Hybrid place-names as evidence of military settlement in the Danelaw and in Castile (original) (raw)
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This is a study of settlement and society in the parish of Torosay on the Inner Hebridean island of Mull, through the earliest known settlement-names of two of its medieval districts: Forsa and Moloros. The earliest settlement-names, 35 in total, were coined in two languages: Gaelic and Old Norse (hereafter abbreviated to ON). The settlement-toponymy provides irrefutable evidence that ON-speakers settled locally and named their settlements in ON. In subsequent centuries, long after ON ceased to be spoken locally, these ON settlement-names were perpetuated by local Gaelic-speakers. Many of these ON settlement-names are still used locally and are recorded on modern maps; others have fallen out of use. The same can be said of the earliest settlement-names of Gaelic origin. New etymological analysis of the earliest known forms of these settlement-names, considered alongside local pronunciation where available, forms the basis of this thesis. Much of this analysis challenges previous research. A number of the settlement-names have not hitherto been located or been subject to etymological analysis, no previous study having comprehensively engaged with their earliest forms. The earliest known forms are recorded in fiscal evaluation dating to the final decade of the 15th century and, as such, the settlement-names provide a window on the Late Medieval period. The settlement-names also provide an invaluable insight into settlement and society in the Norse period; i.e. the period in which ON was spoken locally. Norse is employed here as both an adjective, as in the Norse period, and a noun, in reference to speakers of ON. Thus, application is broadly to what is now Scandinavia and contemporary inhabitants thereof, as opposed to the more typical modern application of Norse to Norway and its inhabitants. Individual place-name elements employed in ON settlement-names provide an insight into how the local landscape was perceived and utilised agriculturally by these immigrant ON-speakers. In some cases, proposed personal names identify individuals associated with specific settlements. At least one ON settlement-name is likely to provide evidence of the religion of those who coined the name. Syntactic analysis of the Gaelic settlement-names highlights the possibility that some were coined in the Early Medieval period. It also identifies names which are perhaps unlikely to have been coined before the early 10th century. Loan-words borrowed in both directions, i.e. from Gaelic to ON and from ON to Gaelic, are identified and these reveal something of the chronology of individual settlement-names, in addition to providing evidence for language contact. The distribution of ON settlement-names and the fiscal status of settlements bearing ON names can also reveal something of the status of immigrant ON-speakers and the status of local Gaelic-speaking communities. The date of the earliest known forms probably post-dates the period in which these ON names were coined by around six centuries and this clearly allows for significant displacement of settlement-toponymy. However, settlement-names of ON origin apply to both settlements of principal and of relatively low fiscal status and the implication is that there was a significant amount of continuity in settlement-toponymy up to the date of the earliest known fiscal sources. The dearth of contemporary textual sources for the Early Medieval and Norse periods and of local archaeology relating to these periods identifies these settlement-names as invaluable sources of information for contemporary settlement, society and language in the districts of Forsa and Moloros. Part One Chapter 1 sets the research in context in providing geographical, geological, topographical, tenurial, ecclesiastical and fiscal information for the two districts. Chapter 2 comprises a review of previous studies on local settlement-toponymy. Chapter 3 identifies the sources which provide the earliest known forms and outlines the employed methodology. Chapter 4 provides an historical framework and engages with Norse toponymy furth of Mull across Britain and Ireland. Chapter 5 presents discursive analysis addressing the predominant research questions. Chapter 6 presents conclusions. Part Two The place-name survey presents raw spatial data and etymological analysis, where not included in chapter 5, for each of the 35 settlement-names.
England offers one of the richest sources of information for study of trends in names and naming. First, and most relevant to the themes of this book, it was the subject of three waves of migration in the medieval period which affected both language and naming. Secondly, an unusually rich survival of documentation from the late eleventh-century onward allows us to trace this process in some detail. The Anglo-Saxon immigrants of the fifth and sixth century so well established themselves that their language completely replaced the British language previously spoken, confining it to the western extremities of Wales, Cornwall in southwest England and Galloway in southwest Scotland. English place-names preserve the evidence of this language change: very few British elements survive (exceptions include the names of the River Thames and the port of Dover). Detailed studies of place-names, still in progress, have yielded some insights into the process of the early Germanic invasions, for example, indicating some of the preoccupations of the settlers with topographical features such as water, and even preserve some of their personal names; for example, Brightwell «bright spring», and Mackney, «Macca's island» in Berkshire 1. The invasion of Danish Vikings in the eighth century affected place-names in the Midlands and the east in the area known as the Danelaw, and introduced Scan-dinavian names into the English personal name pool (reinforced by the Danish conquest of 1016). The Norman Conquest of 1066, by an army predominantly of Normans, but also including Bretons and Picards, introduced a completely new set of personal names which eventually almost completely replaced native English names. It did so at a time when naming systems elsewhere in Europe were moving towards a two-name system. What this essay primarily aims to do is to document the changes after 1066 by means of a corpus of name records collected in my Continental Origins of English Landholders (1066-1166) [COEL] Database, supplemented by analysis of some contrasting texts, both contemporary and later.
This paper examines comparatively the naming patterns of the Normans of southern Italy and the Latins of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem—two regions that were targets of Western Latin conquest and migration. Based on the premise that naming preferences reveal cultural, social, and religious attitudes, recent studies of the anthroponymic patterns of medieval European and Mediterranean regions aim at exploring the cultural ties, influences, and barriers between different religious and social groups, and the interaction between immigration/colonization and naming patterns. This study asks whether the evidence from the name-giving practices of the settlers bears out the similarities or the differences between these immigrant groups, and aims to contribute indirectly to the question of the groups’ internal identity. The comparative analysis reveals the uniqueness of each group and adds a perspective to the question of the cultural identity of these groups, which has not hitherto been examined in a comparative and quantitative manner.
Quintana place-names as evidence of the Islamic conquest of Iberia
Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 2020
In this paper we explore the long-standing hypothesis that the very abundant Quintana place-names, anomalously concentrated almost exclusively in northwestern Iberia, have their origin in the Islamic conquest of 711. Alternative etymologies are considered, and their inherent problems noted. We then address the distribution of said toponyms in both Spain and Portugal, noting a strong correlation in the latter with the coordinates provided by al-Gassani and which purportedly delimit an area differentiated in terms of the post-conquest land-partition. In the light of the Portuguese correlation, we tentatively propose Sajazarra (Rioja) as a new identification for the enigmatic Sayya, the eastern coordinate provided by al-Gassani, traditionally interpreted as referring to Ejea (Zaragoza).
makes its contributions in three main areas, pragmatic, theoretical and historical: * Pragmatic: this is an ‘open source’ paper. Its findings arise from several datasets which are published online, primarily at http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/42650, as an integral part of this paper. Readers are invited not only to use these datasets to check Alaric's claims, but to develop them for their own purposes. * Theoretical: we often work on the implicit assumption that place-name survival is random, and therefore unbiased evidence for the time at which the names were coined. This may not be the case, however. In using a number of different, relatively large datasets to sketch how stable place-names were in early medieval England and Wales and in what circumstances, this paper begins to address fundamental sociolinguistic questions about how place-names were coined, accepted, and maintained. * Historical: as a case-study for the historical implications of its theoretical explorations, the paper analyses the early medieval language-shift in eastern Britain from Celtic and Latin to English. A key approach here is to compare English evidence with a region which to a large extent experienced linguistic continuity throughout the first millennium, Wales. Early medieval Wales suggests the degree to which place-names might be unstable despite substantial linguistic continuity. We have little more hard evidence for continuity of names from the Roman period in Wales than in England, and England arguably shows no greater loss of Roman place-names than we should expect in any region of post-Roman Britain.
Pre-Scandinavian place-names in the Isle of Man revisited
Beiträge zur Namenforschung. Neue Folge, 2018
This article looks again at the names the names previously considered to be pre- and post Scandinavian and records them according to a recent reassessment, thereby expanding the list of names in Man now felt to be pre-Scandinavian.
The Naming Patterns of the Inhabitants of Frankish Acre
2005
The anthroponymic method and analyses that have been developed and used in medieval studies in recent decades perceive the personal name as one of the means by which a social group may express itself. These methods enable researchers to trace socio-cultural evolutions within groups and to explore the differences between them. Using evidence from name-giving patterns from the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem and from crusader Acre in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, I will attempt to examine whether there were any special characteristics of the naming patterns of the inhabitants of Acre, both in comparison with the rest of the Latin kingdom, and in comparison with Italian maritime towns in the thirteenth century. I will also attempt to verify whether a so-called “urban anthroponymy”, a phenomenon described in European contemporary studies, can be identified in thirteenth century Acre. I will first present briefly the basic terminology and the main findings on the naming patterns of th...
Ancient Anglo-Saxon Place Names in Continental Europe.
By July 2023, I have interpreted 1,397 place names across continental Europe using Old English. Such a quantity itself surprises me to no small extent, but no one else has shown the same surprise yet. Obviously, no one believes in such a possibility, believing that my etymologies are chosen to prove my fiction about the Anglo-Saxon migrations throughout Europe. If someone thinks so, then he overestimates my imagination too much, but I would put it to better use. In principle, I understand that all sorts of unusual ideas are first of all objectionable, but it is surprising that no one has tried to independently decipher toponyms that are well known to him and do not have convincing etymologies. But the accumulation of Old English toponyms in one place could encourage others to search in the nearest area. For example, I gave my interpretations of two place names in Portugal but did not give an explanation for the name of Lisbon for several years. During this time, anyone could try to do this by looking in the dictionary of the Old English language to see how beautiful the name of this city is, but no one came up with such an idea, not even the one who deals with this issue. All this makes one think about how imperfect human is.
Place Names and Viking Age Religion
Names and Their Environment. Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, Glasgow, 25 - 29 August 2014 . Vol. 2. Toponomastics II . Carole Hough and Daria Izdebska (eds .) First published 2016 by University of Glasgow under Creative Commons licence (CC BY -NC -ND 4.0)
Place names with religious connotations have been used as a source of knowledge about Viking Age religion. The chronology of such names – referred to here as 'sacral place names' – is uncertain, however, and many may pre-date the Old Norse period. To assemble a corpus that can shed more definite light on this segment of time, the author attempts to identify sacral place names in areas colonised by Scandinavians during the Viking Age.