CHAPTER I.

THE TEUTON RACE.

Section I.—Ground occupied by the Teutons.

The great mass of modern European nomenclature springs from the class of languages which it is convenient collectively to call Teutonic.

Nothing shows the identity of the entire Teutonic race more than the resemblance of the names in each of the branches. Many are found in each of the stems—Gothic, Scandinavian, and High and Low German—the same in sense, and with mere dialectic changes in sound, proving themselves to have sprung from a name, or from words, current in the original tribe before the various families parted from it. Others are found in some branches and not in others; but there are comparatively very few belonging to a single tongue, and the analyzation of one into its component words is never safe till the same name has been sought for in the cognate languages. All the more popular of these personal names have gone on a little in the rear of the spoken language of the country, undergoing changes, though somewhat more slowly. Then, perhaps, some famous character has, as it were, crystallized his name for ever in the form in which he bore it, and it has been so continued, ever after, in his own country, as well as imitated by others, who often have adopted it in addition to their own original national form of the very same.

The Teutonic names were almost all compounds of two words. Sometimes a single word was used, but this was comparatively rare. For the most part, families were distinguished by each person bearing the same first syllable, with other words added to it to mark the individual, much in the same way as we have seen was the custom of the Greeks. Some families, like the royal line of Wessex, would alternate between Æthel and Ead; others between Os and Sieg and the like. The original compounds forming names were expressive and well chosen; but it seems as if when once certain words had come into use as component parts of names, they were apt to be put together without much heed to their appropriateness or signification, sometimes with rather droll results. Their names were individual, but every man was also called the son, every woman the daughter, of the father; a custom that has not passed away from some parts of Norway, the Hebrides, or even the remoter parts of Lancashire, where, practically, the people use no surnames. A family was further collectively spoken of by the ancestor’s or father’s name, with the addition of ing, the derivative or patronymic; as, in France, the sons of Meervig were the Meerwingen; the sons of Karl, the Karlingen; not Merovingians and Carlovingians, as Latinization has barbarously made them. Remarkable features, or distinguished actions, often attached soubriquets to individuals, and these passed on, marking off families in the genealogical songs of the Scallds; and from these derivations, as well as from the fertile source of territorial terms, have most of our modern surnames arisen.

The words whence names were compounded were usually the names of deities and those of animals, together with epithets, or terms of office, generally conveying good auguries. They were usually connected with some great hero belonging to the various cycles of myth, in which the Teuton imagination revelled, and which, for the most part, under Christian influence, descended from the divine to the heroic, and then to the fairy tale.

These Teutonic centres of legend may be considered as threefold. There is the great Scandinavian mythological system, as elaborate and as poetical as that of the Greeks, and which belonged in part, at least, to the Goths, Franks, and Saxons, though their early conversion deprived it of five hundred years of development; and Louis le Debonnaire unfortunately destroyed the poetry that would have shown us what it had been among them.

Next, there is the cycle of Romance, represented in Scandinavia by the latter part of the elder Edda and by the Volsunga Saga, in Denmark by the Vilkina Saga, and in the centre of Europe by the Nibelungenlied, where old myths have become heroic tales that have hung themselves round the names of Attila the Hun and Theodoric of Verona, who in Germany is the centre of a great number of ancient legends, once doubtless of deified ancestors.

Thirdly, we have the grand poetical world, in which Charlemagne has been adopted as the sovereign, and Roland as the hero—the world of French romance, Spanish ballad, and Italian poetry, which is to continental chivalry what the Round Table is to our own.

Section I.—Guth.

It is hard to class this first class of names under those of mythology, for they bear in them our own honoured word for the Deity; and though some arose when the race were worshippers of false divinities, yet under the same head are included many given in a Christian spirit.

Some philologists tell us, though they are not unanimous in the explanation, that this name is from the same source as the Sanscrit Svadáta, self-given or uncreate, and as the Zend Quadata, Persian Khoda, and our own Teuton term for Deity—the Northern Gud and Gothic Guth, whence the High German Cot and low German God. Others explain it as the creating or all-pervading. Others, again, derive it from od, possession, and in early Christian times there was a distinction between God (mas.) and the neuter god, an idol. It is equally doubtful whether this divine word be the origin of the adjective, guth, gut, cuot, gode. Whether they are only cognate, or whether they are absolutely alien, and the adjective be related to the Greek ἀγαθός—wherever they come from, the names derived from either God or good are so much alike, as to be inextricably mixed, so that they must be treated of together.

The North is the great region of these names; but they are not very easy to distinguish from the very large class beginning with gund, war, as in pronunciation, and latterly in spelling, the distinctive letters, n and u, get confounded or dropped.

It is probable, however, that among those from Gud we may place Gudhr, which was owned by one of the Valkyrier, the battle maids of northern belief, and must, with her, have meant the brave, or the goddess; Guda was known in Scandinavia; and Germany used the name, till it was translated into Bona or Bonne, and thus passed away.away.

In the northern version of the Nibelungen, the second heroine is Gudruna. The last syllable means wisdom, or counsel; it is the same as rune, the old northern writing, and alludes to the wisdom that Odin won at so dear a rate. Gudruna may then be translated divine wisdom, a name well suited to the inspired priestesses, so highly regarded by the Teutons. It was very common in the North; eighteen ladies so called appear in the Icelandic Landnama; and it was so universal there, that Johann and Gudruna there stand for man and woman, like our N. or M. In Norway, likewise, Gudruna is common; and, near Trondjem, is contracted into Guru; about Bergen, into Gern or Gero. High German tongues rendered it Kutrun.

The Landnama-bok, which gives all the pedigrees of the free inhabitants of Iceland for about four hundred years, namely, from the migration to the twelfth century, gives us Gudbrand, divine staff, now commonly called Gulbrand; Gudbiorg, divine protection; Gudiskalkr, God’s servant, or scholar, which is the very same as Godeskalk, the name assumed by the first Christian prince of the Wends of Mecklenburg, who was martyred by his heathen subjects, and thus rendered Gottschalk a German Christian name; in Illyrian, Gocalak; and known even in Italy as Godiscalco, just like Gildas or Theodoulos. Gudleif is feminine, Gudleifr masculine, for a divine relic; and this last coming to England with the Danes, turned into a surname as Gulleiv, then shortened into Gulley, and lengthened into Gulliver—a veritable though quaint surname for the Lemuel Gulliver whom Swift conducts through Laputa and Brobdignag, with coolness worthy of northern forefathers.

Gudleik, divine service, is, perhaps, repeated by our St. Guthlac; but both these may come from gund. Gudmund contracts into Gulmund, divine protection. Five ladies called Gudny appear, which latter termination is a common feminine form, and comes from the same word as our new. If an adjective, it would mean young and pretty; if a noun, it stands for the new moon, a very graceful name for a woman. Guni is the contraction used in the North.

Gudfinn and Gudfinna must be reminiscences of Finn, whom we shall often meet in the North. Gudrid and Gudridur mean the divine shock or passion, from the word hrid or hrith, one that is constantly to be met with as a termination in northern names, and which has sometimes been taken for the same as frid, with the aspirate instead of the f. Guri is the contraction.

Gudveig’s latter syllable would naturally connect itself with the wig, war, that is found in all the Gothic tongues; but Professor Munch translates it as liquid—divine liquor—the same meaning as Gudlaug and the masculine Gudlaugr; laug, from la, liquor, or the sea. Divine sea, would be a noble meaning for the Gulla or Gollaa to which Gudlaug is commonly reduced in Norway.

Gudvar is divine prudence or caution, the last part being our word ware; in fact, every combination of the more dignified words was used with this prefix in the North, and it was probably the Danes who introduced this commencement into England, for we do not find such in pedigrees before the great irruption in Ethelred I.’s time.

In spite of the romantic story of Earl Godwine’s rise into honour from acting as a guide to a Danish chief, it is certain that he was of an honourable family, of Danish connection, and thus he probably obtained his name, which would mean God’s beloved, and thus translate Theophilos. Few are recorded in history as bearing the same; but there must have been some to transmit the frequent surname of Godwin and Goodwin, the latter connected to our minds with the Goodwin Sands, which were really once the estate of the ambitious earl. Godin is the remains of the same in French. It is found at Cambrai, in 1065, belonging to the “Echanson d'Ostrevant.” The old French word godeau meant a cup, and, as Godin soon became a surname of a family which carried a cup in their arms, there might have been a double allusion to the office of the ancestor and to the sound of the name. Godine and Godinette were also in use there, but were considered as feminines to Goderic—a very old word, which, strange to say, was, at Cambrai, equivalent to fainéant, or ‘ne’er do weel,’ it must be supposed in allusion to some particularly discreditable Goderic, as everywhere else it signifies divine ruler. Our own St. Goderic was an Anglo-Saxon abbot, and the name, which means divine rule, grew so common among the English, that the Norman nobles called Henry I. and his Queen, Godric and Godiva, in derision of the lady’s English blood. Goderic does, indeed, swarm in Domesday Book, and has left the surname Goodrich.

really existed, and was probably Godgifu, the gift of God, like Dorothea, as ive or eva was the Norman rendering of gifu. Her namesakes are in multitudes in Domesday, and, in 1070, one lived in Terouenne, a pious lady, tormented, and at last murdered, by her husband, on which account she was canonized as St. Godeleva.

The High Germans, however, made far more use of this commencement, and won for it the chief honour. The elder forms are according to the harsh old German sounds—Cotahelm, divine helmet, Cotahramn, divine raven, Cotalint, divine serpent! But the more universal spelling prevailed, as Frankish or Allemannic saints came into honour. Gotthard, bishop of Hildesheim, was one of these. His name, which may be rendered divine resolution, or, perhaps, firm through God, was also borne by Godard, abbot of Rouen, and has adhered to the great mountain-pass of the Alps, as well as to families of Godard in France, Goddard in England. In Germany it is still used as a Christian name; and in Lithuania is Gattinsch, Gedderts, or Kodders.

Gottfrid, divine peace, was abbot of St. Quentin early in the eleventh century, and named two godsons, the canonized bishop of Amiens, and the far more famous Gottfried of Lorraine, who might well, as leader of the crusading camp, bequeath his name to all the nations whose representatives fought under him, and thus we find it everywhere. In Florence it has become Giotto, to distinguish the artist who gave us Dante’s face; in Germany, cut down into Goetz, it distinguished the terrible, though simple-hearted, champion with the iron hand, then, falling into a surname, belonged to Göthe. We received our Godfrey from the conqueror of Jerusalem, but previously the Gottfried had been taken up by the French, and was much used by the Angevin counts in the Gallicized form of Geoffroi. In alternation with Foulques, the name continued among the Angevins till they came to the English throne; and then Jaffrez, as the Bretons called the young husband of their duchess Constance, was excited to rebellion by the Provençals as Jaffré. Geoffrey spread among the English, and the Latinizers made it into Galdfridus, which misled Camden into translating it into Glad-peace.

Besides these, Germany has Godegisel, divine pledge; Godebert and Godeberta, divine brightness; and Gottwald, divine power: repeated in Provence by Jaubert.

Germany also has a Gottleip, the same with the old Anglo-Saxon Guthlaf, meaning the leavings of God, or remains of Divinity, but which has been made in modern German into Gottlieb, or love, and contracted in Lower Lusatia into Lipo; in Dantzic, into Lipp. There are several of these modern devotional German names, such as Gottlob, the very same in meaning as belonged to the Speaker of the Rump, Praise God Barebones, but has been continued as Lopo, or Lopko, in Lusatia. In fact, the Moravians use these appellations, and thus we have the modern coinage of Gottgetreu, Gotthilf, and Gotthilfe, and even of Gottsei-mit-dir, much like the Diotisalvi of Italy, and not without parallel among the early Christians.

The Spanish Goths left behind them Guzman, once either divine might (magen), or Man of God. Guzman el Bueno was an admirable early Spaniard, who beheld his own son beheaded rather than surrender the town committed to his keeping. It became a surname, and it may be remembered how Queen Elizabeth played with that of Philip II.’s envoy, when she declared that if the king of Spain had sent her a gooseman, she had sent him a man-goose.

Another old form taken by this word was Geata, or Gautr. It was used as an epithet of Odin, and has been explained by some to mean the keeper, and be derived from geata, to keep; but it is far more likely that it is only another pronunciation of the same term for the All-pervader or Creator.

Gautr is sometimes a forefather, sometimes a son of Odin; and there is a supposed name-father, Gaut, for the Goths of Sweden, whether they are the same as the Goths of Italy and Spain or not.

In this form, Gaut had its own brood of derivatives, chiefly in Sweden, but with a few straying into Germany; such as Gosswin, divine friend, and Gossbert, in Provençal Joubert, Gossfried, which may be the right source of Geoffrey.

The most noted of all is, however, Gotzstaf, or Gozstaf, meaning either the divine staff, or the staff of the Goths. Twice has it been endeared to the Swedes; first by Gustaf Vasa, the brave man who delivered the country from the bondage of the union of Calmar, and whose adventures in Dalecarlia, like those of Bruce in Scotland, were more endearing than even his success. Him the country calls affectionately “Gamle Kong Gosta” and no less was its love and pride in his noble descendant, Gustaf Adolf, “the Lion of the North, the bulwark of the Protestant faith,” who casts the only gleam of brightness over the dull waste of the Thirty Years' War. Thus it is no wonder that so many bear his name, Gustav, Gosta, Gjosta, that it is considered in the North as the national nickname of a Swede; and it has the feminine Gustava.

Section II.—The Aasir.

Tacitus tells us that the supreme god of the Germans was called Esus or Hesus, and though some have thought he meant the Keltic Hu, it is far more likely that he had heard the word As or Æs, the favourite Teutonic term for their divinities.

The word is known in all the Teutonic languages: it is As, Aasir in the North, Os, Es in Anglo-Saxon, and Anseis or Ensi in Gothic and High German. Jornandes tells us that the Goths called their deified ancestors anses, but it is only in the North that the literature of the Pantheon of the race was so developed that we can follow it out.

The Aasir are in northern myth a family like the Olympian gods of Greece; they inhabit Valhalla, and there receive the spirits of the worthy dead, to feast and hunt with them till the general battle and final ruin of all things, when a new and perfect world shall arise.

Blended with this notion there is a grand allegory of the contention between the seasons. The Aasir, or summer gods, are always struggling with the Hrimthusir, or frost powers, and winning the victory over them.

And further, the tradition of a migration from the warmer East, and of the battles with the northern aborigines, is mixed up in the legends, and the Aasir are a band of heroic settlers from Asgard or Asia, who fix themselves in Europe, and become the ancestors of all the various races of Teutons.

So speak the Edda and the various sagas of the North; and though the poetry and legends of the other nations have not come down to us, their use of the names formed from as, os, ans, testifies to their regard for the term as conveying the idea of deity.

To begin with the North, where the pronunciation is the purest, the word in the singular is aas, in the plural, aasir or æsir, and the older form of these names began with the aa, though usually spelt with a single a in Norsk and Icelandic, with an e in Danish. And let it be remembered throughout, that the Northern aa is pronounced like our o.

The Low Germans change the aas into os, and in this way most of the Anglo-Saxon and continental German names commence.

Ans, the High German and Gothic form, occurs in the Frank, Lombardic, and Gothic names. Asgaut or, as the Saxons call it, Osgod, and Asgrim, are both reduplications of divinity.

Asa appears in the Landnama-bok, and Aasir, the collective term for the gods, is used in Norway as a name corrupted into Asser, or Ozer. It is probably the same with Esa, the ancestor of the Bernician kings, who may have used ‘Os’ in compliment to him. Aasketyl is the divine kettle or cauldron, probably connected with creation. It was usually called in the North Askjell, and has the feminine Askatla. Oscetyl, as the Anglo-Saxons spelt it, was used by them in Danish times, when a so-called marauder terribly tormented them; but Frank pronunciation so affected the Normans, that they brought in the name as Ansketil; and a person so called was settled at Winchester in 1148.

Aasbjorn, divine bear, is a queer compound, and so is Aasolfr, or divine wolf; but as will be shown when we come to the beasts themselves, a certain divinity did hedge about these formidable animals in the days of name-coining in the North. The first Asolfr with whom I have met was a Christian, who, with twelve companions, was wrecked upon the shores of Iceland in the interval between its settlement and conversion. They erected buildings, resolutely refused all commerce with the heathen, and lived solely on the produce of their fishing. A church has since been built where they settled. The name has fallen into Asulf in the North, and was paralleled by Osulf in England. As to the divine bear, he had a wider fame, for Asbiorn came among the Northmen to Neustria, and was there Frenchified. An Osborn was the seneschal who was murdered in the sleeping chamber of William in the stormy days of the minority of the future conqueror; and his son, William Fitzosborn, was the chief friend and confidant of the stern victor of Hastings. Osborn figures in Domesday, and has now become a common English surname, which used to be translated house-born, before comparison with the other tongues had shown the true relations of the word. Asbera is the northern feminine.

Esbern Snare, or the swift, the Danish noble, whose heart and eyes were to have furnished Finn’s child with amusement, was really a powerful earl at the end of the twelfth century, and his still more celebrated twin brother, Bishop Absalom, was a great statesman and warrior, and prompted Saxo Grammaticus to write his chronicle of Norway. Bishop Absalom is believed to have, like his brother, received at baptism one of the derivatives from the old gods of Denmark, namely, Aslak, the divine sport or reward, a name which in Denmark and Sweden is always called Axel, in which shape it belonged to Oxenstjerna, the beloved minister of Gustavus Adolphus, and has ever since been a favourite national name. Aslak is in the North pronounced Atlak, and sometimes taken for the original Atli in the Volsunga Saga; but this is far more probably the Tartar Attalik. We had a Bernician Aslak of the like meaning. Never were there a more noted pair of twins than these brothers, of the bear and the sport. Well might their birth be first announced to their absent father, on his return to the isle of Soro, by twin church steeples, built by the mother to greet his eyes over the sea. His name, Askar, or Ansgjerr, divine spear, was so common that sixteen appear in the Iceland roll, and the word Osgar gets confused with the Keltic Oscar, son of Ossian; nay, it may perhaps have been his proper name. A Frank Ansgar, born in Picardy about the year 800, was the apostle of Denmark, and afterwards bishop of Hamburgh and Bremen; he was canonized as Anscharius, and is popularly called in his bishopric St. Scharies, by which title the collegiate church of Bremen is called. It is curious to find the Ansbrando of ancient Lombardy reflected by the Asbrandr, divine sword, of Iceland. Lombardy had likewise Anshelm, the divine helmet, softened down into Anselmo or Antelmo, the name of that mild-natured Lombardic Archbishop of ours, whose constancy cost him so dear in his contention with the furious Rufus and politic Beauclerc. That firmness, however, together with his deep theological writings, won him the honours of sanctity, though it is only on the Continent that his name took root: England had no national love for her Anselm; and he chiefly appears in Italy, France, and Germany, where he has been cut short as Anso, endeared as Ensilo, has a feminine Ansa, and is called by the Jews Anschel.

Of other terms which, like helm, give the idea of protection, there are many; the feminine Asbjorg or Asburg, divine fort, is reflected by the Anglo-Saxon Asburgha. Asgardr, divine guard, may be most probably an allusion to the abode of the gods, Asgard, the abode to which the rainbow-arch Bifrost was the access, trod, according to the grand death song of Eirikr Blodaxe, by the spirits of the courageous dead on their way to feast in the hall of Odin. As men’s names appear the Norwegian Asgard, and Ansgard, a Winchester householder in Stephen’s time; but the Northern feminine Asgerdur is the divine maiden, in honour of the goddess Gerda. Asmundr is the northern form of a favourite name, giving the idea of protecting with the hand. It is called Ansmunt in old German, Osmund in Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French, and in this form was most popular, at first perhaps, from Osmond de Centeville, the brave Norman, who fled from Laon with the young Richard Sans Peur, but afterwards for the sake of a Norman Osmond, who was canonized as Bishop of Salisbury, whence this form in England and Osmont in France have continued. Aasvalldr, divine power, was in Germany Ansvalt, and has modernized as Asvald; but the Anglo-Saxon Oswald was the glory of the name in the Northumbrian monarch, “free of hand,” as even his Welsh foes called him, who has left Oswald to be an English name. Asvor and Asvora express divine prudence.

“Aslaug, dottur Sigurdur Fafnisbana,” is recorded in the Landnama-bok in sober earnest as having married Ragnar Lodbrog.

Divine legacy, or relic, appears in Asleif, the English Oslaf. The northern Aasny, with Ashildur, has always been a favourite. Osthryth, divine threatener, came out of the house of Bernicia into Mercia, where she was murdered by the Danes, and revered as St. Osyth with a priory in her honour.

Thoroughly English are likewise Osmod, divine mood or wrath; Osfrith, divine peace; Osred, divine council; Osgifu, divine gift; Oswine, divine friend, the third of the admirable but short-lived kings of Bernicia; Oswiu, who overthrew him, was probably named from a word meaning sacred, of which more in its place. Osbeorht we share with Germany, which calls it Osbert, and has the feminine Osberta. In fact, most of these names were in use there, beginning with os or ans, according to the dialect in which they were used. Ansgisel was one of the Frankish forms, that section of the race always making much use of gisel, a pledge.^[107]

Section III.—Odin, or Grîmr.

The head of the Aasir was Odin, as we have learned to call him from the North, which worshipped him long after we had forgotten our Wuotan, except in the title of his day of the week. There are various opinions as to the meaning of his name, some making it come from the word for rage in the North, odhr; in A. S., wod; and still wuth in German; and the adjective wud in Scottish. It thus may allude to Odin being the god of storm and tempest. Others take the name from O. G., watan, N., vatha, to pervade, the title of the Divinity, as being through all things. This is, in fact, the same as God.

However this may be, Odin, in the higher myths, is the All-father, standing at the head of Asgard, as Zeus does of Olympus. He governs all things, and knows all things. He obtained this mighty influence, says the Edda, by hanging for nine nights on the world-tree, Yggdrasil, without food or drink, transfixed with a spear, as a self-sacrifice. Then he looked down into the depth, and sank from the tree into it; but in the abyss beneath he drank the costly poet-mead, and learnt powerful songs, obtaining the Runes, the beginning of wisdom, by which he could compel to his will all nature: wind, sea, and fire, hate and love!

Coupled with this entirely divine Odin, there was the abiding notion of ancestry beginning with a god; and no one, of any nobility, was content without having Odin for his forefather. Even when Christianity dethroned Odin from his place in Heaven, he was still retained as a heroic ancestor; and somewhat grotesquely, the old chroniclers, after carrying up their kings to him, brought him down from Noah, and he became reduced to be the leader of the great migration from Asia, while the gods were made his human sons.

We do not find Odin itself forming part of any personal name; it seems to have been avoided as Zeus was in Greece, and, to a greater degree, Jupiter in Rome. But he had no less than forty-nine epithets, all of which are rehearsed in the prose Edda, and his votaries were called by one or other of these.

Finn has been spoken of already as one of these; also Gautr, as one of the forms of divinity. Grîmr is another, coming from the old Norse word grîma, a mask or helmet. Odin was called Grimr, meaning the concealed, or possibly the helmeted; and the names beginning with Grim may generally be referred to the hidden god.

Grîmhild, or in High German, Krimhild, was originally one of the Valkyrier, or choosers of the slain, who was so called, as being endowed with a helmet of terror. Hidden battle-maid, or helmeted battle-maid, would be her fittest translation. In the northern version of the Nibelungenlied, Grimhild is the witch-mother of Sigurd’s wife, Gudrun, and performs a part like that of the Oda, or Uta, in the German and Danish versions, in which the heroine herself is called Kriemhild, or Chriemhild, and does her fatal part in wreaking revenge for the murder of her husband. Grimhhildur was somewhat used in the North, but nothing was so fashionable as Grim, who occurs twenty-nine times in the Landnama-bok, and with equal frequency in Domesday; besides that one of these Danish settlers left his name to Grimsby, in Lincolnshire.

Grim has, of course, his kettle, in the North, Grimketyl, or Grimkjell; in Domesday, Grimchel; an allusion, probably, to creation, quaint as is the sound to our ears. Grimperaht, or helmeted splendour, first was turned into Grimbert, then into the common German surname of Grimmert. Grimar in the North was Grimheri in Germany. Grim was in greater favour as a prefix in the High German dialects than in the North, and chiefly in the Frankish regions.

Grimbald, helmeted prince, was a monk of St. Omer, transplanted by King Alfred to Oxford, in the hope of promoting learning, and he thus became a Saxon saint. Grimvald, helmeted ruler, was a maire du palais in the Faineant times of the Franks; and in Spanish balled el Conde Grimaltos, a knight at the court of Charlemagne, was slandered and driven away with his wife to the mountains, where the lady gives birth to a son, who was baptized Montesinos, from the place of his birth, and educated in all chivalry till he was old enough to go to Charlemagne’s court, refute the slander by the ordeal of battle, and restore his family to favour. Grimaldo was a name borne by the Lombard kings, and left remains in the great Grimaldi family of Genoa.

Most of our English Grims were importations, and there are few of them, though we have Grimulf in Domesday, probably a Dane.

Section IV.—Frey.

Every false religion preserves in some form or other the perception of a Divine Trinity, and the Teutonic Triad consisted of Odin, Frey, and Thor, whose images always occupied the place of honour in the temples, and who owned the three midmost days of the week.

The history of the word freyr is very curious. The root is found in pri, Skt., to love or rejoice, the Zend frî, the Greek φίλος. To be glad was also to be free; so freon or frigon means to free and to love, and thence free in all its forms (N. fri; Goth, frige; H. G. frei; L. G. freoh). Thus, again, the Germans came by froh, and we by fresh. Fro was both glad and dear; and as in Gothic frowida was joy, so is freude in modern German; and we exult in frolics and freaks. He who loved was known by the present participle, frigonds, the friend of modern English, the same in all our Teutonic tongues; and as the effect of love is peace, the term was fred or fried, our Saxon frith, which we have lost in the French-Latin word. To be free was to be noble, so the free noble was Frauja, the name by which Ulfilas always translates Κύριος, in the New Testament, by a beautiful analogy, showing, indeed, that our Lord is our Friend and our Redeemer, loving us, and setting us free.

Frauja, or free, was the lord and master, so his wife was likewise frea, both the beloved and the free woman; the northern frue, German frau, and Dutch vrowe, all, as donna had done in Italy, becoming the generic term for woman.

Out of all the derivatives of this fertile and beautiful term, there were large contributions to mythology, and a great number of names.

Freyr, lord, lover, was once a god of very high rank, lord of sun and moon, hermaphrodite, and regulating the seasons, blessing marriage, and guarding purity: and this was probably a universal idea brought from Asia.

As old notions formed into mythic tales, and the gods grew human, the wife of Odin was invented, and what could she be but the frau, the lady of Asgard, Frigga? Again, Freyr was brought down from his mysterious vagueness, and turned into a nephew of Odin, with the moon to take care of, and, moreover, was disintegrated into a brother and sister, called Freyr and Freya.

The sixth day of the week had probably originally belonged to Freyr, but Frigga got possession of it; and, in right of her presiding over love and marriage, she was considered to be Venus; and in France and Italy her day is still Vendredi and Venerdì, while we have it as Friday, the Germans as Freitag, the North as Fredag.

Freya is also a goddess of love, and drives over every battle-field with her car drawn by cats (once, perhaps, panthers, like those of Bacchus, whom her brother is thought to resemble), and chooses half the slain, whom she marshals to their seats at the banquet of Valhalla. Her husband, Othur or Odhr, curiously repeats Odin’s name, as she does Frigga’s. She weeps continually drops of gold when he is absent, and the metal is poetically called Freya’s tears.

Her brother, Freyr, was always a chaste, dignified, beneficent personage, a sort of severe Bacchus, or grave Apollo. In the great final battle, he is to be destroyed by Surti. He is the tutelary god of Sweden, as was Odin of the Saxons.

There are hosts of names connected with these deities, or the words sprung from their source. Frith in Saxon, frey or freya in the North, fried in German, falling in France into froi, was a favourite termination generally masculine, and so probably in honour of Freyr; and though it is safe to translate it peace, it probably also meant freedom.

Old Spanish has Froila, or Fruela, among the kings of the Asturias, and this may be translated lord, and compared with the Freavine, or Frowin, free darling, now become Frewen. Franta, too, was a king of the Spanish Suevi.

Fritigern, king of the Visigoths, who first fixed himself on the Danube, bore the name afterwards Frideger (spear of peace), in Germany, a compound much resembling that borne by that Jezebel of the Meerwings, Fredegunt, or Frédégonde, as she is called by French historians. Freygerdur ofof the North, as found in the Landnama-bok, serving four men and two women, is there explained either as freedom-preserver, or peace-keeper.

But what is to be said of Fridthjof, or Frithjof, the renowned hero of the Frithjofsaga, being no better than peace-thief? Northern pirates thought no scorn of being thieves, and we shall fall on plenty more of them; but the compound is certainly startling.

Fridulf, or Fridolf, peace wolf, is nearly as bad; but it seems to have contracted into Friedel in Germany, and expanded into Fridolin, probably in imitation of Fedlim, or some such Erse name, since the saint thus recorded in the calendar is one of the many Scottish missionaries of the fifth century, who preached to the Burgundians. He is the titular patron of the Swiss canton of Glarus, whose shield bears his figure in the Benedictine dress he never wore. Thence Schiller took the name of the youth in his ballad on the strange adventure of Isabel de la Paz of Portugal, which is best known through Retzch’s illustrations. The German Friedel must be short for this, as Frider is for Fridheri, peace-warrior. In fact, Germany is the great land of this commencement, and has fostered the best known of the whole. There was indeed a Fridrikr in the Landnama-bok, and a Fredreg, or Frederic, in Domesday, but these would have been forgotten but for an old Frisian bishop, Freodhoric, who, in the time of Louis le Debonnaire, had been murdered while praying in his chapel, and being canonized, was a patron saint of the Swabian house. Friedrich with the red beard, or Barbarossa, a Ghibelline hero, caused Federigo to be popular among that party in Italy; and when his Neapolitan grandson’s claims to the kingdom of the Two Sicilies had been transmitted, through Manfred’s daughter, to the Aragonese monarchs, Fadrique became usual in Spain. Friedrich had grown national in Germany, and not a king of Prussia till the present has reigned without being so called, in compliment to their hero, who, while the soldiers called him Old Fritz, thought it graceful to write himself Frédéric, having with his French tastes, taken a dislike to the sound of his own name, even in the softened spelling of his adopted language. It was from the father of this monarch that the son of George II. was called Frederick, a name we have twice had next in succession to the crown. The Danes obtained the name from their German connections, and make it alternate on the throne with Christiern. The feminine is a late invention in Germany, very common there but barely recognized elsewhere.

Probably this popular Frederick has devoured all the other forms with the same commencement; for after the middle ages had fairly begun, we hardly ever hear of the German Fridrad, Fridrada, Fridhelm, Fridrun, Fridbald, Fridbert, Fridburg, Fridgard, Fridilind. Fridmund, peace protection, Fridwald, peace-power, has been preserved in Friesland as Fredewolt, Fredo, or Freddo. Fridleifr in the North has fallen into Friedlieb in Germany: it is the same as the Frithlaf whom our Saxon chroniclers bestowed on Wuotan by way of ancestor.

Our own Saxon saint, Frithswith, strong in peace, was the daughter of the Lord of Oxford, in the eighth century. She lived in a little cell at Thornbury, had various legendary adventures, which may be seen portrayed in a modern window of the cathedral at Oxford, and became the saintly patroness of the University and Cathedral, where, by the name of St. Fridiswid, she reigned over Alma Mater, till Wolsey laid hold of the church and its chapter for his own splendid foundation of Christchurch. Frethesantha Paynell was wife of Geoffrey Lutterell, about the fourteenth century; and Fridiswid is by no means uncommon in the old genealogies of Essex and the northern counties. Alban Butler gives Frewissa as the contraction; but in Ireland, according to Mr. Britton’s capital story of The Election, it is Fiddy.

From frei, free, modern Germany has taken Freimund, by which they mean Freemouth, though it ought to be free protection, Freimuth, free courage, Freidank, free thought. But the older word for free plays a far more important part in modern nomenclature, namely, Frang, the High German form of free lord.

The nation called Cherusci by Tacitus denominated themselves Frangen when they warred on northern Gaul, overspread it, and termed it for themselves Frankreich. As their primary energy decayed their dominion divided; Frankenland, under the Latinism of Franconia, became leagued with the lands of the Swabians, Allemanni, and Saxons, and thus became part of Deutschland and of the Holy Roman Empire, while Frankreich was leavened by the Gallo-Romans, who worked up through their Frank lords, and made their clipped Latin, or Langue d’oui^[108] (the tongue of aye), the national language, and yet called themselves Les Français, and the country France. And as the most enthusiastic and versatile of the European commonwealth, they so contrived to lead other nations, and impress their fashions on them, that the Eastern races regarded all Europeans as Franks, called their country Franghistan, and the patois spoken by them in the Levant became Lingua Franca.

Franc, or Franco, was the archbishop of Rouen who made terms with Rollo; but the name of real fame arose otherwise.

Long before the emperor Charles V. had pronounced French to be the language for men, an Italian merchant of Assisi caused his son, Giovanni, to be instructed in it as a preparation for commerce. The boy’s proficiency caused him to be called ‘il Francesco,’ the Frenchman, until the baptismal Giovanni was absolutely forgotten; and as Francesco he lived his ascetic, enthusiastic life; as Franciscus was canonized; and the mendicant order, humbly termed by him fratres minores, lesser brethren, were known as Franciscans throughout the Western Church.

Many a little Italian of either sex was christened by his soubriquet, and though one of the first feminines on record was the unhappy lady whose fall and doom Dante made famous, yet the sweet renown of the devout housewife, Santa Francesca di Roma, assisted its popularity; there was a Françoise at Cambrai even in 1300, and Cecarella is the peasant mother of a damsel in the Pentamerone.

San Francesco di Nola reformed the Franciscans into a new order, called the Minimi, or least, as the former ones were the Minores. It is to him that the spread of the name beyond the Alps is chiefly owing, for Louise of Savoy was so devoted to him, that she made him sponsor and name-father to her passionately loved son, and sewed his winding-sheet with her own hands.

The name was not absolutely new to France, for that of the grandson of the first Montfort, Duke of Brittany, had been Fransez, and so had been that of the father of the Duchess Anne, who carried her old Keltic inheritance to the crown of France; but it was her daughter’s husband, François I., the godson of the saint of Nola, who was the representative Frenchman, the type of showy and degenerate chivalry; and thus spread François and Françoise universally among the French nobility, where they held sway almost exclusively till the memories of the House of Valois had become detestable; but by that time the populace were making great use of it, and at the present time it is considered as so vulgar that a French servant in England was scandalized that a child of the family should be called Francis.

Franz von Sickingen is an instance that already Germany knew the name; but it did not take root there at once. The grandchildren of François I., intermarrying with the house of Lorraine, rendered his namesakes plentiful, both in the blood-stained younger branch of Guise, and in the dull direct stem, the continuation of the Karlingen, who at length, by the marriage with Maria Theresa, were restored to the throne of Charlemagne, in the person of him whom the classicalizing Germans termed Franciskus I. This cumbrous form is still official, but Franz is the real name in universal use in the German parts of the Austrian Empire, though the Slavonic portions generally use the other end of the word, as Zesk.

It was the same gay French monarch who sent us our forms of the name. Mary Tudor, either in gratitude for his kindness, or in memory of her brief queenship of France, christened her first child Frances—that Lady Frances Brandon whose royal blood was so sore a misfortune to her daughters, and who had numerous namesakes among the maidens of the Tudor court; but they do not seem to have then made the distinction of letter that now marks the feminine, and they used what is now the masculine contraction. “Frank, Frank, how long is it since thou wast married to Prannel?” was the rebuke of the Duke of Richmond to his Howard lady when he was pleased to take down her inordinate pride, by reminding her of her youthful elopement with a vintner.

The modern Fanny is apparently of the days of Anne, coming into notice with the beautiful Lady Fanny Shirley, who made it a great favourite, and almost a proverb for prettiness and simplicity, so that the wits of George II.’s time called John, Lord Hervey, ‘Lord Fanny,’ for his effeminacy. Fanny, like Frank, is often given at baptism instead of the full word; and, by an odd caprice, it has lately been adopted in both France and Germany instead of their national contractions.

The masculine came in at the same time, and burst into eminence in the Elizabethan cluster of worthies—Drake, Walsingham, Bacon; but it did not take a thorough hold of the nation, and was much left to the Roman Catholics. It was not till Frank had been restricted to men that it took hold of the popular mind, so as to become prevalent.

The original saint of Assisi made devout Spaniards use Francisco and Francisca, before the fresh honour won for the first by two early Jesuits—the Duke of Gandia, the friend and guide of Charles V., and Xavier, the self-devoted apostle of the Indies. His surname has thrown out another stock. It is in itself Moorish, coming from the Arabic Ga’afar, splendid, the same as that of our old friend, the Giaffar of the Arabian Nights, the Jaffier of old historians. Wherever Jesuits have been, there it is; Savero in Italy, Xavier in France, Xaverie in Wallachia, Xavery in Poland, Saverij in Illyria; Xaveria for the feminine in Roman Catholic Germany, marking the course of the counter-Reformation. Even Ireland deals in Saverius, or Savy, though when English sailors meet a Spanish negro called Xaver, they call him Shaver! Savary de Bohnn, whom Dugdale places under Henry I., was probably a form of Sigeheri, or Saher, which may have been absorbed by Xaver in Roman Catholic lands.