life, and erected his noble hospice for the reception of travellers. Then came further glory to the name through the Cistercian monk, whose pure character was revered by all in the thirteenth century, until his became a universal name throughout Europe; in Ireland absorbing the native Brian. In Spain, too, Bernardo del Carpio is a great legendary champion, nephew to king Alfonso II. of Leon, and who, in the battle of Roncevalles, was said to have squeezed Roland the paladin to death in his arms. Bernal Diaz is the simple-hearted chronicler of Cortes.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Spanish. │ │Bernard │Bernard │Bernardo │Bernardo │ │Barnard │Bernadin │Bernadino │Bernal │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Portuguese. │ Wallachian │ German. │ Dutch. │ │Bernaldo │Bernardu │Bernhard │Bernhart │ │Bernadim │ │Berend │Barend │ │ │ │Benno │Barndt │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Frisian. │ Lusatian. │ Lettish. │ Esth. │ │Bernd │Bernat │Berents │Pero │ │ ———————— │ ———————— │Berns │Perent │ │ Slovak. │ Hungarian. │ │ │ │Bernardek │Bernät │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

It has the German feminine Bernhardine. The Irish Bryan adopts Bernard as his English synonym.

Other less celebrated German forms are Bernwald; the French, Berault; and Italian, Bernaldo. Berwart, abbot of Hildesheim; Bernclo, the Bavarian bear’s claw; Berner, and many others where _bern_ or _pern_ ends the word.

Bahrend, Berndt, Behr, Behring, all are surnames from the bear in Germany, and the last very appropriately named Behring’s Straits. It is the same that came to England as Baring.[123]

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Footnote 123:

Munch; Lappenburg; Pott; Michaelis; Butler.

SECTION V.—_The Horse._

No sacred animal was in more request than the horse. The gods had their wonderful horses. Sleipner (the Slider) was the eight-footed steed of Odin; Gullfaxi, or gold mane, belonged to the giant Hrimgrim; and the shining-maned and hoary-maned coursers of day and night have been already mentioned.

The eastern origin of the Teutons was never more shown than by their homage to horses. Beautiful and choice white steeds were reserved for the gods, drawing the waggons that conveyed the images, when the army went out to battle, or a colony migrated; and omens were derived from their neighings when alive, and from their heads when killed in sacrifice. Great sacrifices of horses were made on solemn occasions, and feasts were made upon their flesh as a religious rite, so that the abstaining from horse-flesh became absolutely a test of Christianity.

The horse was the national emblem of the Saxons; and Henghist and Horsa are both old Teuton names for the animal, the first surviving in the German _hengst_ and northern _hest_, the last in our ordinary word _horse_: while the High German _hross_ has fallen into the modern _ross_. White horses cut out in the chalky hill-sides of southern England from time immemorial, attest the antiquity of the symbol still claimed by the county of Kent, and by the Anglian-Continental kingdom of Hanover.

In the old poem of _Beowulf_, however, Hengist is a Dane, invading and oppressing Finn of Friesland, and afterwards slain. It is possible, then, that Hengist may after all be a mere mythic name erected into an ancestor by the Kentish monarchs. Some have tried to derive _hross_ from _horen_, to hear or obey, in honour of the noble creature’s obedience; but it is in fact only another form of the _ashva_ of India, to which ἵππος, _equus_, and the Keltic _each_ have been traced; and it is curious to find that Brittany preserves the word _ronse_, as does Spain _ronzin_, the term that Don Quixote magnified into the magnificent designation of Rosinante.

The nation that sat round their cauldrons and feasted solemnly on horse-flesh might well call their sons Rossketyl, or Rosskjell. Three are to be found in the _Landnama-bok_, and Roskil is not extinct in Denmark. The agreeable title of Hrossbiorn, or horse-bear, is there to be found likewise, and Saxo-Grammaticus dignifies as Rostiophus, a gentleman who was properly called by the term of Hrossthiof, or horse-thief.

Hrossbert formed into Rospert, Hroshelm into Roselm, Hrosmod into Rosmund, Hrosswald, or horse-power, into Roswal, who was the hero of a Scottish poem called _Roswal and Lilian_. He is the disinherited heir of Naples; and, after a series of troubles, fights his way back to honour and the hand of Lilian, the fair princess of Bealn.

The feminines Hrossmund, Hroswith, Hroshild, Hrosa, have by general consent been changed from horses to roses, giving up the old idea of the Valkyr on her tall shadowy horse, weaving her web of victory, and have been treated of under the head of Latin flowers.

Hengst seems to have been used for the male, horse for the female; but _jor_ in the North, _ehu_ in Old German, _ehvus_ in Gothic, meant both horse and mare; and this _jor_, or sometimes only the _jo_, is not uncommon in Norsk names, as Jogeir, Jofred, Jogrim, Jostein, or flower of chivalry, Johar or Joar, horse warrior, Joketyll, or Jokell. The women were, Jora, Jodis, Jofrid, Joreid, Jorunna, all, be it remembered, being pronounced as with a _y_.

Afterwards Justin devoured Jostein, and George probably consumed some of the others; indeed, some of the early specimens of Jordan among the Normans, probably accommodated their names to the river in their crusading fervour; but, _en revanche_, the great Gothic historian, Jornandes, is supposed to have been so called by corruption from his state name of Jordanes.

Jorund, which looks very like one of this race, is referable to another source.

Probably in honour of Thor’s he-goats we find the goat figuring in names, as Geitwald, Geithilt, and the wife of Robert Guiscard, Sichelgaita.[124]

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Footnote 124:

Grimm; Munter; Munch; Dasent; Cambro-Briton; Blackwell, Mallet; Weber and Jamieson, _Northern Romance_; Sturleson, _Heimskringla_; Kemble _Beowulf_; Ellis, _Specimens of Early English Poetry_; Pott, _Personen Namen_.

SECTION VI.—_The Eagle._

‘There is an eagle sitting on the ash Yggdrasil who knows many things.’

He is, in the North, _aar_, in Germany _ar_, in Scotland _erne_: though we and the modern Germans use, in _eagle_ and _adler_, mere contractions of the Latin _aquila_. Places named from the king of birds are found wherever there are mountains.

His influence on nomenclature was exercised from the Dovrefeld and from the Alps, for the eagle-names are chiefly either Scandinavian or High German; we do not seem to have any native English ones.

The most noted of these southern ones are Arnwald, eagle power, and Arnulf, or eagle-wolf, and it is very difficult to distinguish their derivatives from one another. The saint of the Roman calendar was certainly Arnulf, a prince of the long-haired line, who in 614 retired into a convent at Metz, and became its bishop, when alive, and its patron, when dead. Another previous Arnulf, after whom he was probably christened, for their day is the same, was martyred by the heathen Franks, about the time of the conversion of Clovis; and a subsequent one was bishop of Soissons, under Pope Hildebrand. Arnoul was common as a name among the Burgundian kings, and was known in Italy as Arnolfo; but it has been swallowed up by Arnwald, or Arnvalldr, as he is in the North, perhaps because this latter was made famous in Provence by Arnaldo di Maraviglia, the troubadour; in Italy by the unfortunate Arnoldo of Brescia, and later in Switzerland by the patriot Arnold von Melchthal, and thus it has become popular enough to have the feminines Arnolde and Arnoldine.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Spanish. │ │Arnold │Arnaud │Arnoldo │Arnoldo │ │ │Arnaut │ │ │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ German. │ Dutch. │ North. │ │ │Arnold │Arnoldus │Arnvalld │ │ │Arno │Arnoud │Arnalldr │ │ │Ahrent │Arend │ │ │ │Ahrens │ │ │ │ │Arold │ │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The Arnolds and Arnoldines keep their feast upon St. Arnulf’s day, thus confessing that they have no patron of their own. Ernulf is an old form found in Domesday Book, and not yet quite extinct.

The northern eagles are much confused by _arin_, a hearth, the same which is found at the end of Thorarin. It contracts into _arn_ at the beginning of a word, so that, except when we meet with it in full, as in the case of the brave old sea-king, Arinbiorn, the hearth-bear, it is difficult to tell to which to send the owner, to the _eyrie_ or the _fire-side_. And further, _arn_ and _arin_ both contract indiscriminately into _ar_ and _an_, so that the list of Northern names is given rather in the dark. They are both masculine and feminine, for Arna was both used standing alone and as a termination.

Arnridur or Arneidur, eagle haste, one of these eagle ladies, had a curious history told in the _Landnama-bok_. She was the daughter of Asbiorn, a jarl in the Hebrides, and was taken captive by Holmfast Vedormson, who sold her to an Icelander named Ketell Thrymr. He was so much smitten with her as to pay for her twice the sum demanded by old Vedorm; but before the departure for Iceland, she found a quantity of silver beneath the roots of a tree, sufficient for her ransom. Instead of claiming it, her new master generously gave her the choice of purchasing her freedom or remaining his wife; she chose the latter alternative, and stands as honourable women do in the _Landnama-bok_, as the mother of a house in Iceland.

Arnthor, and his feminine Arnthora, contract into Arnor and Arnora, and this latter explains Annora, to be found in Norman pedigrees. Annora was wife of Bernard de St. Valery; and was carried into the family of Braose by king John’s victim, Maude de St. Valery, who called one of her daughters Annora. It is also said that Anora is only the contraction of Eleanora.

Ari was an adventurer who sailed to Greenland in fourteen days, fifteen years before the preaching of Christianity in Iceland.

The other old Icelandic and Norsk forms are:—

Arnbiorg, eagle defence; Arndis, eagle sprite; Arnfinn, white eagle; Arnfridur, eagle fair one; Arngeir, eagle war; Arngrimm, } or Angrim, Arngrimur, } eagle mask; Arnkatla, } eagle cauldron; Arnkjell, } Arnlaug, eagle liquor; Arnleif, eagle relic; Arnliotr, eagle wanderer; Arnmodur } eagle wrath; or Armodr,}} Arnstein, eagle stone; Arnthrudr, eagle maiden.

This Ari, be he eagle or hearth, seems to conduct us to the source of the first syllable of Arabella. The first lady so called, whom I can detect, was Arabella, the granddaughter of William the Lion, of Scotland, who married Robert de Quinci. Another Arabella, with her husband John de Montpynçon, held the manor of Magdalen Laver in the thirty-ninth of Henry III., and thus it was evidently a Norman name. The Normans made wild work with all that did not sound like French, and their Latin secretaries made the matter worse, so that I am much tempted to believe that both Arabella and that other perplexing name, Annabella, may once have been Arnhilda, cut down into Arbell, or Anable, and then amplified. “My Lady Arbell” was certainly what the lady was called, in her own time, whose misfortunes are so well known to us, under the name of Arabella Stuart, and from whom Arabella has been adopted in various families, and is usually contracted by Belle. Some have made it Arabella, or fair altar, others the diminutive of Arab, both equally improbable.

The most common form of Arn at present used in Scandinavia is Arnvid, the eagle of the wood, often contracted into Arve.

With much doubt I question whether the name of Ernest should not be added to this catalogue. It is obvious to take its native German form, Ernst, from _ernst_, earnest, grave, or serious, but this is quite unlike the usual analogy of such names. Arnust was the older German form of the name, and some even think that this was the proper name of Ariovistus, the German chief who fought with Cæsar, though others consider this to be Cæsar’s version of Heerfurst, or general, and others think they detect the universal root _ar_, husbandry.

The more certain form of the name begins in Lombardy, where Ernesto, lord of Este, was killed in battle by kinFg Astolfo, in 752. Is not Ernesto just what Italy would make of Arnstein, after fancying that Arnstino was a diminutive? Then, over the mountains, comes Arnust I., duke of Swabia, in right of his wife, in 1012, and Arnust the Strenuous, Markgraff of Austria, from whom Ernst spread all over Germany, especially after the Reformation, when Ernst, Duke of Brunswick, had striven so hard to spread Lutheranism among his subjects that Protestants called him the Confessor.

This is now one of the most national of German names, and it is working its way into England, though not yet with a naturalized sound. Its German feminine, Ernestine, is one of the many contracted by Stine and Tine, or by Erna. Bohemian has Arnostinka.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ German. │ │Ernest │Erneste │Ernesto │Ernst │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Dutch. │ Bohemian. │ Lettish. │ Hungarian. │ │Ernestus │Arnost │Ernests │Erneszt │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

One or two instances of Hauk occur. Hauk Habrok was a noted pirate; and there are two Haukrs in the _Landnama-bok_. The bird is now called _hog_ in Denmark, and most of our families named Hogg are supposed to rejoice in Hawk as an ancestor.

As to Folco and his kin, though it is often attributed to the falcon, it has, as we shall see, quite another source.[125]

-----

Footnote 125:

Grimm; Munch; Pott; Michaelis; Butler; _Landnama-bok_; Chalmers; _Essex Pedigrees_; Dugdale; Anderson, _Genealogies_.

SECTION VII.—_The Raven._

Ferocious and predatory nations love and admire even the raven that scents slaughter from afar, and is the comrade and emblem of the battle-field. So as Oreb and Zeeb were among the Bedouin desolators of Israel, Hraben and Ulf were among the wasters of Christendom.

Two ravens, Mind and Memory, go forth throughout the world, then returning and perching on Odin’s shoulders, reveal to him all that passes on the earth.

The raven seems to have been the special mark of Odin, and sometimes used for Thor; for amulets have been found in Sweden and Denmark, where a raven flies before the mounted figure of Odin, and again is seen in company with the hammer of Thor. And who does not know the raven banner of the sons of Ragnar, denoting probably their family _dis_, which flapped its wings before victory and drooped them before defeat?

No wonder, then, that the raven has left traces in the nomenclature of Teutonic Europe, though it is not always easy to distinguish its progeny from those of _ragn_, judgment, and _rand_, a house.

The raven, in his harshest croak, entitled the Frank sovereign Chramne, who is hard to recognize as the near kinsman of the sixteen Rafns of the _Landnama-bok_, and Rabanus Maurus, the Latinism of the learned archbishop of Mainz of the ninth century.

Hrafenhilldur, a suitable title for a Valkyr, and Hrafenkell also figure in the _Landnama-bok_, and in Domesday stand Ravengar and Ravenswar, showing the transition from the _gjer_, or spear, down to our word war.

Rafnulf is northern, but has been mixed up with the derivatives of Randolf. Rambert, successor of St. Ansgar, in Holstein, was a bright raven, Rampold a raven prince, and the Italian form Ramusio may be another variety; but in general the raven comes at the end of words as in Wolfram, Valdraban, Bertram, &c.

SECTION VIII.—_The Swan._

The swan might well figure prominently in the northern mythology, familiar as she was, as the fair creature of the autumn, when huge squadrons of the whistling swan fly southwards, athwart the darkened heavens and pine forests, making the air resound with the solemn beat of their heavy wings, and their deep peculiar cry.

Two swans, parents of all those who dwell on earth, had their home in the holy spring of Urd, beneath the world-tree, Yggdrasil; and the power and fierceness of these magnificent, pure, calm-looking birds connected them with the Valkyrer, who were supposed to have swan wings, and to be able to change themselves into swans. When the Valkyrier began to pass into mere magic ladies, they preserved their power of changing into swans, and by-and-by had swan garments, which they put off when they wished to assume human shapes, and which were now and then captured by some happy mortal, who thus won the owner for his bride. Swanhvit, or Swan white, was thus the suitable name of one of the three Valkyrier who married the sons of Vidja in the Vilkina Saga.

The swan transformations appear again in the beautiful tale, common to all Teutonic countries, of the twelve princes transformed into swans, and of the faithful sister who redeemed them by the nettle shirts that she wove, ever in silence, through every vicissitude of life even to the verge of death.

Svana is an Icelandic name, also Svanlaug, a swan ocean, which has contracted to Svallaug. Svanhild was used both by Norway and Germany, being Swanahilda in the latter, and Svanaburg and Swangarde were also there; but it is strange that so pretty a word for a white-skinned maiden should not have been more frequent. The Erse Gelges imitates the sense, but we have no English swan ladies, for Swanhals was only the epithet of the often commemorated lady, who is said to have discovered the corpse of Harold of Hastings.

For the most part, the swans were left to womankind; but the Germans had a Swanbrecht and Swanahold.

SECTION IX.—_The Serpent._

Either from terror, or from a shadowy remembrance of the original temptation, the implanted enmity between the serpent and man has often resulted in a species of worship.

The North believed in the Jörmungandr, or Midgardsorm, the serpent that encircled the world and was one of the monstrous progeny of Loki.

And even till late in the seventh century the Lombards had a golden image of an enormous viper to which they sacrificed, until St. Barbatus recovered them from the heathenism into which they had relapsed.

One species of ship among the Northmen was called serpent. It was long and low, with the gilded head of a dragon at the prow, a long tail raised and curling over the stern, while with coloured shields ranged along the sides, and thirty oars on either side propelling it, besides the winged sails, it must have been more like a water-dragon than any creature that has ploughed the waves since the Plesiosaurus, and this probably accounts for the prevalence of the name of Orm among the northern nations.

Twenty-two Ormrs appear in the _Landnama-bok_; Orm and Ormar (_Ger._ Wurmhar) are both in Domesday. Orm was the founder of the Scottish house of Abernethy. Homer was considered, by the Danes of the middle ages, as the translation into Latin of the name of Ormr.

Ormilda is likewise a northern name, and it is not quite impossible that Ophelia may have been a translation of one of these serpent-names by the Greek ὄφις (ophis); at any rate the fair Ophelia shows no precedents for her name, and no other derivation for it occurs. The gentle maiden, with her most touching fate, is altogether an invention of Shakespeare, for though a woman appears in the old story of Amleth, she is of far other mould, and Ophelia may have been merely devised by himself. If so it is curious that he should have placed her in the chief land of serpentine names. A few lovers of its sound have used it in England and America.

_Lind_ is another term for a serpent. The German dragons are always called _lindwurmer_, and the word is, in fact, the same as that which we still use as _lithe_, expressing supple grace; the adjective _linths_ becoming, on the one side _lind_, on the other _lithe_. The Spaniards use _lindo_, _linda_, for pretty, with about the same difference of sense, in the masculine or feminine, as we do when we speak of a pretty woman, or a pretty man. Norse poetry considered it a compliment to compare a gaily dressed lady to a glistening serpent, and thus the idea seems to have passed from the reptile to the woman, so that, though the German Lintrude is the only instance of a commencing _lind_, the word is one of the most common of all terminations among German and Italian names, and dropping its _d_, so as to become _linn_, was made to serve as a favourite feminine diminutive, its relation to the Spanish _linda_, fair, keeping up its reputation. Thus we have Rosalind, or Rosaline, Ethelind, and many more of the same kind.[126]

-----

Footnote 126:

Munch; Mallet; Grimm; Chalmers; Laing.

SECTION X.—_Kettle._

Among mythological objects the kettle or cauldron can hardly be omitted; certainly the very quaintest of human names, but perhaps referring originally to the cauldron of creation, and afterwards to the sacrificial cauldrons that boiled the flesh of the victims at the great _blots_ or sacrifices.

In the North, the vessel is _ketil_; in old German, _chezil_; in English, _cytel_; but the names from it seem to be almost entirely northern, though the cauldron is certainly the _olla_, so common a bearing in Spanish heraldry, and there at present regarded as the token of a large following, beneficently fed, somewhat in the same spirit as that in which the Janissaries used a camp kettle as their ensign.

Ketyl was the Norwegian conqueror of the Hebrides, and founder of the line of Jarls, of the Western Isles; and the family of Ketyl was very famous in Iceland, holding in honour an ancestor called Ketyl Hæng, from _hæng_, a bull trout; because when his father asked what he had been doing, he answered, “I am not going to make a long story of every fish I see leap; but true it is, that I chopped a bull trout asunder in the middle,” which trout turned out to be a great dragon.

Katla was Ketyl’s feminine, and not uncommon. The Eyrbiggia Saga tells wonderful stories of a sorceress so called, who, when her son was in danger from his enemies, made him appear first like a distaff, then like a tame kid, and, lastly, like a hog, but all in vain, for her spells were disconcerted by a rival sorceress, and she herself stoned to death.

Ketel does not often stand at the beginning of a word; but Ketelbiorn and Ketelridur are both Iceland names, and both the masculine and feminine are very common terminations; the masculine being, however, generally contracted into Kjel, and then into _kill_ or _kel_.[127]

SECTION XI.—_Weapon Names._

Weapons were so nearly divine, so full of the warlike temper of their owners, and so often endowed with powers of their own, that it seemed as if they themselves were living agents in the deeds wrought with them.

The sword forged by supernatural smiths, the terrific helmet, the heavenly shield, are dreams of every warlike nation, either endowing the Deity with the symbols of protection or wrath or of might, or carrying on the tradition of some weapon which, either its own intrinsic superiority or the prowess of its owner, had made an object of enthusiasm or of terror.

Some of these tales of magic weapons are perhaps, as Mr. Campbell suggests, remnants of the days when the iron age was coming in, and the mass of arms being of brass, one iron sword, “a sword of light,” as Gaelic tales call it, would have given irresistible superiority to its wielder, and even, perhaps, earned the worship that was paid by Attila’s Huns to the naked sword.

It accords with this theory that Iron appears as a component part of numerous names in Germany, and probably likewise in Scandinavia, though there the similarity of the sound to _Iis_, ice, occasions a doubt whether the word was intended for ice, or for iron. The North has, indeed, the cold but not inappropriate Snæulf and Snæbiorn, Snæfrid, snow peace, and even the uncomfortable Snælaug; and when their language had dropped the form _eisarn_ for the metal, and called it _jern_, as we do iron, they probably transferred to ice the meaning of the names that once meant iron.

Isa is an old German feminine. Isambart, or iron splendour, is the best known of all the varieties, having been used in France as Ysambar, and travelled to England as the suitable baptismal name of the two engineers, to whom so much of our ‘iron splendour’ is due. Its German contractions are Isabert and Isbert.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Nor. Isgeir; Ger. Isegar, Isgar—Iron spear │ │ Nor. Isbrand; Ger. Isebrand—Iron sword │ │ Ger. Isebald; Fr. Isambaus—Iron prince │ │ Nor. Iarngard; Ger. Isengard—Iron defence │ │ Ger. Isenhard—Iron strong │ │ Nor. Isrid—Iron vehemence │ │ Nor. Isulf—Iron wolf │ │ Nor. Ising—Son of iron │ └────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Steel or Staale, likewise had one name from it in the North, and, perhaps, likewise named even the historical Stilicho of barbarous birth, but the sole hope of Rome in her final fall.

But the stone of the elder age was not forgotten; the stone that at all times is the readiest weapon, and often the mark of the place honoured by conflict. To say nothing of the Seax, whether stone or stone knife of our ancestral Seaxnot, we find the North using the word Stein, both alone and as a prefix and suffix; while in England, though it is not very frequent, we have it in the honoured names of Athelstan and Wulstan.

Norwegian

Stein, } Sten (_Dan._), } stone. Steinarna, stone eagle. Steinbjorn, stone bear. Steinfinn, white stone. Steingrimm, stone helmet. Steinhar, } stone warrior. Steinar, } Steinthor, } stone of Thor. Steindor, }

Steinulf, stone wolf. Steinvar, stone prudence.

Another old word for stone is _hall_, much used in the North; and in a few cases, such as that of the Scottish Halbert, or Hobbie, creeping to our island with its Danish invaders; but except in this, and a few surnames, unknown away from the North, save for the Hallar, or stone warrior, of Germany.

The northern varieties, however, had much reputation in their own country. Hallgerda is in the Njal Saga the haughty wife of Gunnar, of Lithend, the dame whose virulence is the cause of all the vengeance and counter-vengeance of the story.

Hallbiorg, stone protection. Halldis, stone spirit. Hallfrid, stone fair. Hallgerd, stone fence. Hallgeir, stone spear. Hallgrim, }stone helmet. Hallgrima,} Hallkell, }stone kettle. Halkatla, } Hallmund, stone protection. Hallthor, } Haldor, }stone of Thor. Haldora, } Hallvard, }stone guard. Halvor, }

_Grjot_, in German _gries_, is another word for a stone. It was not so common as the others; but there was both a masculine and feminine Grjotgard, who in Denmark were rendered, the one into Gregorius, the other into Margarethe. The English lady, Græsia de Bruere (_temp._ Henry III.), must have been named from _gries_, a stone.

So too was Gries-hilda—Stone battle maid. Griselda was the perfectly patient wife whose tale was told by Boccaccio, and narrated by Petrarch to Chaucer, who told it in his own way. The Scots seem to have been peculiarly delighted with the lady Griselidis—and Grizell or Grisell acquired fresh honour with Lady Grisell Baillie. Grizzie or Girzie are the contractions, and there is a Grisley in the register of Madran, Cornwall, dated 1662.

Though in general Borg, or Bjorg, is used to mean protection, yet Bergstein is most probably a mountain stone, and it curiously answers to two names of noted ecclesiastics from Somersetshire, whose first syllable Dun is a hill; the same with our present word _down_, and the _dunes_ on the other side of the Channel, where Dunkirk answers to our Dunchurch. The word is probably the Keltic _don_, dark brown, grey, or dun, used as the epithet of a hill, and lasting on like other Keltic local titles in the _dunum_ of the Romans and the _dun_ of the Teutons.

The two Somerset Duns are the hill-wolf, Dunulf, who is said by one of the traditions that ought to be true, to have been the swineherd whose cakes King Alfred burnt, and to have been afterwards made by him bishop of Winchester, which a Dunulf certainly was. The other was Dunstan, the mighty ascetic Abbot of Glastonbury and Archbishop of Canterbury, whose career, between wisdom and devotion, frenzy and sternness, is one of the least explicable studies of history.

His place in the calendar has given this rugged mountain stone a few namesakes.

There is a race of names, chiefly German, beginning with _hun_, that it would seem natural to ascribe to the Huns of Attila; but the original term for this race seems to have been in their own language Hiognu, and was retained in the pronunciation by other nations before writing and Latin had made the word Hun. In old Germanic poems, the Huns figure as giants or Titans, so that some translate, _huni_, or _hiune_, as a giant. The word _hun_, however, also means a stake, and it is most according to the ordinary analogy of nomenclature to suppose the names thus commencing were used in the sense of a stake, meaning either the weapon or that the bearer was strong and straight as a stake or a support, like the staff in Gustav.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ German. │ │Humfrey │Onfroi │Onufrio │Humfrid │ │Humphrey │ │Onofredo │ │ │Humps │ │ │ │ │Numps │ │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The names of this commencement are Huno, Hunnerich, latterly lost in Heinrich, Hunold, the French Hunaud, Hunibert, which was corrupted in France into Humbert, and belonged to various counts of Savoy and dauphins of Auvergne, Hunigar, in Hungeir and Hunifred, which the French much affected in the form of Onfroi, which belonged to one of the short-lived kings of Jerusalem, and was Latinized as Onuphrius. In the form of Humfrey it was much used by the great house of Bohun; and through his mother, their heiress, descended to the ill-fated son of Henry IV., who has left it an open question whether dining with Duke Humfrey alludes to the report that he was starved to death, or to the Elizabethan habit for poor gentility to beguile the dinner-hour by a promenade near the tomb of Duke Humfrey Stafford in old St. Paul’s. From being a noble and knightly name, Humphrey, as we barbarously spell it, came to be a peasant’s appellation, and now is almost disused.

The northern Hundolf, or Hunnolf, and Hungerdur, are in some doubt between the dog and the stake.

The helmet is the most popular piece of armour in Germany. It comes from the word meaning to cover, the very same that furnished _hol_, whole, hale, and holy. To _heal_ a wound is to cover it, and health is soundness. The Teutonic languages teem with derivatives from _hulyan_ and _helan_, of which all that shall be here mentioned are our own; heel, the covered part of the foot, the hold of a ship, its hull, and the provincial hulls (chaff), and hillier (a slater).

The Latin _galea_ was nearly related to the _helm_ of the German, and may be from the same source. Indeed, it is, as has been said before, doubtful whether Galeazzo Visconti was the offspring of a classical or of a Gothic helmet. The only popular northern helmet is Hjalmar, the helmed warrior, apparently in honour of one of the heroes of the Orvarod Saga; but Germany has Helmar, Helmerich, in Friesland Elmark, the helmed king, Helmund, or helmet protection, Helmbold, Helmut, Helmich, Helmtac; besides numerous _helms_ at the end of words, of which Wilhelm is the most notable.

The sword figures in northern and German nomenclature as Brand; but not from the verb _to burn_, but from _brandr_, an elastic staff, transferred to the blade of a sword. It would also mean the staff of a bow, and a short straight stripe of colour, whence a cow so marked is _brandet_ in the north, branded with us. The Brands are many, with German and Frank commencements, such as Hildeprant, Liutprant, &c., but seldom common; though Brand sometimes stands alone in the North, and Brandolf, or sword wolf, is an old name. Perhaps the Zetland Brenda may be the feminine.

Degen, a blade, is another sword name of rarer use, and exclusively German. It also is compounded into Degenhard, then contracted into Deinhard; but the primary meaning is the hero, as it comes from the same word as _tugend_, virtue or valour.

Another very old term for a sword was _hjøru_, or _hiru_, in the North; _hairu_, _heru_, in the Gothic; _heoru_, in Anglo-Saxon. Here we see that the Heruli and Cheruschi, as the Romans called them, were both sword men. Heoruvard, or Hereward the Saxon, was the sword guardian; Heorugar answered to the northern Hjørgeir; there was a Gothic Hairuwolf, or Heruwolf; in the North, Hiørulf, Hiørleif, and Hiørdis also occur; but the syllable gets contracted into Her, and the names are not easily distinguished from those beginning with _her_, a warrior. Hjaraande is another northern form.

Boge, the bow, is sparsely found alone, and as Bauggisel in Iceland, and now and then in Norway at the end of a name. Bogo was Old German, and the surnames in Denmark Bugge, in England Bogue. But its English fame rests upon a champion called Bogo, who was supposed by our ancestors to have been Earl of Southampton at the time of the Norman Conquest; to have fought a battle with the invaders at Cardiff, and to have left his sword as a relic at Arundel Castle. Whether this ever occurred or not, Boge was rendered by Norman tongues into Bevis, or Beavois, and was the subject of an old metrical romance, where his great exploit is killing the tremendous giant Ascapart, who had carried off his wife, the converted Saracen princess Josyan. He lives to a good old age, sees his twin sons kings, and dies happily on the same day as his wife and his good horse Arundel, once doubtless Hirondelle, or the swallow.

His fame travelled to Italy, where Buovo d'Antona is accepted as one of the heroes of romance, though he stands alone, not fitting into any of the cycles. The etymologists of Elizabeth’s time were led by the form Beavois, in which they spelt the word, to imagine that it was Bellovisus, beautiful to behold. But if ‘Bevis of Hampton’ was anybody, he was an Anglo-Danish ‘Bow,’ or Boge, a word which, like bay, bough, and boughsome or buxom, comes from _bygan_, to bend.

The spear and the breastplate, Geir and Brune, will be mentioned in the next chapter. The shield is now and then found in the North, as Skialde, Skioldbjorn, Skiolulf, and Skioldvar, shield bear, wolf, and, more appropriately, shield caution. The shield wolf is capable of being contracted into Schelluf.

_Saro_, _saru_, _searu_, is the entire equipment or suit of armour; Sørle is a Norwegian name for it, contracted into Solle; and among the Normans was called Serlo, and considered to be the same with Saher.

If there were plenty of weapons, there was also balsam to heal their wounds; that is, if the northern names beginning with _Sölv_ are rightly referred to salve, the same word in the North as with us. The _v_ has for the most part been left out by pronunciation, but the dotted _o_ remains to testify that Sölmund, or Saamund, has no connection with Sol, the sun, as little as with Solomon, by which the Danish bishops rendered it. Solveig, healing drink, is now Solva, and Sölvar is Sölvi.[128]

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Footnote 127:

Grimm; Munch; Dasent; _Int. to Nial Saga_; Weber and Jamieson; Spanish Heraldry (_Quarterly Review_).

Footnote 128:

Munch; Michaelis; Ellis; Campbell; Montalembert.

SECTION XII.—_Thought._

Mind or thought amounts to a mythical character in northern fancy. The word is _hugr_, the same with _hu_, still the Scandinavian word for thought, as _heuge_ is in Holland, all coming from old verbs represented by the Mæso-Gothic _gahugan_, and Anglo-Saxon _gehygan_.

The two ravens who sat on Odin’s shoulders, and revealed to him all that passed in the world, were Huginn and Munninn, thought and memory; and when Thor made his famous visit to Utgard, it was Hugi, or thought, alone that was swift enough to outstrip him in the race. At Tours, the Northern Lights are _le carrosse du roi Hugues_, perhaps originally from some connection with speed of thought, though latterly mixed up with Hugues Capet.

The name has been much used by all the Teutons, and it was not inappropriately chosen by Fouqué, as that of the old knight in the _Magic ring_, whose character he has sacrificed for the sake of making him the representative parent of all the chivalry of Europe, except the English, which he considers as independently typified by Richard Cœur de Lion. This roving knight appears at home as Hugo; Hugur in the North; Hugues, in France; Uguccione, in Italy; and even as Hygies, in Greece, which last is, however, only a resemblance, not a translation.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐ │ English. │ Scottish. │ Gaelic. │ French. │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │Hugh │Hugh │Uisdean. │Hugues │ │Hugo │Hughie │ │Hues │ │Hutchin │Hutcheon │ │Huon │ │ │ │ │Huet │ │ │ │ │Hugolin │ │ │ │ │Huguenin │ │ │ │ │Ugues │ ├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Provençal. │ Italian. │ German. │ Norwegian. │ │Oc │Ugo │Hugo │Hugr │ │ │Ugolino │ │Hugi │ │ │Ugone │ │ │ │ │Ugotto │ │ │ │ │Uguccione │ │ │ └───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

Part of the popularity of the name was, no doubt, owing to the Cymric countries having adopted it as the nearest resemblance to the mighty Hu Gadarn, from whom the national Hugh of Wales almost certainly sprung. A Frank saint, Archbishop of Rouen, and one of the many canonized cousins of Pepin, first made Hugo current among his own race; but the only person who wore it on the throne was the Gallican Count of Paris, who may have had it as a compromise between the Cymric Hu and Frank Hugr; at any rate, it was long spelt without the _g_ in France, and declined as Hues, Huon. The old Cambrai form was Huet, with the feminine Huette.

Hugo is very frequent in Domesday Book, and the name was much more common in earlier times than at present. In Scotland and Ireland it has been pressed into the service of Anglicizing the native Aodh, or fire; but the Gaelic name Uisdean, pronounced something like ocean, is most likely intended as a rendering of Hutcheon, the form in which the Scots caught the Hugon of their Anglo-Norman neighbours, who revered the name doubly for the sake of the good bishop of Lincoln, and for another St. Hugh of Lincoln, _i.e._ the child murdered by the Jews, as in the _Prioress’s Tale_ in Chaucer. St. Hugh of Lincoln is revered in the north of Italy as well as at home; and Ugo is common there in all manner of varieties, the most memorable, perhaps, being that of the terrible Genoese, Ugolino de Gherardesca, whose fearful fate has been rendered famous by Dante. In Dutch, it is Huig. Huig Groot was the home name of the author whom the world hailed as Hugo Grotius, and the Walloons use the contraction Hosch.

Hyge was the Low German form, and Hygelac is the sea-king of the Geats, the friend and lord in the poem of _Beowulf_. The latter syllable _lac_ is the northern _leik_, and Gothic _laiks_, signifying both reward and sport, the same word that in some parts of England has become _lake_, meaning to play or to be idle, and in slang, to _lark_. It is rather a favourite termination, but only a commencement in the Norse feminine Leikny, fresh sport.

Hygelac is thus the sport of thought, or it may be, the reward of thought. Hugoleik was thus not an inappropriate name for an old Frank chronicler, who has had the misfortune to descend to the world by the horrible Latinism of Chochilaicus. Hugleik was current in Norway, was transformed by the Danes into Hauleik and Hovleik, and in Ireland seems to have turned into Ulic, a favourite name, but latterly transmogrified into Ulysses.

Hugibert, or bright mind, belonged to the bishop of Liege, to whom attached the Teutonic story of the hunter’s conversion by the cross-bearing stag, making him the patron of hunters, and his name very popular in France, Flanders, northern Italy, and probably once in England, since it has left us the two surnames of Hubbard and Hobart.

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐ │ English. │ French. │ Italian. │Portuguese. │ German. │ │Hubert │Hubert │Uberto │Huberto │Hucpraht │ │ │ │ │ │Hugibert │ │ │ │ │ │Hubert │ └────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

It used to be wrongly translated bright of hue.

Hugibald became the German Hugbold and the Italian Ubaldo, the prince of thought; Hugihard, or firm in mind, is the French Huard.

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