Anglo-Saxon Names

I wrote a blog some time ago about why I thought it was that the Anglo-Saxon era is one of the less popular. 

It's not often studied in schools - indeed, I had to wait until my degree course before I was offered the opportunity to study it - and it's a bit, well, far away. Not as far away as the Romans, though, or the Ancient Greeks.

What probably doesn't help is the names.

In an average day's writing, I can find myself with at least one Aethelwold, an Aelfhere, a couple of Aelfric's, an Aelfsige, an Aethelweard and several Aethelreds. Aelthelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, was far from being the only woman of this age who was given that name.

Of course, I know who they all are. Just as you might know one or more people named Michael; you will be able to distinguish them in your mind. So much so that you hardly notice that Michael from the office, who drives you mad with his habit of tapping his pen on the desk while he works, has the same name as your lovely Uncle Michael who always brings presents when he visits. So it is with me: I know that Bishop Aethelwold of Winchester, formerly abbot of Abingdon, is a completely different person from Ealdorman Aethelwold of East Anglia. And that neither of them has anything to do with Aethelwold, son of Aethelred, who fought at the battle of the Holme in 902 and held a nun hostage...

'Aethelwold' silver penny

To be fair, the Anglo-Saxons were no different from any other age in this regard. Pick up a book set in the later middle ages and you will find the pages littered with Williams, Richards and Edwards. Henry is quite popular too. I believe one or two kings even bore the name 😉

Later on, in the Tudor age, try getting away from folks named Thomas - Thomas Wolsey, Thomas Cranmer, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas More, Thomas Tallis...

Parents or teachers today will see the same trends in the classroom. When my children were little, it seemed like every other male child was named Matthew or Daniel, and common girls' names were Hannah and Bethany.

The main problem with Old English names is that they are Old English. They're not familiar, because they essentially come from another language. In written form, they look odd. I haven't used the diphthongs but if I did, they would look even more 'foreign.'

Æ and æ turn the name Aethelflaed into Æthelflæd, which looks better to me, but I imagine it's more difficult to read if one is not used to the OE alphabet characters. Turn it into Æðelflæd and it looks even worse!

Charter of Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians and Aethelred, her husband

So what do these names mean?

Most OE names of this period are composites. The Aethel, or Æthel prefix means 'noble'. 
We also have the prefix Ælf, which means 'Elf'.
Ead, as in Eadred or Eadgar, means 'blessed'. This prefix is very common, and is the original prefix of names such as Edward, Edwin and Edgar.

The endings of names have meaning, too.
Wine means 'friend', so Aethelwine translates as 'noble friend'.

Red, or more properly ræd, means 'counsel'. Thus we have the most famous of all puns on a king's name. Aethelred the Unready, whilst he might always have been caught a bit unawares by boatloads of Danes, was not actually named thus because of his inability to anticipate the Viking raids.

Originally his epithet was a play on words: His name, Æthelræd, means noble counsel. Unræd means badly or ill-counselled. So in OE, Æthelræd Unræd  was 'noble counsel, ill-counselled. He was, as in the title of Ann Williams' biography of him, Aethelred, the Ill-counselled king.

Charter of Aethelred the Unready (detail) note all the 'Æ' names

Stān, meaning 'stone', when added to Æthel, gives us the name Æthelstān, or Athelstan, a fitting name for a king: 'noble stone'.

Other name endings include 'thryth', or ðryth, which means 'strength'. 
Thus, Queen Ælfðryth, or Aelfthryth, has a name which means 'elf strength'.

Many noblewomen's names end in gifu, meaning gift, and pronounced 'yiva'. Perhaps the best known of these is Lady Godgifu - modernised to Godiva (from Godyiva)

These names, by and large, are reserved for the 'upper classes', and are prevalent in the later portion of the period. Go back to the seventh and eighth centuries and you find more variety in the personal names, partly as a result of there still being separate kingdoms, with family, tribal and linguistic traditions. Thus the royal house of Mercia had two branches, known as B and C, with names such as Burgred on one side, and Ceolwulf on the other. Going back further still, the names get even stranger, but even so, patterns are detectable. Penda, Peada and Pybba were all from the same family. (And all male, which might seem strange to us - as was King Anna of East Anglia.)

Other OE names have a similar composition to the later, noble names, but are easier on the eye: compound names beginning with Wulf, for example, such as Wulfstan, Wulfric, and Wulfnoth. 

Older compound names are less easy for our modern eyes to read: Cynewulf, Cynethryth, and Cynegils, for example.

Some are simply delightful because they incorporate what we would refer to as nicknames.
Eadulf Cudel was an eleventh century nobleman from the north east. Cudel means cuttlefish.

Eadwig Ceorlacyng's nickname translates as 'king of the peasants' although we don't know why he was known as such.
Athelstan Rota was so named because he was Athelstan the Red, and so, presumably, red-haired.
It's fairly safe to assume the reason why Æthelweard the Stammerer was so called. Or how about Godwine the Driveller?
Possibly the most infamous was Eadric Streona - whose name translates as Eadric the Grasping, but one of my favourites is Æthelmær se greata - Aethelmaer the Fat.

Ladies, too, had their nicknames, although goodness knows whether Æthelflæd Eneda's nickname 'the duck' was meant as a compliment or an insult.

Another Æthelflæd was known as 'The White' (se hwita), perhaps to describe the colour of her hair? We must assume that Eadgifu Pulchre was rather beautiful, since her by-name means The Fair. 

The name Eadgyth Swan-neck (swanneshals) conjures up images of a beautiful, long-necked woman, perhaps someone like Audrey Hepburn, but somewhere along the way, many of these OE names became modernised and for a long time, fell out of favour. Some have seen a resurgence (Eadgyth becomes Edith), but then there's Cuthbert, Wilfrid, Mildred, Audrey (yes, there she is again, although Aethelthryth Hepburn doesn't have the same ring to it), and even, though it was never an OE name in and by itself, Ethel. Some, however, retained their popularity and their noble bearing - Alfred, Edmund, Edward.

I like them all - although I stopped short of naming my children after any of them! And pronunication? Well, take your pick:
Many people call her Ethelfled, Lady of the Mercians. But I have also heard her referred to as Athelflat. I know which I prefer. 

The difficulties with these OE names, and the evidence for the use of by-names or nicknames, helped shape my decision to modernise some names in my novels, and to give several characters nicknames or pet names.

So I gave my Aethelflaed a nickname: Teasel. If you want to know why, pick up the book - the pet name leads to some confusion...

To Be A Queen - the Story of Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians

Home - Where the Heart is?

Did you know that, in space, moss spirals? 

It doesn't not thrive, but it's not at its best. 

Not doing what it should.

It's not at home.

Home. It's literally a universal concept; it's the only one that E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial knows. Who among us hasn't at one time or another put on a silly voice, held out a finger and said 'E.T. phone home'?

At the end of the Mad Max film, Beyond Thunderdome, the narrator talks about how the group of children "Started the haul for home," and explains why they keep the oral tradition - so important in history - alive. "We lights the city... for all of them that are still out there ... there'll come a night when they sees the distant light, and they'll be coming home."

So what is home?

“The home should be the treasure chest of living,” said Le Corbusier, but this was an architect's point of view. The concept of home has little to do with its contents; in literary terms this is not what makes a house a home. There are lots of homes in book titles: The Little House on the Prairie, The Mill on the Floss,  while some fictional houses are memorable by name - Pemberley, Manderley (but these are settings, and whilst important, are not necessarily yearned for.)

Be it a house, a village, or just something loosely described as a homeland, it calls us. And the yearning to return to it is a powerful theme in literature. Although not central to the story, in The Lord of the Rings, the little hobbits dream of home; they remember the Shire with longing as they journey ever further away from it, and from what they know.

Languages all over the world have words for this feeling. In Japanese - 故郷を慕う (kokyō o shitau) means to pine for home.

They also have 離郷 (rikyō) which means to separate from one's hometown. It doesn't have an English equivalent and yet we can understand the sentiment, immediately.

The Welsh have hiraeth. It's a longing for one's homeland, but it's not mere homesickness. It's an expression of the bond one feels with one's home country.

In Portuguese, saudade is 'a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves.'

And of course, with homesickness, the longing, invariably, is not simply for the place, but for the people there, too. As a bullied child at boarding school, my homesickness was as much about longing to go back to a place which offered unconditional love, as it was about missing my creature comforts.

The urge to return home is perhaps nowhere stronger than in the book, based incredibly on a true story, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington, where three young Aboriginal* girls defy odds and the authorities to work their way home across nearly 1000 miles of Australian outback, using the aforementioned fence as a navigational aid.

The Rabbit-proof Fence 2005 - by Roguengineer under CC Licence

Yes, this was a true story, but a great deal of dramatic tension can be created in a novel by taking the character out of their natural environment.

The 'New kid in Town' can upset the equilibrium, as Vianne does in Chocolat, by Joanne Harris, when she arrives in the French village of  Lansquenet-sous-Tannes and scandalises the village and disturbs its occupants, for better or worse, or maybe they feel out of place, like the moss in space: Leo, in The Go-Between, is very uncomfortable in his new world - literally, since he has only a thick woollen suit to wear as the Norfolk summer temperature rises and rises. Not only has he been removed from his home, he has been transplanted to the world of another social class. He does not know how to act. More significantly, he is a child thrust into the world of adults, with disastrous consequences not only for him, but for them.

'Fair Use' Image

I subconsciously made use of this theme in my own novels. I didn't set out to do it, because the outline of an historical novel is, by definition, already in place, and yet I've recently realised that the theme is there in both of my novels and my short story. 

In To Be A Queen, a huge part of Aethelflaed's struggles hinge upon the fact that she is a 'foreigner', in a country she knew as a small child but yet is unfamiliar to her as an adult. She is not, initially, accepted and she reacts defensively, closing her mind to the possibility that these foreigners might be either as civilised, or indeed as brutalised, as her own countrymen have been. Much of the drama unfolds as the two 'sides' learn, gradually, to understand one another.

Surely there was nothing about this in my second novel? It's a fairly straightforward tale of love, lust, and politics. But, here again, is a character who is taken out of the world he knows; in this case, Alvar the fighting man, the local lord, finds that he has to contend with the deadlier arena of the royal court. If he knew the phrase 'fish out of water', I think he would readily have applied it to himself.

Now, I can see that I understood completely what each of these characters must have been feeling and that's why the theme permeated the books.

Is it because I was so frequently a 'new kid' myself that this aspect of their stories resonated with me, or is it, as I said, a universal condition, the sense of alienation which we all will feel when taken away from our cultural, spiritual or physical home? 

Even in my short story for 1066 Turned Upside Down, not only are the English, naturally enough, fending off the invaders who threaten their country, but my central characters, Edwin and Morcar, are also fighting for their homeland, and for their rights. 

I'm not 'from' anywhere. I'm a forces brat, and I have a sense of rootlessness that makes my story very hard to tell. The word 'belong' is a strong one. We humans need to be able to feel it as a truth. What happens when we are removed from home, and the quest to return to that place where we belong, makes for powerful drama.

~~~~~~~~~~

(If you want to know what the moss in space looks like - click on the link. I couldn't contact anyone to gain permission to use the image, but I can direct you to it. Take a look; it's the oddest thing  - NASA - Fire Moss)

*I did a bit of research into whether or not the term 'aboriginal' was acceptable. This issue is complicated (my thanks to Prue Batten for her insights) but on balance it would appear that the word is largely acceptable, so I have risked using it. I hope not to have caused any offence by so doing.

Blog Round-up of 2016

It's been a busy year for the blog, and for me...

In February Alvar the Kingmaker was released, and I'm pleased and thrilled to say that it's received nothing but four and five star reviews, and has been awarded an IndieBRAG Gold medallion.

In March I was asked to contribute a story for the wonderful project, 1066 Turned Upside Down, the brainchild of Joanna Courtney and Helen Hollick, which involved 9 authors telling 11 stories re-imagining the events of 1066. I'm proud to say that it hist the Amazon #1 spot as well as being chosen as an Editor's choice and long-listed for Indie Book of the Year 2017 by the HNS (Historical Novel Society). As part of the promotion for the project, I interviewed all those involved in the venture, and you can see the whole collection HERE.

Elsewhere on the blog, I was delighted to welcome many interviewees and received some wonderful guest posts.

I already have some great guests ready to talk about their writing processes, the music that inspires them, and some good-natured 'arguments' from authors who all write in the same period.

Thank you to all those who have appeared on the blog this year, and thank you thank you thank you to all those who've popped by to read the posts. I'm very grateful.

I have also set up a new blog, where you can find all my 'travel' articles, from my visits to various places in Historic Britain

I shall also be working hard with two exciting new projects, one which will involve the mining of some rare gems, and one which calls for me to hop into bed... more details soon!

Happy Christmas to all, and a peaceful New Year, and I hope you'll join me in 2017 for lots more discussion about writing, history, and writing history.

But before then, please look out for an exciting new blog hop, orchestrated by the redoubtable Helen Hollick, more news about our gem-mining project, a guest post from Judith Arnopp and a feature/review/interview with Julia Brannan, which will introduce some new themes for 2017... 

Now on Blog Lovin!!

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1066 - Anniversary Weekend Round-Up

"Ever wondered what might have happened if William the Conqueror had been beaten at Hastings? Or if Harald Hardrada had won at Stamford Bridge? Or if Edward the Confessor had died with an heir ready to take his place? Then here is the perfect set of stories for you. ‘1066 Turned Upside Down’ explores a variety of ways in which the momentous year of 1066 could have played out differently. 

Written by nine well-known authors to celebrate the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, the stories will take you on a journey through the wonderful ‘what ifs’ of England’s most famous year in history."

I was thrilled to be part of this wonderful collaboration and I found writing my story both interesting and challenging, and also very satisfying - who doesn't relish the opportunity to re-write history?

I was keen to know how the other authors and contributors went about the challenge, so I interviewed them all.

In case you missed any of these chats, here are the links.
And don't forget, 1066 Turned Upside Down is on offer this weekend at just 99p/99c

The interviews:

Helen Hollick
Annie Whitehead
Joanna Courtney
Carol McGrath
Richard Dee
Alison Morton
Anna Belfrage
Glynn Holloway
Eliza Redgold
Cathy Helms

You can read more about the project, too, at our dedicated BLOG

and catch up with all the latest news on our Facebook Page

She's got it covered - Cathy Helms on designing 1066 Turned Upside Down

Over the last few weeks, I have been talking to all the authors who have written the stories in 1066 Turned Upside Down. Now, on the eve of the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings itself, I need to talk to the person responsible for the public 'face' of the book - designer Cathy Helms:~

Why 'Avalon' Graphics? I have loved the tales of King Arthur and his Knights since I was a girl, so when it came time to choose a name for my design company, I knew that I had to draw on something from those legends. Using the word ‘Avalon’ meant that my company’s name would come near the top of any list sorted alphabetically too – and of course I think of Avalon as a place of peace and beauty which in turn I hope is a good parallel or representation of my creative body of work overall. I’ve always been fascinated by Arthur in particular – who he might have really been historically (if he ever even existed), but I will always devour any books about Camelot and the fairytale legends. Great escapism!

Can you tell us a little about your working process? What do you need from the author in order to design their cover? When initiating any new design project I always request a summary of the novel/story, any general ideas the author might have for their cover and make certain that I understand the genre and target market for the book (and a few technical details too).

My process involves a fair amount of research as well; seeking out other covers of similar subject matter/genre/plotlines for inspiration, and then I spend a good amount of time searching through potential stock image sites for suitable images to work with. 
I work on a desktop computer with a 27” monitor (eyes are not what they used to be, ha!) in a comfortable office at the front of our home – my walls are painted in my favorite color – purple!

And I have a lovely view of our front yard with roses and Hydrangea planted right in front of my office windows. I often listen to music while working as the sounds help my creative process, and I always make the time to simply play with Photoshop and attempt to learn new design tricks as often as possible.

Once upon a time, book covers were designed using drawings or paintings. Nowadays there are a lot of computer-generated images. Do you have a preference, or do you like to blend the two? Is book cover design a completely different art form nowadays? I am one hundred percent a digital artist; meaning that I work with photography, digital line art and digital brushes in order to create my designs. I started drawing with colored pencils as a young girl and still enjoy doodling from time to time (mostly with colored pens), but my open freestyle of drawing is too unrefined for graphic design (in my own opinion at any rate). I predominantly design using the vast available tools within Adobe Photoshop – to the point of being able to give the viewer the impression that the design was hand painted at times.

The program truly is outstanding and limitless. Book cover design evolved from hand lettering (typography) and hand illustration and I am actually relieved that I came along after the digital revolution! As part of my formal education, I was taught the very meticulous and labor intensive way to hand letter designs for marketing purposes, as it was done many decades before. I found the process interesting, but nothing that I would consider taking the time to do in any project today – not when I can achieve the same effect within minutes using Photoshop verses days hand lettering just a book title alone!

Do you have a favourite among all the covers you've designed? If so, why? This is always the toughest question to answer! Sentimentally, I often go with ‘Sea Witch’ by Helen Hollick because it was my first published cover design and I utilized my dear and patient husband as a model. The cover is in bold blue hues, contains a pirate ship and a pirate – and I worked my magic with grunge textures to accomplish the old world feel that the book deserved. While I cannot truly choose a single cover design as a favorite, any time that I can design a cover with a castle, knights or Ancient Rome, I am at my happiest in the creative process. I love working in the historical and fantasy realm above all other genres.

And finally, I have to ask about the 1066 Turned Upside Down cover. I love it (well, I would, wouldn't I?) It shows the concept of the book so clearly. Did you play around with other ways of showing the 'upside down' theme before you settled on this one? Presumably, like us authors, you go through several 'drafts' before settling on the final design? Believe it or not, this was one of those cover designs that simply came together right from the start without numerous design ideas. I had solid up front input regarding the design from Helen Hollick and Joanna Courtney – their initial idea was to include either a helmet or a shield wall reflected upside down. So I found a handful of potential photos to work with and then set about making the top part of the cover reflect in ripples of ‘time’ on the bottom half of the cover. Often the biggest challenge in designing for historical fiction is the ‘historical’ part – finding accurate depictions for the time of the novel. But in the case of ‘1066 Turned Upside Down’, I was able to take a bit of liberty with the elements since the novel is a time slip or alternate history collection.

So I was able to use the photo of a helmet that may have been a few decades off from the year 1066. It was a stunning stock photo, so it worked perfectly for an eye-catching cover. Having said all of that, typically I go through numerous concepts before a final cover design is chosen by the author. I begin with three to four distinct designs, then I work with the concepts until the author/client is content with a final. And I am thrilled that you love the cover design! All nine authors involved have been kind and generous with their feedback for the cover. I am fortunate to have been given the opportunity to design for such an illustrious group of writers, many of whom are friends and clients already.

Annie, thank you so much for the chance to speak with you in regards to book cover design and my involvement with the ‘1066 Turned Upside Down’ project!

Thank you, Cathy, for explaining the process to us, talking about your work, AND for our beautiful cover!
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1066 Turned Upside Down - Sunday chat with Annie Whitehead

Well here's an odd thing - If I am to interview the authors of 1066 Turned Upside Down in the order in which their stories appear in the book, then I must now interview myself!

How did I get involved with the project?
I was contacted by Helen Hollick - of whom I've been a fan for a very long time - and asked if I would write a story for the project. I must have hesitated for about, ooh, two seconds before I said yes!

Without giving too much away, can I set the scene for my story?
My story concerns the northern earls and the Battle of Fulford, just outside York. It was here that the English were defeated by the forces of Harald Hardrada of Norway and Tostig Godwinson, brother of King Harold. This defeat meant that Harold had to ride north to the Battle of Stamford Bridge and thus had to endure a long but swift march down south again to meet William of Normandy. What if the northern earls had won at Fulford, and Stamford Bridge never happened? This was the premise for my story but, actually, those northern earls were mainly Mercians. I love my Mercians, so I decided to think a bit more about their likely attitude not only to battle, but to Harold himself...

Did it go 'against the grain' to change history?
Usually I am at great pains to depict history as it happened. Occasionally I change something minor, if it helps the narrative to flow more easily, but I make this clear in my notes. The job of the historical novelist is, in my view, to present the facts but to fill in the gaps - plausibly - and to put flesh on the characters' bones, to try to give them a back story, to present possible reasons why they, as humans, behaved the way they did. With 'A Matter of Trust' (my story in 1066 Turned Upside Down), I tried to stick to this principle and to give logical reasons for the behaviour of my characters. Once I had got past the blatant twisting of the history, I found it quite natural to then tell the tale using the personalities of the people involved.

What draws me particularly to the stories of Mercia?
History belongs to the victors, to a large extent. The ancient kingdom of Mercia was eventually swallowed up by Wessex. The King of Wessex, Alfred the great, commissioned the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, one of our main primary sources for this period. Thus the history of Mercia was somewhat sidelined, which is a shame, because Mercia produced some wonderfully charismatic characters: Offa (he who built the dyke) Aethelflaed (Lady of the Mercians, subject of  To Be A Queen), 

Lady Godiva, and even evil old Eadric Streona, who vacillated so much during the time of King Canute that he must have made himself utterly dizzy!

Some, less well known, simply deserved to have their stories told, in my opinion: King Edgar, who managed uniquely in those times to rule peacefully, and his right-hand-man Aelfhere (Alvar), whose reputation suffered because not only was he an earl of Mercia, but he also took on the Church establishment, and at this time, the Chronicles weren't just written by Wessex, they were written by Wessex monks. 

What really attracted me though was the anomalies - Aethelflaed was a woman leader, Ethelred was a man who wasn't a king, but fought like one anyway to save his country, Edgar was a king of peace in a very turbulent age, Alvar went up against the Church, Aelfthryth fought like a lioness for her youngest child, but had left two children behind. Why? What was the story there? 

Is there another event in history that I wish had had a different outcome, another "What if"?
There is one episode in history which I really wish hadn't happened. Not because it would have changed the course of history, but simply because it was unnecessary: Anne Boleyn's death. As it turned out, her daughter came to rule England anyway, so in terms of history, this brutal act achieved little, other than to set a precedent for Henry's dealings with Catherine Howard.

If I could write another 'What if', though, it would probably be the history of Wales. Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, (Llewelyn the Last) was killed during campaign against Edward I and his daughter was sent to Sempringham Priory in England where she spent the rest of her days as a nun. Llywelyn's brother, and named successor, is reputed to be the first victim of hanging, drawing and quartering. I have a strong dislike for Edward I, and I would relish a re-telling of history which preserved the Royal House of Gwynedd.

Thanks for talking to me today Annie.
It was my pleasure Annie!