The Anglo-Saxon Heritage in Middle English Personal Names. East Anglia 1100-1399. By Bo Seltén. Vol. I. (Lund Studies in English xliii.) 24 × 16 cm. Pp. 187 + 2 maps. Vol. II. (Acta Regiae Societatis Humaniorum Litterarum Lundensis, Skrifter utgivna av Kungl. Humanistika Vetenskapssamfundet i Lund, lxxiii.) 24×16·5 cm. Pp. 223. Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1972 and 1979. Prices not stated.

1984 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-181
Author(s):  
Peter McClure
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
Personal Names

Conditions for the voicing of Old English fricatives, II: morphology and syllable structure

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. D. Fulk
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Place Names ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Phonological Process ◽  
Personal Names

Old English fricatives at points of morpheme juncture are studied to determine whether they conform to the rule of voicing between voiced sounds that applies morpheme-internally. Should we expect a voiced or a voiceless fricative in words like OE heorð-weorod, Wulfweard, and stīðlīce? The evidence examined regards chiefly compounds and quasi-compounds (the latter comprising both forms bearing clear derivational affixes and ‘obscured’ compounds, those in which the deuterotheme has lost its lexical independence), though a small amount of evidence in regard to voicing before inflectional suffixes is considered. Evidence is derived from place-names, personal names, and common nouns, on the basis of Modern English standard pronunciation, assimilatory changes in Old English, modern dialect forms, post-Conquest and nonstandard Old English spellings, and analogous conditioning for the loss of OE /x/. A considerable preponderance of the evidence indicates that in compounds as well as in quasi-compounds, fricatives were voiced at the end of the prototheme when a voiced sound followed, but not a voiceless one. It follows from the evidence that there was no general devoicing of fricatives in syllable-final position in Old English, despite Anglo-Saxon scribes' use of <h> for etymological [Γ] in occasional spellings like <fuhlas> and <ahnian>. Old English spellings of this kind need be taken to imply nothing more than a tendency for <h> and <g> to be used interchangeably in noninitial positions, due to the noncontrastive distribution of the sounds they represent everywhere except morpheme-initially. Rare early Middle English spellings of this kind may or may not have a phonological basis, but they cannot plausibly be taken to evidence a phonological process affecting /v, ð, z/.

Human faces with pointed ears: exploring lycanthropy in Early Anglo-Saxon England

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Lisa Brundle ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Information ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Human Element ◽  
Human Faces ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Literate Society

In Early Anglo-Saxon England, Style I anthropomorphic and zoomorphic motifs played a key role in shaping identity and communicating ideas in a non-literate society. While the zoomorphic designs are well discussed, the meaning of the human element of Style I remains underexplored. This paper addresses this imbalance by examining a rare and overlooked group of anthropomorphic images: human faces with small, pointed ears depicted on fifth- to sixth-century female dress fittings recovered from archaeological contexts in eastern England. This paper identifies quadrupedal creatures as a stylistic parallel within the menagerie of Style I, including equine, lupine and porcine creatures. Although it is difficult to identify the character/s depicted with ears, there are notable affinities between the anthropomorphic masculine face with pointed ears and the ancient Germanic practice of warriors donning wolf and bear pelts. The facial motif with pointed ears appears on feminine metalwork within East Anglia, the historic region of the sixth-century Wuffingas (Little Wolf) dynasty – Wuffa being Wolf and the -ingas suffix meaning ‘people/descendants of Wuffa’. This paper explores this rare design with contextual information from pictorial and historical texts of shapeshifting and considers the relationship between this motif, the object, and the wearer/user.

Regional identities Angles and Saxons?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Rippon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The West ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
Southern Scandinavia ◽  
Burial Rites

Writing in the early eighth century, Bede described how three separate peoples— the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—had settled in Britain some three hundred years earlier, and ever since the genesis of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ scholarship in the nineteenth century archaeologists have sought to identify discrete areas of Anglian, Saxon, and Jutish settlement (e.g. Leeds 1912; 1936; 1945; Fox 1923, 284–95). The identification of these peoples was based upon different artefact styles and burial rites, with most attention being paid to brooches. The degree of variation in the composition of brooch assemblages across eastern England is shown in Table 9.1. Cruciform brooches with cast side knobs, for example, were thought to have been ‘Anglian’, and saucer brooches ‘Saxon’ (although even in the early twentieth century Leeds (1912) had started to doubt the attribution of applied brooches to the West Saxons). In recent years, however, this traditional ‘culturehistorical’ approach towards interpreting the archaeological record has been questioned, as it is now recognized that, rather than being imported from mainland Europe during the early to mid fifth century, regional differences in artefact assemblages emerged over the course of the late fifth to late sixth centuries (e.g. Hines 1984; 1999; Hilund Nielsen 1995; Lucy 2000; Owen- Crocker 2004; 2011; Penn and Brugmann 2007; Walton Rogers 2007; Brugmann 2011; Dickinson 2011; Hills 2011). In early to mid fifth-century England, in contrast, it now appears that Germanic material culture was in fact relatively homogeneous, with objects typical of ‘Saxon’ areas on the continent being found in so-called ‘Anglian’ areas of England, and vice versa. The earliest material from East Anglia, for example—equal-arm, supporting-arm, and early cruciform brooches—are most closely paralleled in the Lower Elbe region of Saxony, with the distinctive ‘Anglian’ identity of EastAnglia onlyemerging through later contact with southern Scandinavia (Hines 1984; Carver 1989, 147, 152; Hills and Lucy 2013, 38–9). Indeed, many elements of the classic suite of early Anglo-Saxon material culture actually developed within Britain as opposed to having been created on the continent (Hills 2003, 104–7; Owen-Crocker 2004, 13), with new identities beingmade in Britain rather than being imported frommainland Europe (Hills 2011, 10).

Kingdoms and regiones: The documentary evidence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Rippon
Keyword(s):  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The South ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
East Midlands

During the early medieval period eastern England was occupied by two major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms—the East Saxons and East Angles—alongside a region that Bede referred to as ‘Middle Anglia’. There has been a widespread assumption that Essex (‘the East Saxons’) and Suffolk and Norfolk (the ‘South Folk’ and ‘North Folk’ of East Anglia) were direct successors to these Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (e.g. Carver 1989, fig. 10.1; 2005, 498; Yorke 1990, 46, 61; Warner 1996, 4, plate 1; Pestell 2004, 12; Chester-Kadwell 2009, 46; Kemble 2012, 8; Gascoyne and Radford 2013, 176; Reynolds 2013, fig. 4), which would imply a strong degree of territorial continuity from at least the early medieval period through to the present day. There is, however, a recognition in the Regional Research Framework that regional differences within early medieval society across eastern England have seen little investigation (Medlycott 2011b, 58), something that the following chapters hope to address. This chapter will explore the documentary evidence for these early medieval kingdoms and their relationship to later counties, before turning to the archaeological evidence for Anglo- Saxon immigrants and their relationship to the native British population in Chapters 8–10. The clear differences between the Northern Thames Basin, East Anglia, and the South East Midlands that are still evident during the seventh to ninth centuries are outlined in Chapter 11. Finally, Chapter 12 explores the boundaries of the early medieval kingdoms, and in particular the series of dykes constructed in south-eastern Cambridgeshire.Table 7.1 provides a timeline of key historical dates for early medieval England, and key developments within the archaeological record. The earliest list of territorial entities is the Tribal Hidage. The original document has been lost—it only survives in a variety of later forms—but it is thought to have been written between the mid seventh and the ninth centuries (Hart 1970; 1977; Davies and Vierck 1974, 224–7; Yorke 1990, 10; Blair 1991, 8; 1999; Harrington and Welch 2014, 1). The Tribal Hidage lists at least thirteen peoples in and around eastern England, some of whom clearly occupied quite extensive areas, such as the East Angles (assessed as 30,000 hides), East Saxons (7,000 hides), and the Cilternsætna (4,000 hides).

From Anglo-Saxon to Early Middle English: Studies Presented to E. G. Stanley

1997 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 165
Author(s):  
T. A. Shippey ◽  
Malcolm Godden ◽  
Douglas Gray ◽  
Terry Hoad
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
English Studies ◽  
Anglo Saxon

St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, and the ‘First Books of the Whole English Church’

2004 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 32-45
Author(s):  
Richard Emms
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
History Of

Early in the fifteenth century, Thomas of Elmham, who grew up in Norfolk and became a monk of St Augustine’s abbey, Canterbury, began to write and illustrate an ambitious history of his monastery. It may be that his interest in history arose from his early years at Elmham, site of the see of East Anglia in late Anglo-Saxon times. This could explain why he became a monk at the oldest monastic establishment in England instead of at the local Benedictine houses, such as Bury St Edmunds, Ely, or Norwich. Clearly he developed his historical interests at St Augustine’s with its ancient books and relics, even though, apart from the chapel of St Pancras and St Martin’s church nearby, pre-Conquest buildings were no longer to be seen.

Meeting in the Shadow of Heroes? Personal Names and Assembly Places

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-63
Author(s):  
John Baker
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Place Names ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
Cultural Affiliation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Domesday Book ◽  
Cultural Resonance ◽  
Motivating Factor

This chapter examines the likelihood that celebrated individuals were commemorated in the names of assembly sites as part of a display of political authority or cultural affiliation. Focusing primarily on the names of Domesday hundreds, it draws comparisons with the personal names in other well-established Anglo-Saxon corpora (including charter bounds, narrative sources, Domesday Book and place-names), in order to assess the social context of those individuals commemorated in hundred-names. The chapter then evaluates the probability that such names could carry specific political or cultural resonance at the time of naming, and there are clear indications that this may sometimes have been the case, perhaps especially in the first half of the 10th century. While the evidence implies that the hundred-names arose in a number of different circumstances, the analysis suggests that reference to heroic figures may have been one motivating factor in the naming of sites of assembly.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document