Section XVIII.—Forefathers.

The deification of forefathers, or the claim to divine origin, whichever it might be, led to the employment, as a prefix, of the very word that expressed them—that word which we use still at the beginning of ancestors, and that the Germans call ahnen. In old German the singular was ano, and it signified a remote forefather. The Rigsmaal, an old Icelandic poem which explains the origin of the various castes which the northern races acknowledged, represents Heimdall, the porter of heaven, as wandering to the earth, and being entertained by Ai and Edda, or great-grandfather and great-grandmother, who lived in a lowly hut; then by Avi and Amma (Lat. Avus), or grandfather and grandmother, who had a comfortable dwelling-house; and lastly by Fadher and Modher, whose abode was a splendid mansion. The son of Edda was Thrall; the son of Amma was Karl; the son of Modher was Jarl; and from these descended the three castes of the North—the thralls, or slaves; the churls, bondr, or farmers; and the jarls, or nobles.

This is an absolute mythic allegory by way of explanation of existing circumstances; but the names therewith connected mostly survived, though they refer to these mere embodiments of abstract ideas.

Ai, or ani, enters into the composition of the Icelandic Anar, ancestral warrior, and thus, no doubt, contributed to form our surname of Anson, which, like almost all our great naval names, thus traces back to some ancient viking, who has done us at least as much good as evil, by leaving us his sons to keep all other invaders from our shores.

The old Saxon histories call some of these enemies by the name of Anlaff, in particular the chief who visited King Æthelstan’s tent in a minstrel’s disguise, and betrayed himself by burying the guerdon that he was too proud to keep. The same persons whom England called Anlaff, and Ireland Amlaidh, were, in the North, Alafr, or Olafr, according to the custom of pronouncing the diphthong a like an o, and then so spelling it, e.g., Aasbiorn, Osbiorn. The latter syllable is laf or leif, from the verb lev, the Anglo-Saxon leafan, our own leave. It is a word that never is used as a commencement, and but rarely stands alone, though the North sometimes has a Leifr, and it is used in the sense of what is remaining. Anlaff, or Olaf, is thus what is left of his forefathers, his ancestor’s relic, and a very notable relic was the gallant king Olaf Trygveson, the prime hero of the Heimskringla, whose last battle is so nobly described there. Scarcely less noble is his relative, Olaf the saint, the ally of England, who fought her battles near London-bridge, and has left his name to the church of St. Olave, near the site of the battle, though, unluckily, English tongues made him St. Toly. St. Olaf was over-harsh in his endeavours to introduce Christianity to his subjects, and perished in a war with the rebels, assisted by Knut of Denmark and England; but his name continued glorious, and another royal St. Olaf, in Sweden, assisted to make it one of the most national of Scandinavian names, even to the present day.

Its Latinism is Oläus, and its contraction Ole, or, rather, this answers to the very old Aale, which, in its turn, answers to the Analo, Anilo, Anelo, of the old Germans.

Leif, or laf, we shall often meet as a termination, both in the North and in Germany, where it generally becomes leib or lip, and then the modern Germans take it for love, and thus have changed the old Gottleip into Gottleib. In the North it has scarcely fared better, especially in the case of Thorleif, or Thor’s relic, who changed from Tholleiv to Thoddeiv, or Tadeiv, on the one hand, and on the other, to Tellev, which, thanks to some classically-disposed clergyman, has been written Teleph, and referred to the Greek Telephus.

Of the other names connected with the Rigsmaal, we find Edda, the great-grandmother, giving title to the ancient poem on cosmogony and mythology that may be regarded as the parent of all the northern songs. Thrall was likewise, in spite of its meaning, used as a name.

The next generation, Avi, Amma, and the son Karl, are the prominent ones. The equivalent of Karl, Bondr, a farmer, is now and then a northern name; but it is the great Frank Karling line whose names so curiously answer to these.

Were they of the middle class of landholders, and were they proud of it, and anxious to trace their connection back to the grandfather, grandmother, and churl? Whether there were a Frank version of the Rigsmaal we do not know, but the leading name of the family was Karl, the churl (of which more in its relation to the cycle of Romance), and it is found in constant company with Amma, or Emma, and alternates with one that almost certainly represented Avi, or grandfather.

Charles, Pepin l'Heristal, Charles Martel, Pepin le Bref, Charles the Great, is the succession till the alternation was broken by the death of Pepin, the eldest son of Charles the Great. Now this most undignified Pepin is traced by the best authorities to be one of the many forms of the primitive and universal abba, father, papa, and to answer to the old German names of Bobo, Bobbo, and Poppo. And it is not, therefore, probable that Pepin and Emma stood for the northern Avi and Amma, both alike with the son Karl?

Amme, or Emma, no doubt formed by the first lispings of a child, is amme, a nurse, in Germany, and ama, a housekeeper, in Spain. As a name, it was at first exclusively Frank, and used by the Karling daughters. The first Emma mentioned was the daughter of Charlemagne; and the sister of Hugh Capet, who married Richard the Fearless, of Normandy, was likewise so called. Her granddaughter was the wife, first of Ethelred the Unready, then of Knut, and the supposed heroine of the ordeal of the ploughshares. Emma was considered as so un-English that her name was translated into Ælfgifu. However, we find ‘Emme’ among the daughters of Dru de Baladon, who came over with the Conqueror, and thus ‘Emm’ and ‘Emr’ are by no means uncommon in the registers of Yorkshire and Durham, even down to the seventeenth century. Then Prior, when modernizing and sentimentalizing the beautiful ballad of the Nut Browne Maid, supposed to be on the history of the shepherd Lord Clifford, called it Henry and Emma, whence it became rather a favourite romantic name of literature. Clergymen were apt to use it, in Latin registers, as a translation of Amy, as well as of its own Em. It is also confounded with Emily, and at the present day recurs extremely often in England, while it is almost disused in France, its native home. The Welsh use it as a translation of Ermin, probably a legacy of the Roman Herminii. Emmott is another old name of northern England, probably amplified from Em; but Emeline, as has been already said, is far more probably Amalina than any relation to Emma.

Jarl, as might be expected, was a very favourite eponym; but not in the same pronunciation; for it first became Irl, then Erl, in nomenclature. Erling, a name much used by the Norsemen, and often corrupted into Elling, is the son of the earl; and the Swedish once had a Jarlar, or earl-warrior, who changed into Erlher, Erlo, Erlebald, Erlebrecht, Erlhild.

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 manemane.

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]

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]

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.

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.

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]

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]

‘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.

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,
  Arngrimur, } or Angrim,
  eagle mask;
• Arnkatla,
  Arnkjell, } eagle cauldron;
• Arnlaug, eagle liquor;
• Arnleif, eagle relic;
• Arnliotr, eagle wanderer;
• Arnmodur
  or Armodr, } eagle wrath;
• 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.

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]