Chapter CCXX: Section VIII: Appearance

Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs was verily named after a beard. Skegg means neither more nor less than a beard, and strange to say, Bardr and Skegg were both fashionable names in the North; indeed, one Icelandic gentleman rejoiced in the euphonious title of Bardr Bla-skegg, or Beard Blue-beard.

But we have an independent name of this class. William de Albini, the second husband of Henry I.’s widow, Alix of Louvaine, wore moustachios, which the Normans called _gernons_, and thus his usual title was William _als Gernons_; and as the common ancestor of the Howards and Percys, he left this epithet to them as a baptismal name, one of the most whimsical of the entire roll. From the Percys it came to Algernon Sidney; and partly through his admirers, partly through inheritance, and partly through the love of trisyllables, has become diffused in England.

_Faxe_ meant the hair or tresses, as may be seen in the names of the horses of day and night, Skinfaxi and Hrinfaxi. Two instances of it are found in the _Landnama-bok_, Faxi, a colonist from the Hebrides, and Faxabrandr, most likely an epithet due to some peculiarity of hair, probably whiteness, or perhaps fieriness; but it was not common, though it came to England to be the surname of Sir Thomas Fairfax.

The name of our excellent friend Wamba in _Ivanhoe_ must probably have been taken from one of the Visigothic kings of Spain, with whom it was most likely a nickname, like that of Louis de Gros in France, for it means nothing but the belly. Epithets like this were not uncommon, and sometimes were treated as names, such as Mucel, or the big, the sobriquet of the earl of the Gevini; or Budde, the pudding, the person who showed Knut the way over the ice. Many of those used in England were Keltic, showing that the undercurrent of Cymric population must still have been strong.

It is remarkable how very few are the Teuton names taken from the complexion—in comparison with the many used by the Kelts, and even by the Romans—either because the Teutons were all alike fair, or because they thought these casual titles unworthy to be names. Bruno was exclusively German, and may perhaps be only a nickname, but it came to honour with the monk of Cologne, who founded the Carthusian order, and has been used ever since; and the North has Sverke, Sverkir, swarthy or dark, a famous name among the vikings.

Far more modern is the name of Blanche. The absence of colour is in all tongues of Western Europe denoted by forms of _blec_. In Anglo-Saxon, _blœc_ or _blac_ is the colour black, but _blœca_ is a _bleak_, empty place, and _blœcan_ is to bleach or whiten; _blœco_, like the German _bleich_, stands for paleness. It is the same with German and Norse, in the latter of which _blakke hund_ is not a black dog but a white one. All these, however, used their own _weiss_ or _white_ for the pure uncoloured snow; while the negative _blœc_, or colourless, was adopted by the Romance languages, all abandoning the Latin _albus_ in its favour. It is literally true that our _black_ is the French _white_; _black_ and _blanc_ are only the absence of colour in its two opposite effects.

Blach, Blacheman, Blancus, and Blancard, all appear in Domesday; but Blanchefleur and Blanche, seem to have been the produce of romance. The mother of Sir Tristrem was Blanchefleur, a possible translation of some of the Keltic Gwenns or Finns, and it probably crept from romance to reality among the poetical people of southern France. The first historical character so called was Blanca of Navarre, the queen of Sancho IV. of Castille, from whom it was bestowed on her granddaughter, that child of Eleanor Plantagenet, whom her uncle, King John, employed as the lure by which to detach Philippe Auguste from the support of Arthur of Brittany. The treaty only bore that the son of Philippe should wed the daughter of Alfonso of Castille; the choice among the sisters was entrusted to ambassadors, and they were guided solely, by the sound of the name borne by the younger, that of the elder sister, Urraca, being considered by them hateful to French ears, and unpronounceable to French lips. John was punished for his policy, for Blanche’s royal English blood was the pretext of the pope in directing against him her husband, Louis the Lion, but no choice could have been a happier one for France, since Blanche of Castille was the first and best of her many queen-regents.

From her the name became very common in France. One of the daughters of Edward I. was so called, probably from her, in honour of his friendship for her son; it became usual among the English nobility, and is most common in Italy, though it is somewhat forgotten in Spain.

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ Spanish. │Portuguese. │
│Blanch │Blanche │Bianca │Blanca │Branca │
└────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

A Swedish heroine called Blenda made this name, from _blenden_, to dazzle, common in her own country, but it is not known elsewhere.

_Koll_, with a double _l_, meaning head, is sometimes used in northern names, but far less commonly than _kol_, cool, or rather in the act of cooling after great heat. The great blast-bellows with which the gods charitably refreshed the horses of the sun, are called in the Eddaic poetry, _isarnkol_, or iron coolers, and there may have been some allusion to this in the names of Kol and Kale, which alternated in one of the old northern families. But as the cooling of iron involved its turning black, _kolbrünn_ meant a black breastplate, and was thus used as a by-name; and it may be in this sense of black that _kol_ enters into the composition of Kolbjorn, black bear, Kolgrim, Kolgrima; Kolskegg would thus be black-beard; but Kolbein can hardly be black-leg, so, perhaps, it may refer to the bones being strong as wrought iron; and Kolfinn and its feminine are either cool-white or refer to Finn’s strength. Colbrand is in English romance the name of the Danish giant killed by Guy of Warwick, at Winchester; but the Heptarchy displays a very perplexing set of Cols, as they have been modernized, though they used to be spelt Ceol. There were three Ceolwulfs in Bernicia, Mercia, and Wessex; Ceolred in Mercia, Ceolwald in Wessex, Ceolnoth on the throne of Canterbury. Are these the relatives of the northern _kol_, cool, or are they _ceol_, keel, meaning rather a ship than merely the keel, as it does now? Or, on the other hand, are both these, and the northern _col_, adaptations of the Keltic _col_ or _gall_, like those already mentioned of Finn? Their exclusive prevalence among the Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons would somewhat favour the notion.

The northern feminine terminal, _frid_, belongs to this class, and means the fair, or pretty, from the old northern _fridhr_, though it is most deceitfully like _fred_, or _frey_, peace, and is probably from the same root.

Teitr is a northern man’s name, meaning cheerful: _Zeiz_ answers to it in old German; and though the analogue in Anglo-Saxon does not otherwise occur in any Anglo-Saxon work, yet we find from Bede that Æthelburh, the daughter of Æthelbeorht and Bertha, of Kent, who carried her Christianity to her husband, Eadwine, was also called Tâte, by which we may gather that she was particularly lively and cheerful.