Chapter CCXXI: Section IX: Locality

A large and interesting class of names relate to country, and express the birthplace or the wandering habits of the original bearers.

The word _land_ was one of these. Its primary meaning seems to be the abode of the people. Long ago we spoke of the Greek λαος, prominent in Laodamia, and many other of the like commencement. An almost similar term runs through the Teutonic tongues; the Saxon _leod_, German _leute_, Frank _liade_, Northern _lydhr_. The _leod_, or _leute_, seem to have been the free inhabitants, including all ranks, and thence we have the _laity_, for the general people, and the _lewd_, which has sunk from the free to the ignorant, and then to the dissipated.

The great region of these names taken from the people is Germany. Leutpold, the people’s prince, was a canonized Markgraf of Austria, in the days when that family had hardly yet begun its course of marrying into greatness, and making Leutpold better known at every stage, and by each new dialect differently pronounced, till it turned into Leopold, and was confounded with the old lion names. Indeed, in the old Swiss ballad on the battle of Sempach, translated by Scott, Leopold the Handsome is called the Austrian Lion. The recurrence of the name in the modern imperial line has made it European, and the close connection of our own royal family with the wise king of the Belgians has brought it to England. Of course, it has not escaped a modern German Leopoldine.

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ German. │ Slav. │
│Leopold │Léopold │Leopoldo │Luitpold │Leopoldo │
│ │ │ │Leupold │Poldo │
│ │ │ │Leopo │Poldi │
└────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

Leutgar, the people’s spear, was a good bishop of Antrim, who was speared by the people, or, at least, murdered by them, in the furious wars of the long-haired kings, and was revered as a martyr under the Latin form of Leodigarius. A priest of Chalons was canonized by the same name, which is in France Leguire, and was brought as a territorial surname to England as St. Leger.

Liutgarde seems to have been a Frank saint, but there is no account of her in Alban Butler; but hers is one of the favourite old names at Cambrai. Liutprand, the people’s sword, is one of the chief chroniclers of early French history, and the other forms are Liuther, the only one accepted by the North, and that in the form of Lyder.

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Ger. Liutbert; Fries. Liubert—People’s brightness │
│ Ger. Liutberga—People’s protection │
│ Fr. Leodefred, Leufroi—People’s peace │
│ Ger. Liutmar; Fries. Luttmer, Lummer; Fr. Leodemir—People’s │
│ greatness │
│ Ger. Leuthold, Liutold; Ags. Leodwald—People’s power │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The _land_ itself was compounded into names chiefly among the Franks, Germans, and Lombards, often as a conclusion, but now and then at the beginning. Lantperaht, or the country’s brightness, is the most noted of these, having been borne by three saints of Maestricht, Lyons, and Venice, and having thus become national in all the countries around; but it is universally corrupted into Lambert, and has been generally derived from a lamb.

┌────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┬────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ German. │ Dutch. │
│Lambert │Lambert │Lamberto │Landbert │Lambert │
│ │Lanbert │ │Lambert │Lammert │
└────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┴────────────┘

Landerich, or country’s ruler, was an early Frank saint, who has left Landry to be still frequent among the Flemish and French peasantry.

Landfrang, lord of the country, was the Lombardic Lanfranco, whence the Lanfranc of the archbishop of Canterbury, whom William the Conqueror imposed on the English Church, but who brought in fresh vigour and learning. Landfrid has left the surname Laffert to France; its contraction Lando belonged to a saint, and has the feminines Landine and Landoline. There are also recorded Landolf, Landrad, Landrada, and Landinn.

If Germany and Italy talked of dwellers in the land, the North, with its seas and numerous islets, distinguished the islanders with the word Ey, or Øi, the word that we use to this very day in speaking of Guerns_ey_ Jers_ey_, &c., of an _eyot_ in a river; and even in Sodor, that puzzling companion to the Isle of Man, which once was the Sudeyas, or South Isles, the Hebrides.

The most famous northern island name is Eystein, or Øistein, much in use among the early kings, and especially honoured for the sake of the good brother of Sigurd the Crusader, who stayed at home and worked for his people’s good, while Sigurd was killing blue men in the land of the Saracens. The Danish Eystein was turned into Austin, or Augustin, to be more ecclesiastical, and this may be the origin of some of our Austins. Eyulf, or the island wolf, has become, in the course of time, Øiel and Øiuf. Eyvind, who appears in the _Landnama-bok_ with the unpleasant sobriquet of Skalldur Spiller, or the poet spoiler, is supposed to have been the Island Wend, a reminiscence of the Wends on the shores of the Baltic. It was a very common name, and became Øvind and Even, while Eymund, in like manner, was turned into Emund. An island thief was not wanting, as Eythiof; nor an island warrior, as Eyar; also Eyfrey, Eylang; and the ladies Eygerd, Eydis, Eyny, and Eyvar, or, as Saxo calls her, Ofura.

An island is also sometimes _holm_, whence the northern Holmstein and Holmfrid, with Holmgeir, which gets mixed with Holger.

Persons of mixed birth were drolly called by the actual fractional word _half_, in Germany Halbwalah, half a foreigner, or half a Wallachian, and Halbtüring or half a Thuringian; and in the North, generally, Halfdan, half a Dane. So early was this in use that there was a mythical king, Halfdan, from whom the name was adopted by many a true-born Dane and Northman, and has been Latinized as Haldanus.

Travellers had their epithets, which probably came to be family names. _Lide_, Wanderer, was compounded in Haflide, sea wanderer; Vestlide, west wanderer; Vetilide, winter wanderer; and Sumalide, or summer wanderer, which last was current among the lords of the Isles, and kings of Man, in the shape of Somerled, or, in Gaelic, Somhle; but ‘the heirs of mighty Somerled’ did not long keep up his name.

Travellers again had their name from _fara_, the modern German _fahren_, and the scarcely disused English _to fare_, meaning to journey. The most noted instance is Faramund, who, in the guise of Pharamond, is placed at the head of the long-haired Frankish dynasty, far travelled it may be, from the river Yssel whence the Salic stock took the title that was to pass to one peculiar law of succession; also Farabert, Farulf, and Farthegn, contracted into Farten, and Faltin, and then supposed to be a contraction of Falentin, or Valentine. _Thegn_ did, in fact, originally mean a servant, so that Farthegn was either the travelled servant, or the travelled thane. Fargrim appears in Domesday; but these names are not easy to divide from those taken from _waren_, to beware.

Even the exile had his sorrows commemorated in his children’s names. No doubt if we could meet with the story of the original Erland, we should find that he was born under the same circumstances as Peregrine Bertie, for the name is from the old northern _er_, out, or away from, and _land_. Erland is the Outland, the banished man, and he must have been beloved, or celebrated, for Erlendr, as the Icelanders had it, occurs plentifully, with its diminutive Erling, and perhaps the corruption Elling.

The unfortunate Bishop Hatto’s name was anciently Hazzo, and is translated a Hessian.

Viking has been used as a Christian name in Norway in comparatively modern days, in memory of the deeds of the terrible Vikingr of old; but, in spite of the resemblance in sound, it must not be suspected of any relation to sea-kings, being only the inhabitant of a vik, or bay, of course the most convenient abode for a sea-rover.

The sea, _haf_, or _hav_, as it was called in the North, named Haflide, Hafthor, and Hafgrim, as well as the mythic hero, Haflok, the Dane, whose life, according to his legend, was saved by his faithful servant Grim, the founder of Grimsby, in Lincolnshire, the native place of our own Sir Henry Havelock, who was bewailed by the Danish school-children as their own ballad hero. The two feminine terminations _laug_ and _veig_ may have been in its honour, but it is much to be feared that they only meant liquor, and at the best were allusions to the costly mead of the gods, the drink of inspiration, or the magic bowls that inflamed the Berserks. Nay, men rejoiced in the name of Ølver or Ølve, meaning neither more nor less than Ale, _øl_, which acquires a _v_ in the oblique cases and plural. Ø1ver and Olaf have, no doubt, been confounded into the modern Oliver.

Knud, or Knut, a very common northern name, is a very puzzling one. Its origin and nationality are Danish, and it only came to Norway by intermarriages, nor does it appear at all in the _Landnamabok_. The great Dane who brought it here is called by the chroniclers Canutus, from some notion of making it the Latin _hoary_, and thus we know him as Canute; but even in Domesday, one landholder in Yorkshire, and another in Derbyshire, are entered as Cnud. The whole North, and the inhabitants of the Hebrides, use the name, which comes from the same root as our _knot_, and properly means a protuberance, a hill, or barrow.