Heil Júlía ok þér öll,

--- In norse_course@egroups.com, "Julia Jones" <jrjones47@...>
wrote:

> Back in Lesson One, we had a vocabulary word "örmr," which means
> "worm or serpent."

Indeed, but the ö there is perhaps overdone - it's "ormr" :)

> Just to be sure I understand: do I use the same word for
> a. The worm in my apple.
> b. The earthworm in my garden soil.
> c. The rattlesnake by the path.
> d. The Serpent in the Garden of Eden.
> e. The dragon Smaug in The Hobbit, who's referred to as a Worm in

a

> couple of places.

The short answer is, yes (but other words could be used, such
as "snákr", "slanga", "dreki").

We've been trying, indirectly, to show people how ON names are
transparent. There isn't as much difference in ON between proper
names and other nouns. It may seem silly to English-speakers (and
many other speakers too), because most of their names are either of
alien origin (e.g. the Bible names, which of course have meanings, in
Hebrew) or have been "distorted" to some degree. Not all of course,
for instance there are lots of transparent surnames, like Smith,
Seaman, Woods, Stone, etc.

Names with colorful meanings probably reminds you of cliché Native
American stereotypes. I don't know which is more common in languages,
transparent names (seems straightforward and logical), or non-
transparent names (seems very common, at least in Western culture).
Going back to ancient culture, most languages in Europe had
transparent names, including Latin and the Germanic languages (I
won't make any statements for others, but I presume they did or
perhaps still do).

In any case, students of ON must learn to think of names as words,
only applied to persons to identify them. Names may or may not have a
deeper meaning regarding the persons character. Usually they don't,
so don't take it too seriously if someone's name is Björn (bear), and
that person often behaves like a bear. There's no particular
mysticism involved, AFAIK. However, I suspect people often got their
names at an older age (I think I heard up to 5 ys old), because the
infant mortality rate was high. But then, that's more likely to have
applied to Medieval Iceland, whose people were weaker and poorer than
their Viking ancestors.

But many (or most?) Northmen had nick names, or middle names; those
were the ones with meaning. Those were the colorful ones which would
describe the real character of the person, as seen by other people.
For instance, there were the kings Haraldr harðráði (often rendered
Harald Hardrada) - Harald the Oppressive; Haraldr blátönn - Harald
Blue Tooth; Óláfr helgi - Olaf the Holy; Gormr inn gamli - Gorm the
Old; and Skallagrímur, father of Egill Skallagrímsson - Bald-head
Grim.

There is constantly the problem of how to translate this meaningful
name tradition to the rigid name system of English or other European
languages. English & al treat names as names, whatever their meaning,
and their form, spelling included, cannot be budged. This approach
doesn't work well on ON, but there's not much choice. Consider the
reasonable ways of rendering ON names into English text:

a) Always write them as they are, in nominative form
b) Always write them as they are, in accusative form
c) Use traditional renderings, such as Olaf and Eric, otherwise write
them as they are, in nominative form
d) Devise more renderings and translations, otherwise use the names
as they are, but without specific endings (like -r)
e) Translate all names

Until now, we've mostly been using approach a). It has the advantage
that it is easy to enforce consistently. But this has caused some
confusions, for some students have been trying to see meaning in the
endings of the names, even when inside English text; thus, "He sees
Óláfr" has confused many and some have tried to correct us.

Personally, I prefer approach c) or even d), or a mix of both.
Specifically, I find it more neat to drop specific endings, like -r.

To go all the way and translate or render most names is a very
Icelandic thing to do, nota bene. We Icelanders often go very far in
converting foreign names to Icelandic name tradition, making them
more comfortable for us. In most cases, there is good etymology
behind it, at least for Germanic names, but other more foreign names
have been converted quite arbitrarily...(many of these conversions
are age-old, made by Viking voyagers all over) Here is a list of
examples for your enjoyment:

York Jórvík (Horse Bay - the original name)
New York Nýja Jórvík
Bergen Björgvin (... Haukur knows)
Copenhagen Kaupmannahöfn (Merchant's Port)
Roskilde Hróarskelda (Robin's Moor)
Odense Óðinsvé (Woden's Sacred Places)
Ålborg Álaborg (Canal City)
Malmö Málmey (Isle of Metals)
Göteborg Gautaborg (Gauti's City)
Stockholm Stokkhólmr (can't translate this now)
Trondheim Þrándheimr (Thrond's Place/Home)
London Lundúnir (?)
Dublin Dyflini (? - but it was founded by Viking slave
traders)
Rouen Rúðuborg (Windows City)
Constantinopel Mikligarðr (Great State)
Kiev Kænugarðr (River Boat State)
Shetland Hjaltland (Sword Hilt's Land)
Orkneys Orkneyjar (?)

If we were to do some neat conversions from ON to English (which I
favor), here are a few samples:

Óláfr Olaf
Eiríkr Eric
Leifr Leif
Egill Egil
Grímr Grim
Björn Bearn (OE?)
Haukr Hawk
Úlfr Wolf
Haraldr Harald
Bragi Bray
Þórr Thor
Óðinn Woden
Hrútr Rowt (?)
Skjöldr Sceold (OE?)

The idea is, use accepted conversions (Olaf, Eric, etc), translate to
cognates if possible (Wolf, Woden), sprinkle with Old English forms
to add the right feel (Bearn?), remove final -r/-l if all else fails
(Egil, Harald).

Taken too far, this would probably get confusing, but I'm certain I'd
feel more comfortable. Using the raw nominative form, complete with
endings and all, just seems like such a double-rape of both ON and
English to me.

Verið heil,
Óskar