Re: [tied] Re: aldric, luis, aldrin = etymology?

On 04-10-25 15:25, bmscotttg wrote:

> Names in *-ri:kaz are all originally masculine. The gender
> of the name was originally determined by the grammatical gender
> of the second element, though to some extent this system
> eventually broke down in Continental Germanic, probably in
> large part thanks to Romance influence, and you start to see
> a few feminine names with masculine second elements. But a
> Spanish Aldrigo, if it existed, would have been masculine.

Incidentally, the addition of a weak-noun extension was one of the ways
in which the gender of a theme could be adjusted whenever need arose. OE
<hors> was neuter and <cra:we> 'crow' was feminine, but augmented
<Horsa> and <Cra:wa> were usable as male PNs.

Piotr