X-Nico

7 unusual facts about Old English


A29 road

From Capel to Hardham, south of Pulborough, the road with notable deviations follows the path of one of the multiple Roman roads with the name Stane Street, the Middle English and Old English for Stone Street due to the remaining building materials.

Ælfgifu of Exeter

She is mentioned in the Old English Exeter relic-list as "the holy servant of Christ ... who would daily perform her confession before she went into church".

Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library

The series begins with a focus on three languages—Byzantine Greek, Medieval Latin, and Old English—that will be enlarged to incorporate additional vernacular languages in the future.

Ednam Church

Thorlongus or Thor Longus ('Thor the Tall') was the first recorded laird of Ednaham, (from the Old English, 'Settlement on the Eden Water') as Ednam was known.

History of Parliamentarism

The name derives from the Old English ƿitena ȝemōt, or witena gemōt, for "meeting of wise men".

Mattock

While the noun "mattock" is attested from Old English onwards, the transitive verb "to mattock" or "to mattock up" first appeared in the mid-17th century.

Princess

Old English had no female equivalent of "prince", "earl", or any royal or noble title aside from queen.


Aldgate, South Australia

The hotel was named after the pump he had installed outside, and Aldgate in London, England, which is an Old English derivation of old gate.

Allodial title

The word is a compound of *all "whole, full" and *ōd "estate, property" (cf. Old Saxon ōd, Old English ead, Old Norse auðr).

Andy Orchard

Andrew 'Andy' Orchard, FRSC is a British academic and a leading expert in Old English, Norse and Celtic literature.

Ashford, North Devon

This Ashford has a different origin to other place-names called Ashford, the origin being "ash-tree enclosure" Old English æsc "ash tree" and worō / worth "enclosure".

Ayenbite of Inwyt

For instance, the neuter gender and dative case of Old English are still distinguished; þet child bed oure Lhorde, þet gernier/to þe gerniere.

Beowulf cluster

The name "Beowulf" comes from the main character in the Old English epic poem Beowulf, which Sterling bestowed because the poem describes its eponymous hero as having "thirty men's heft of grasp in the gripe of his hand".

Bittern

They were called hæferblæte in Old English; the word "bittern" came to English from Old French butor, itself from Gallo-roman butitaurus, a portmanteau of Latin būtiō and taurus.

Cædmon's Hymn

Cædmon's Hymn is a short Old English poem originally composed by Cædmon, in honour of God the Creator.

Charles Fritz Juengling

Other courses of study have included Old, Middle, and Early Modern English, Old and Middle High German, Old Norse (Old Icelandic), Gothic, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Middle Dutch, history of the English, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages, Latin and Greek philology, Latin paleography, and Middle English paleography.

Chipping, Lancashire

Chipping is a prefix used in a number of place names in England, and is probably derived from ceapen, an Old English word meaning 'market', though the meaning may alternatively come from (or via) the Medieval English word chepynge with a more specific meaning of 'long market square'.

Christ II

Christ II, also called The Ascension, is one of Cynewulf’s four signed poems that exist in the Old English vernacular.

Common Brittonic

The Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain during the 500s marked the beginning of a decline in the language, as it was gradually replaced by Old English.

Coney Weston

Coney Weston has a different meaning to other towns with the name Weston: it is not a true Weston (where the origin is from Old English west-tun "western farm, village or estate") but is a hybrid name, from Old Norse konungr "king" (cognate with Old English cyning "king") and Old English tun "farm".

Crist

Christ, in Old English Crist, is the title given to a triad of Old English religious poems in the Exeter Book comprising a total of 1664 lines and dealing with Christ's Advent, Ascension and Last Judgment.

Edith of Wilton

Saint Edith of Wilton (also known as Eadgyth, her name in Old English, or as Editha or Ediva, the Latin forms of her name) was an English nun, a daughter of the 10th century King Edgar of England, born at Kemsing, Kent, in 961.

Ermine Street

The Old English name was 'Earninga Straete' (1012), named after a tribe called the Earningas, who inhabited a district later known as Armingford Hundred, around Arrington, Cambridgeshire and Royston, Hertfordshire.

Goldhanger

The name means slope where marigold grew, from the Old English golde meaning marigold.

Goose

In Germanic languages, the root gave Old English gōs with the plural gēs and gandres (becoming Modern English goose, geese, gander, and gosling respectively), New High German Gans, Gänse, and Ganter, and Old Norse gās.

High Bradfield

The name Bradfield simply failed to shift during the Great Vowel Shift from Old English to Broadfield, a name with a double emphasis on its broad stretch of open countryside.

Holme Lacy

Holme Lacy is not from Old Norse holmr "island" like other places of the name Holme, but from the fairly similar Old English hamm "land in a river-bend".

Human branding

The English verb to burn, attested since the 12th century, is a combination of Old Norse brenna "to burn, light," and two originally distinct Old English verbs: bærnan "to kindle" (transitive) and beornan "to be on fire" (intransitive), both from the Proto-Germanic root bren(wanan), perhaps from a Proto-Indo-European root bhre-n-u, from base root bhereu- "to boil forth, well up."

Langwathby

'Langwathby' can be translated as 'long' ('lang'), 'ford' ('wath', Old Norse 'vað'), 'village' (Old English 'bȳ', Old Norse 'býr'), referring to the fording of the River Eden which runs along the edge of the village.

Lea Rosh

She began to use the first name Lea instead of her given name of Edith, describing the name Edith, which is of Old English origin, as "horribly German".

Midhopestones

The name midhope is thought to derive from the Old English words mid (middle) and hop (enclosed or dry place), the suffix 'stones' is though to refer to stepping stones in the river (now beneath Underbank reservoir), and is not recorded in use before the late 17th century, before the 17th century the village was known as Nether Midhope.

Mount Grendal

It was mapped by the United States Geological Survey in 1962 from U.S. Navy aerial photographs taken 1947–59, and was named by the New Zealand Antarctic Place-Names Committee in 1983 from association with Mount Beowulf after Grendal (Grendel), the monster in the Old English epic poem Beowulf.

Muchelney

The village was recorded as Micelenie in the Domesday book meaning 'the increasingly great island' from the Old English miclian and from the Norsk Øe.

Name of Sweden

The name of Sweden was originally a plural form of Swede and is a so-called "back-formation", from Old English Sweoðeod, which meant "people of the Swedes" (Old Norse Svíþjóð, Latin Suetidi).

Norman Gilliland

He is also an active author with four published books, the historical novel Sand Mansions and its stand-alone sequel Midnight Catch, plus two nonfiction books about classical music--Grace Notes for a Year and Scores to Settle. He has produced an audio drama based upon Dick Ringler's modern English translation of the Old English narrative Beowulf titled Beowulf: The Complete Story—A Drama (ISBN 0-9715093-2-8).

Quendon

The name of Quendon derives from the Old English "cwena" (queen, or woman) and "denu" (a valley), meaning the valley owned by a queen, or a woman; the queen referred to may be Ricula, wife of King Sledd of Essex, who gave her name to Rickling, the adjacent parish.The history of Quendon is closely associated with its close neighbour, Rickling village.

Ragnall

The name is derived from two elements: one is the Old Scandinavian personal name Ragni; the other element is the Old English hyll, meaning "hill".

Richard Huskard

Adrian James Martyn has speculated that the original form was huscarl, a compound word of two distinct words in Old English, hus (house) and churl (a peasant.

Shelsley Walsh

The addition of Walsh to the name is from the surname Walsh, which means "of the Welsh", from Old English walas "Welsh, foreigners".

Shelvock

Shelvock is a name of Saxon origins - from the Old English scelf meaning a shelf of level ground, or flat topped hill, and ac meaning oak, taken from the ancient Manor of Shelvock, near Ruyton-XI-Towns, Shropshire, England originally pronounced "shelf'ac", "shelv'ak" or "shelv'oak", but today as "shel'vock".

Skyrack

It is believed that the word "skyrack" comes from the Old English phrase - 'Scir ac' meaning "Shire Oak" under which meetings were held.

Taliska

During the writing of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien toyed with the idea of making Taliska the primordial tongue of the people of Rohan who spoke Old English in his translated setting of The Lord of the Rings.

Walker, Newcastle upon Tyne

Walker's name is a hybrid of Old English and Viking Norse, "Wall-kjerr", where "kjerr" is Norse for "marshy woodland".

Wilfried

Wilfred and Wifred (also Wifredo) are closely related to Wilfried with the same roots (Old English wil and frið).

Woden, Texas

In 1886 a post office was established and the community was named Woden after the Old English deity Woden.

Yarbrough

In English it originated as a habitational or topographic name from Yarborough and Yarburgh in Lincolnshire, named with Old English eorðburg ‘earthworks’, ‘fortifications’, (a compound of eorðe/eorethe ‘earth’, ‘soil’ + burg ‘fortress’, ‘burrow’).

York Racecourse

It is situated on an expanse of ground which has been known since pre-medieval times as the Knavesmire, from the Anglo-Saxon "knave" meaning a man of low standing, and "mire" meaning a swampy pasture for cattle.


see also

Ah-So

Ah-So is a line of Asian sauces and marinades from Allied Old English, Inc., Port Reading, New Jersey.

Anglo-Saxon poetic line

Eduard Sievers created type-lines based on the metrical patterns that he saw in Old English poetry, and named them in alphabetical order according to the most frequently used.

Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies

"Giwis", seemingly a supposed eponymous ancestor of the Gewisse (a name given to the early West Saxons) appears instead of a similarly eponymous ancestor of the Bernicians (Old English, Beornice), Benoc in the Chronicle and (slightly rearranged in order) Beornic or Beornuc in other versions.

Anke Eißmann

Beowulf and the Dragon, Walking Tree Publishers (2009), ISBN 978-3-905703-17-7 (the dragon episode of Beowulf, Old English text with the translation by John Porter, foreword by Tom Shippey)

Beasts of battle

A mythological connection may be presumed as well, though it is clear that at the time that the Old English manuscripts were produced, in a Christianized England, there was no connection between for instance the raven and Huginn and Muninn or the wolf and Geri and Freki.

Bible translations into English

Aldhelm (c. 639–709) translated the complete Book of Psalms and large portions of other scriptures into Old English.

Christmas Tree Shops

Most stores are typically made to resemble older buildings, in Colonial, Victorian, or even Old English barn styles (such as the Sagamore, Massachusetts, Pembroke, Massachusetts and Warwick, R.I. stores).

Dictionary of Old English

The Dictionary of Old English (DOE) is a dictionary published by the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto under the direction of Angus Cameron (1941–1983), Ashley Crandell Amos (1951–1989), and Antonette diPaolo Healey.

Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library

The Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (est. 2010) is a series of books published by Harvard University Press in collaboration with the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, which presents original medieval Latin, Greek, and Old English texts with facing-page translations designed to make written achievements of medieval and Byzantine culture available to English-speaking scholars and general readers.

English alphabet

In the year 1011, a writer named Byrhtferð ordered the Old English alphabet for numerological purposes.

Gesta Romanorum

Frederic Madden, Introduction to the Roxburghe Club edition of The Old English Versions of the Gesta Romanorum (1838).

Heathen Gods in Old English Literature

Heathen Gods in Old English Literature details North's theory that the god Ing played a prominent role in the pre-Christian religion of Anglo-Saxon England, and highlights references to him in such texts as Beowulf and the sole surviving Anglo-Saxon copy of the Book of Exodus.

Historical language

A further ISO 639-3 criterion for historic languages is that they have a distinct literature from their descendant languages: in the example of Old English, Beowulf and other works of Old English literature form a distinct body of material.

Hörgr

In England, the London Borough of Harrow derives its name from the Old English form of hearg.

Hurlingham, Buenos Aires

The word "ham" in Old English meant "house" may have been related to the name referring to "The House of Hurling", an ancient Irish sport.

Judith Roberts

Judith Roberts (1958–1972), 14-year-old English schoolgirl whose brutal murder resulted in wrongful conviction (Andrew Evans case), with Evans spending 25 years in prison, being released in 1997 and receiving monetary compensation in 2000

Knowler

Knowler is an uncommon English surname, a toponymic derived from knoll (Old English cnoll), with the suffix -er common in Kent and Sussex.

Lychpit

Lych or Lich being the Old English name for a corpse, it is assumed that the pit was therefore some kind of mass burial ground, local tradition associating it with the Danish victory over Alfred's Saxons at the Battle of Basing in 871.

Mary Sands

When Cecil Sharp came to Madison County in 1916 as part of his project to collect old English ballads, Sands was 44 years old and was eight and a half months pregnant with her tenth child.

Middle English phonology

#Dialect mixture between Old English dialects (e.g. Kentish) that voiced initial fricatives, and the more standard dialects that didn't do this.

Nicholas Howe

Nicholas Howe (1953-2006) was an American scholar of Old English literature and culture, whose Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England (1989) was an important contribution to the study of Old English literature and historiography.

Old English alphabet

Anglo-Saxon runes (futhorc), a runic alphabet used to write Old English from the 5th century

Old English Bible translations

A translation of the Gospel of John into Old English by the Venerable Bede, which he is said to have prepared shortly before his death around the year 735.

Old English Black

The Old English Black Horse heavily influenced the bloodlines of the Clydesdale and Shire, and these breeds today have many features inherited from their ancestors.

Old English District

Old English District was one of the districts of Tryon County when it was set off from Albany County, in the American colony of New York, on March 12, 1772.

The Old English District covered roughly the area now covered by Otsego County, New York.

Olde English 800

In 1992, Pabst introduced Old English 800 Draft, a cold-filtered instead of pasteurized "draft-style" malt liquor.

Paeonian language

Stoboi (nowadays Gradsko), name of a city, from *stob(h) (cf. Old Prussian stabis "rock", Old Church Slavonic stoboru, "pillar", Old English stapol, "post", Ancient Greek stobos, "scolding, bad language");

Pink Piper

The Pink Panther is a traveling Pied Piper of Hamelin who encounters an old English village home besieged by pesky rodents.

Ratatoskr

Bugge proposed that the -toskr element is a reformation of the Old English word tūsc (Old Frisian tusk) and, in turn, that the element Rata- represents Old English ræt ("rat").

Raven banner

The Function of the Beasts of Battle in Old English Poetry. PhD Dissertation, 1976, State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Rohirric

Compare with Alfred the Great, king of England whose name appeared as Ælfred cyning in Old English.

Seisin

The Old French variations seisir, saisir, are from Low Latin sacire, generally referred to the same source as Gothic satjan, Old English settan, to put in place, set.

Sheffield incest case

The Sheffield incest case concerns the conviction in November 2008 in Sheffield Crown Court of a 54-year-old English businessman who, undetected over a period of 25 years, committed rape of his two daughters, fathering seven surviving children with them.

St Mary de Lode Church

The word Lode is from the old English word for water course or ferry and in this case it refers to a ferry that once crossed a branch of the River Severn to the west of the church, which no longer exists.

Straight Talking: A Novel

Anastasia, or "Tasha," is a thirty-year-old English woman working as a television producer in London.

The Miracle of the Cards

The Miracle of the Cards is based on the true story of eight-year-old English youngster Craig Shergold (Thomas Sangster), who in 1989 is diagnosed with a brain tumor.

The Unknown Child

Sidney Leslie Goodwin (1910–1912), a 19-month old English boy who was identified as the child in 2007

Tiu

Týr, as the Old English name for the Sky-God of Norse (Germanic) Mythology

Tuireann

His name points to a Proto-Indo-European root which gives us words for thunder or related concepts even today, for instance the Old English "Thunores Dæg" (Thursday), as well as dedication to the god and tórnach, the Irish word for thunder.

Waldhere

Waldere, Old English epic poem surviving only in fragments

Weathersfield, Vermont

The Connecticut town had taken its name, in turn, from Wethersfield, a village in the English county of Essex, the name of which derived from "wether", or in Old English wither, meaning a castrated lamb.

Wetterhorn

The 24-year old English mountaineer William Penhall and his Meiringen guide Andreas Maurer were killed by an avalanche high up on the Wetterhorn on 3 August 1882.

Winthrop Ames

After the war, Ames began to direct most of his Broadway shows, which included The Betrothal (1918), The Green Goddess (1921), The Truth About Blayds (1922), Will Shakespeare (1923), Beggar on Horseback (1924), Minick (1924), Old English (1924), White Wings (1926), Escape (1927), The Merchant of Venice (1928) and Mrs. Moonlight (1930).

Zounds

The name of the band is derived from the old English minced oath coined by William Shakespeare: "zounds", which is a contraction of "God's wounds", referring to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ, formerly used as a mildly blasphemous oath.