Alliteration As An Aid: What's in a Name?

A lot of people tell me that they find the 'Anglo-Saxon' personal names quite challenging, and I know what they mean: all those Æthels and Ælfs... 

They are tricky partly because they come from what is essentially a different language. But then so do Spanish and French names, and we don't struggle so much with them. I think the main reason Old English names are difficult is because they use letters which we don't use any more, such as the Æ diphthong, which is very common. 

Æthelwulf of Wessex

And, the 'Anglo-Saxons' didn't have surnames. If you were to talk about Henry VIII's various advisers and members of the court, and take away their surnames, you'd find an awful lot of people with the exact same name. Wolsey, Cranmer, Cromwell, More, Tallis, Wyatt, Boleyn: all had the name Thomas.

Apparently, when Henry the Young King (eldest son of Henry II) held his Christmas court in Normandy in 1171, it was said that the guests included no fewer than 110 knights all called William.*

I know that the Æthels and Ælfs can be utterly confusing but sometimes it helps to look at the second part of the name, where, unlike the Thomas' and Williams, they alter slightly. Mostly, the Old English names are compounds, and Æthel means noble. So Æthelwine has two elements, noble being the first, and wine (friend), being the second, while Æthelred, or more properly Æthelræd, means noble counsel (ræd = counsel). I wrote a post a while ago about these various names, but this time I want to talk about what historians have gleaned, or surmised, from looking at these names; in particular, alliteration.

There was certainly a tendency for various royal houses to have alliterative names. Names beginning with Cyne or Cen can often be associated with the kingdom of the West Saxons, which is why King Penda of Mercia's wife Cynewise is often presumed to have hailed from there. It doesn't always work, for there were plenty of Mercians with those names too, but often they are assumed to have descended from a branch of the family descended from a West Saxon.

Alliteration can help with identification in some cases. Because all these people came from the royal family of Kent - Eormenred, Eorconeberht, Eormenhild, Eorcongota, it's likely that a bishop named Eorcenwald did too.

If the name is Sigeheard, Sigered, Sigeric, Sæberht Sexred, or Saeward, then they're probably a member of the East Saxon royal house. But there were plenty of 'Siges' who were Kentish nobility too, so it doesn't always work. 

St Seaxburh - image attribution link

The name element Seax is more commonly found among the East Saxons than the West. Yet even here it's not failsafe, as Seaxburh, queen then abbess, was actually the daughter of an East Anglian king.

In seventh-century Mercia, King Penda, menitoned above, had rather a lot of offspring. One of his sons had an odd name, which has the element walh, which can mean Welshman, foreigner, or even slave. It's unlikely that this man was a slave, but he might have been Welsh. Anyway, historians have sometimes argued that he couldn't have been Penda's son because his name, unlike another of Penda's sons, Peada, didn't alliterate. Personally, I don't think Merewalh, for that was his name, was Penda's son, but not because of the alliteration argument, which falls down when you look at all of Penda's other children:

sons Wulfhere and Æthelred, and daughters, Cyneburh, Cyneswith and possibly Cynethryth. There may have been two other daughters, Saints Edith and Eadburh and another possible daughter, Wilburg.

So not much alliteration there really, certainly not with Penda's name, and only one Æthel too! ** 

However, Merewalh's family certainly all belonged together. By two wives, he had:

daughters Mildburg, Mildrith and Mildgyth,
and sons, Merchelm, Mildfrith and Merefin.

Alliteration can, then, indeed indicate close family ties. But it shouldn't be relied upon. One historian looked at the circumstances of one of Penda's daughter-in-law, a lady by the name of Osthryth, who married Penda's son Æthelred. She was the daughter of Penda's enemy, Oswiu of Northumbria and the reason for, and the timing of, the marriage are somewhat hazy. The main thing about Osthryth is that she was killed (by Mercian nobles), and no reason was given in the chronicles.

A tribe of the midlands, the Hwicce, originally had their own kings, who gradually got demoted to subkings of Mercia. Some of them had alliterative names, such as Oshere, Oswald and Osred. One historian suggested that these people were somehow related to the Northumbrian kings, Oswald and Oswiu. Oshere of the Hwicce was also a possible murder victim and the argument was that the Hwicce royals were all members of a branch of the Northumbrian royal house, trying to overthrow the Mercians, and that Osthryth was part of that plot, and was murdered because of it. It's not a theory that is given much credence by other historians.

Alfred's Will

However, another 'Os' connection has been argued. It is thought by some that Alfred the Great had a bastard son. Alfred’s will contained a bequest for a man named Osferth who is described as the king’s kinsman. He also appears in a charter of Alfred’s son Edward, where he is described at the king's brother (frater regis). But it seems unlikely that he was Alfred's illegitimate son. Historian Simon Keynes says that the name suggests a relationship to the family of Osburh, Alfred’s mother. Alternatively, he might have been a son of Oswald filius regis who attested at least three charters and might have been a son of Alfred’s brother Æthelred. In both cases, alliteration of names directs the argument.

In other cases, non-alliteration can be powerfully suggestive. Alfred the Great did have plenty of legitimate children and those who survived beyond infancy were:

Æthelflæd, the first-born daughter, Edward, who ruled Wessex after his father, then two more daughters, Æthelgifu and Ælfthryth, and another son, Æthelweard. Interestingly, the only one there who is neither an Æthel or an Ælf is Edward. It has been suggested*** that he was named after his Mercian maternal grandmother, Eadburh. (Edward would have been spelled Eadward, so the first element of both names would be identical.)

Margaret arrives in Scotland

Queen Margaret of Scotland had an interesting lineage. The daughter of a man who so very nearly could have been an English king, she was [probably] born in Hungary and came to England with her father, who was the son of Edmund Ironside, but had to flee when her brother Edgar, involved in the resistance against William of Normandy, found life in England a little perilous. The family landed in Scotland, which might or might not have been deliberate, and the benefits of an alliance quickly became clear. Margaret was married to Malcolm of Scotland and made a successful life in her adopted country. Her children were a huge part of her legacy. Matilda married Henry I of England, bringing English blood back in to the monarchy there. Margaret's children took precedence over Malcolm's children by his first wife, but it may also be significant that some of them were given very English names. Of her eight children with Malcolm, four were:

Edward, Edmund, Ethelred, Edgar and indeed Matilda is said by some to have been christened Edith. 

Surely no one in the Scottish court by this stage could have thought for a moment that Margaret and Malcolm's children had any chance of sitting on the English throne, nor is it at first glance likely that Margaret thought of herself as English. And yet, she did much to help displaced Englishmen, and her biographer, who also happened to have been her chaplain, said that her first language was English. Was the naming of her children a nod to her English heritage, a reminder of her illustrious ancestry or was it perhaps even a signal of defiance? 

Although Edgar, Edward and Edith are easier names there were still a lot of Æthels and Ælfs in the later period, but in time the Danes came along and helped a bit, bringing some Harolds and Sweins into the mix. 

But no, it's not easy making head and tail of Old English names. Sometimes they can provide a clue to family identity and sometimes they can't. Alliteration is fascinating, but it can't be relied upon. Surnames though, well, they'd have definitely helped.


*Thanks to Charlene Newcomb for this nugget.
**However, it must be said that Penda's wife was called Cynewise, so maybe the daughters, the ones we're sure about, were all given names that alliterated with hers. For more on who Penda's children were, and whether they were full or half-siblings, see http://mybook.to/MerciaRiseandFall
*** By historian Pauline Stafford

Kings' Sons Who Didn't Make It

There are some well-known younger sons in history, who became kings because their elder brothers died young, or left no heirs. 

Henry II was succeeded by more than one of his sons, the last being John. 

Edward III should have been succeeded by his son, the Black Prince. Had he been, perhaps the Wars of the Roses would never have happened.

Henry VII should have been followed by his eldest son Prince Arthur, but instead the country got Henry VIII and the seismic changes which accompanied his reign.

Henry VIII then of course famously had a bit of difficulty siring a legitimate male heir and the one he finally produced, Edward VI, also died whilst still a teenager. What would the country have been without the reigns of Mary I or Elizabeth I?

Charles I was not destined to rule; his elder brother Henry was the heir, but died when still a teenager. Would there have been civil war if Henry had lived and reigned?


Back in Anglo-Saxon times there were also some occasions where the elder brothers' deaths had far-reaching consequences.

A few instances even in the early part of the period leave me thinking, what if?

Offa of Mercia went to a great deal of time and trouble to secure the legitimate succession of his son, Ecgfrith. Offa and his predecessor, Æthelbald, were only distantly related, and neither was directly related to the kings who had come before. In Mercia during the eighth century there were several contenders for the throne upon every death of the king, and Offa was determined to make the way easier for Ecgfrith. Bloodshed was one of the preferred methods, and letters show that it was not approved of . Alcuin of York wrote a letter in 797 in which he said of Ecgfrith: 'You know very well how much blood his father shed to secure the kingdom on his son.'

But Offa went further, having Ecgfrith anointed by Hygeberht, bishop of Lichfield. (It's probable that the archbishop of Canterbury had refused to do it.)

It was all for nothing, however. Ecgfrith died only a few months after becoming king. The history of Mercian kingship for the next almost one hundred years is one of rival families vying for the throne. The secure dynasty which Offa envisaged was not to be. It might not be stretching a point to suggest that had there been a stronger dynasty, Mercia would have remained an independent kingdom instead of being absorbed by Wessex.

Probably one of the most famous kings who should never have expected to rule was Alfred the Great. He was the youngest of the five sons of King Æthelwulf of Wessex (839-858.)

Æthelwulf went on pilgrimage in 855, taking with him his youngest son, Alfred, and leaving his domains in the hands of his eldest son Æthelbald (Wessex) and second eldest Æthelberht (Kent and the Southeast.) When he returned, he had with him his new wife, Judith of Flanders.

The welcome was perhaps not what he was expecting.  Æthelbald refused to hand back Wessex, and for a while the kingdom was divided - although historians argue the precise nature of this division. Upon his father's death, Æthelbald married his stepmother Judith, which earned him the opprobrium of the chroniclers, particularly Asser, who said that his actions were 'against God's prohibition and Christian dignity, and also contrary to the practice of all pagans ... incurring great disgrace from all who heard of it.' Asser went on to report that the king controlled Wessex for only two and half 'lawless' years after his father.

So the crown passed to his brother, Æthelberht, but he died in 865, and was succeeded by the next brother, Æthelred, who died in 871. He had children, one of whom later rebelled, but who must have been too young to rule in 871. Thus Alfred, the fifth son, became king. 

His grandson, Athelstan, famous victor of the battle at Brunanburh, was said to have been a particular favourite of Alfred's. But he was not supposed to be king.

When Alfred's son, Edward the Elder, died in 924, it seems that his legitimate son, Ælfweard, was declared king in Wessex, while it's generally accepted that the supposedly illegitimate Athelstan was chosen as king of the Mercians. The case might not have been quite so simple, but it's irrelevant because a mere sixteen days later, Ælfweard was dead. Another brother, Edwin, described as a king by Folcwin, deacon of St Bertins, drowned in rather suspicious circumstances. 

Athelstan died without issue and the throne passed to two of his half-brothers, and eventually to the young son of one of those half-brothers. This young son, Eadwig, was famous for having reportedly being caught in bed with his wife and her mother, and banishing the cleric, later saint, Dunstan. He lost half his kingdom two years later and was dead by the age of nineteen. He was almost universally loathed, whereas his younger brother, who succeeded, was known as Edgar the Peaceable, whose reign was free from Viking raids, and renowned for monastic reform.

Edgar

Edgar left two sons, the eldest of whom, Edward the Martyr, gained a reputation for having a fierce temper. He was king only for three years and his murder - said by some to have been arranged by his stepmother - ushered in the long, and troubled, reign of Æthelred, whose nickname was Unræd (ill-counselled.)

This reign saw the renewal of Viking raids, and the invasion forces of Swein Forkbeard and then his son, Cnut. Fighting Cnut for control of the country was  Æthelred's son, later known as Edmund Ironside. Energetic, successful as a military commander, he was nothing like his father. Unfortunately, as mentioned in my last blog post he died, possibly murdered, in 1016. He was probably still only in his twenties. 

In fact, Edmund was a son who didn't make it, having followed a brother who didn't make it. His brother, Athelstan, died while still young, and left a will which provides a wealth of information. From it, we learn that his grandmother, usually reviled for her supposed involvement in the murder of Edward the Martyr, played a huge part in his upbringing. It also shows that he was good friends with a family of Mercians who had strong links with Edmund Ironside.

With some of these cases, it might have been viewed as a good thing that the reigns were cut short; Eadwig, who tried to buy the loyalty of his noblemen, was perhaps no huge loss to the monarchy. Edward the Martyr was not shaping up to be the tactician that his father Edgar had been. 

But the loss of Edmund Ironside was perhaps more significant. He didn't die without issue, but these Anglo-Saxons' nicknames are very telling. Edmund's son became known as Edward the Exile, because he spent a considerable amount of his life abroad, some of it in Hungary. His son was a contender, for a while, for the throne in 1066. But whilst being a teenager was no bar for succession, by the time Edward the Confessor died, powerful court factions and a family named the Godwines had changed the political landscape. 

All these kings feature in my book, Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom, available HERE or HERE

Televising the past - truth or fairy tales?

How much does the 'story' part of history matter?


If you are going to teach history you need to teach the facts, right? Films and TV dramas that mess with those facts are irresponsible, misleading and wrong. Right?  That 'awful film' Braveheart that got the Battle of Stirling Bridge so badly wrong - removing the bridge from the retelling - and that terrible series The Tudors which didn't even bother to slap a ginger beard on Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Tut tut. This will never do.

image - picturespider.com

Except ...

Well, how about going back to the beginning - and no, I don't mean pre-history - to take a look at how history should or shouldn't be taught in schools.

Richard Kennett, teacher and contributor to BBC Radio 4's Making History wrote insightfully in History Today magazine: "Narrative at school is often a dirty word ... as teachers we scrawl ... 'stop telling the story' in the margins of essays as if this was an insult to history." He went on to say, "Children love a story and what makes history great is that these are stories that actually happened. Tell your students about the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170. Four knights entering Canterbury Cathedral and lopping off the head of an archbishop. What more could you ask for to grab the attention of a class?"

image - guardian.com

So, does it matter if that story deviates a little from the truth?

The strange thing about story-telling, when it comes through the medium of film or TV, is that by masking the facts one can sometimes interest viewers sufficiently to lead them to discover the truth:

Let's go back to that terrible series The Tudors. Perhaps I'm an equally terrible parent but I allowed my youngest child, then aged about 12 or 13, to watch it. She loved it; initially, I suspect, because she was rather taken with the aforementioned Mr Rhys Meyers, and possibly the equally fine Henry Cavill as Suffolk. When we took a family holiday to Ireland she was keen to see some of the locations used for filming, such as Kilruddery House, pictured below

blogger's own photo

but she was equally interested when we visited places which were associated with historical characters

blogger's own photo

such as Ormonde Castle and Manor House, above. Here, she learned how Francis Bryan, 'the one with the eye patch', married Lady Joan Fitzgerald, widow of the 9th Earl. Okay, so apparently the dating of his arrival at court and the appearance of the eye patch were a little wonky (pun intended), but hey, she knew who he was. The series brought my daughter to explore the history and associations with the houses we saw in Ireland. When I then quietly explained that Henry didn't look like that, and that he had two sisters, not one - she accepted it, and amended her 'knowledge' accordingly.

So what about Braveheart? It's all wrong, wrong wrong. The battle was on a bridge, not in a great big field. He's depicted having an affair with a princess who was actually only about ten when he was executed. He was a lowlander, not a highlander, so he wouldn't have worn the plaid etcetera etcetera.

image - thedennisjonestumblr.com

BUT - if you get that Edward I was trying to smash the Scots, if you get that Wallace 'succeeded at Stirling, failed at Falkirk', should we get too hung up? I happen to think that the film offered a realistic view of how the world looked at that time, how bloody and thunderingly loud the battles were and how chaotic the business was of the Scottish succession in this period. Such images surely serve to give people a better idea of history than none at all? 

Ian Mortimer, author and historian, makes the argument that academic debates are but a small part of history and that "The vast bulk of history lies elsewhere ... in the biographies and general history books. It lies in the television programmes that bring key themes to the attention of millions overnight."

The Braveheart film spawned many serious documentaries detailing what is known about Wallace's life, which surely reached a larger audience than they would have done had the film not been made.


But how far can you go to make it a good story before it deviates and stops being history? I'm thinking immediately of the film A Knight's Tale - but, if it gets people interested in Chaucer by thinking he looked like Paul Bettany...

My A levels studies of Bismarck and the unification of Germany were much enhanced by my notion that Bismarck looked like Oliver Reed, who played him in the Flashman film.  (And I can't help wondering how more recent students will have enjoyed studying the Napoleonic era now that they can picture Richard Sharpe charging around capturing Eagles). Sharpe was fictional, but boy can we all now picture what the battles of the Peninsular War looked like...

Probably one of the most earnest historical films was Mary Queen of Scots which was made in 1971 and starred two of the most talented and respected actresses of their generation: Glenda Jackson and Vanessa Redgrave. Yet even here, there was an erroneous scene depicting the two queens meeting, which has never been proven to have happened. Did it spoil my learning or understanding? Nope.

Some years ago I visited Dover castle at the beginning of a project to redecorate some of the rooms in the Great Tower. Now it's finished, and they depict how these rooms would have looked at the time of Henry II. 

image - English Heritage

Better, perhaps, to reconstruct, to avoid the lament which my own children chanted regularly when we were on holiday: "Not another castle, please, Mummy." I still recall their glee when we went to one that "Actually has a roof on it!" How much better it is for children to 'see' what the past might have looked like.

When I was a child, a joke, (admittedly a bad one) had a mother lemming asking her child, "If your friends asked you to jump off a cliff, would you?" Now we know that lemmings don't have suicidal tendencies, but it's a bit mealy-mouthed to point it out and spoil the joke. Sometimes we have to go with the accepted 'truth', the one that engages people, gets them interested.

Susannah Lipscomb, Convenor for History and Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the New College of the Humanities, London recently remarked : "As a Tudor historian I am bothered slightly less by the fact that the TV drama The Tudors had a tendency to conflate characters, rearrange historical events and compress time than by the underlying conviction that, if you can strip away all the guff about faith and politics and honour, you will discover that Henry VIII, his six wives and his ministers were really secularists with modern ideas about sexuality."

She went on to say: "But all these forms of history as entertainment share an ability to dust the discipline down: to stimulate viewers to a sense that the past was as vivid, vibrant and dynamic a place to live in as that depicted on our screens and that the issues our ancestors grappled with were as urgent to them as our social, political, spiritual and romantic lives are to us today. If they achieve this, we need not be snooty."

I think she's right.  As an educator, I am thrilled if my small charges take an interest in a new topic. If they get it a bit 'wrong', we don't criticise; we applaud their enthusiasm. If a partly inaccurate film or TV series gets it a bit 'wrong' but sparks an interest and sets off a pursuit of learning, I think that's probably okay too.