Tags
anglo saxon names, Historical Fiction, medieval, Middle Ages, Saxons, The Ashes of Heaven's Pillar
Ever experience what you think is a small job become something major like scraping off that bit of peeling paint to do a touch up only to find yourself repainting an entire room?
That’s how I’m feeling right now as I search for a new name for my heroine of my second novel, The Ashes of Heaven’s Pillar. Her current name is Acha, but that is too similar to Alda, the heroine of my first novel, The Cross and the Dragon.
To further complicate matters, my heroine is a pagan Continental Saxon, a society that didn’t have a written language as we know it at the time. So I turned to their cousins, the Anglo-Saxons.
While searching Google books, I came across and gem–or a trap, depending on how you label it: The Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum. Published in 1897, it is a huge list of Anglo-Saxon names before and after the Domesday Book, the latter commissioned by William the Conqueror to take inventory.
Widukind memorial in Herford, Germany, rebuilt from an 1899 sculpture by Heinrich Wefing. (By M. Kunz via Wikimedia Commons, used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.)
As I read about naming conventions, I was presented with a new issue. Family members had similar names, too similar for my taste. Kentish Earl Eormenred’s children were Eormenbeorh, Eormenburh, and Eormengyth. On the Continent, the Saxon ruler Widukind (also spelled Wittekind) had a son named Wigbert (also spelled Wichbert and Wibreht), who in turn named his own son Waltbert.
Not only do I have to change Acha’s name, but also her daughter, her brother, and her nephews. The challenge: stay mostly true to how Saxons named their children but not confuse the reader. I have a few factors on my side.
- My characters are fictitious, which provides a lot of flexibility
- The second element of the name (deuterotheme for the academics) could be repeated in children’s names instead of the first part (prototheme).
- The themes have variant spellings, and my illiterate characters wouldn’t know how to spell their own names anyway.
- Characters go by only one name in this society.
So my first tentative character list:
Leova: my heroine
Derwine: her husband
Leofwine: her son
Sunwynn: her daughter
Leodwulf: her brother
Wulfgar: Leodwulf’s son
Ludgar: his other son
Ebbe: Leodwulf’s wife
So I have four characters with names that not only start with L but use variants of Leof. I thought it was sweet for Derwine to think so much of his wife he would incorporate part of her name into his son’s, but I wonder if it would be easier for the readers if her name were even more different than her children’s.
If I choose the prototheme Neri for my heroine, the character list could be something like:
Nerienda: my heroine
Derwine: her husband
Leofwine: her son
Sunwynn: her daughter
Neriwulf: her brother
Wulfgar: Neriwulf’s son
Nasbert: his other son
Ebbe: Neriwulf’s wife
I like Leova better as a name for my heroine, even if it does mean having four variants of a prototheme, but I would like to hear from readers. What are your thoughts on these characters’ names? I want them to sound like they are from a different time but still be accessible.
If you enjoyed this post, you might also like an earlier post about the Franks’ tradition of recycling names, a true challenge when writing about historical characters.
Kim Rendfeld 
I think Nerienda is a pretty name and the derivatives from that are less similar and potentially less confusing than the ones from Leova.
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Thanks, Elizabeth. One reason to present Nerienda as alternative is its prettiness.
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I like Leova much better than Nerienda. However, I can see how it would confuse some readers to have so many similar names, especially those unfamiliar with the time period. You say that they only had one name during this period…what about nicknames?
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Thanks, Rosanne. They probably had nicknames. I might also look into more variation of the prototheme, Leof.
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When reading a book, after I’ve seen the name a few times my eye recognises the first few letters and then skips over the rest – With your naming dilemma, if the ends of the name are similar, that doesnt bother me as a reader, but if the first syllable is similar, this leads to confusion (Just my opinion!)
G x
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Thanks, Grace. That might be why I used similar second elements and tried to vary the spelling in the first.
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I like Leova the most, too. I completely agree with Grace Elliott about reader’s potential confusion. Especially with a book as fast-paced as I’m sure this will be, names with too little difference, especially at the beginning, will trip readers up. For The Assassin’s Wife, Moonyeen Blakey wrote about England in the late fifteenth century, a time when everyone was Edward or Ann in the records. She made use of a lot of nicknames and finally had to give up and make up names that would be different enough for the readers’ tolerance level. In my case, two important characters are both named Gonzalo, so I’ve used nicknames, titles, and family relationships to get by, and my beta readers seem to have coped well. So don’t be afraid to get creative. Good luck!
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Thanks, Jessica. Good thing my characters are fictional, which allows for more flexibility. I’m leaning toward changing the name of my heroine’s son, even though I like the name Leofwine quite a bit.
Medieval people did have an annoying habit of recycling names. I’ve cheated some by using variant spellings, such as calling King Charles’s son Karl rather than Charles the Younger, as he is in the history books.
When I get to my third book, I’m going to have to deal with the fact that Charles had two sons named Pepin, but I’ll worry about that later.
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I like Leova too. The potential area of confusion for me, as a reader, is between Leofwine and Leodwulf, since they are the same length. I wouldn’t confuse Leova with either of the two male names, because it’s shorter and therefore looks different to my eye. And, in a society where I’m expecting some of the names to to the same, the repeated L in Ludgar doesn’t bother me, as the rest of the name is very different. Perhaps give her son a different name but keep the similarity in her brother’s name? Which male characters are most prominent in the story? Which names will we hear the most often?
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Thanks, Jessica. I probably will change the name of my heroine’s son, as much as I like it, but keep her brother’s as is. My heroine and her children are the most prominent characters, and you would definitely hear from her son a lot more often.
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