Anglish Given Names

The following are English given names which spring from Anglo-Saxon, or Old English. They have not been greatly shaped or otherwise lost thanks to the Danish onslaughts and French overthrow of England.

While there are many living names, like ‘Edward’, many more names have been from their dead matches, like ‘Willem’, which was killed off by its Norman match ‘Williaume’ (‘Guilliaume’'), and many other names, like ‘Ordgar’, which were lost under the Norman yoke.

There are also many church and book names, which have been built with inborn shapes from attested or hypothetical Old English borrowings to sidestep the Norman-swayed shapes they have in English, like ‘Thedder’ instead of ‘Theodore’, and ‘Yesow’ instead of ‘Jesus’.

The Names
The names are shown in both their mainstream English spelling and their Anglish Spelling. The Anglish spellings are only that — spellings. So, if you are wondering how to say a word or name in its Anglish Spelling, you can look beside it to its English spelling. Learn more with the Anglish Spelling leaf on The Anglish Wiki.

See the Make Your Own Name deal on this leaf for the meanings of the naming words.

Living: A name that is found within the time of New English, whether having been in unbroken use (such as ‘Edward’), or having been quickened by others in a New English shape, as many were, in the 18th and 19th centuries. (Such as ‘Ethel’.) Lastname: A name that is found as a living name but which has not been in unbroken use as a given name since Old English times. It might be from an Old English name that only lived on as a lastname (such as ‘Alfrich’), or from a word or name that was not a given name in Old English (such as ‘Stanley’). Quickened: A name that is found as an Old English name but which does not have a known shape in New English. Brought back to life (quickened) and shaped by the writers of this leaf (mostly Wordwork) by its likeness to living, New English names and words. (Such as ‘Wolfrich’, from OE ‘Wulfriċ’, by likeness to the New English words ‘wolf’, ‘rich’, and known, living names, such as ‘Wolfroun’ and ‘Aldrich’.) Frozen: A name that, by way of a ‘learned borrowing’, often by a well-known writer, has a spelling that's frozen in time from Old English, while being used in New English. (Such as: ‘Beowulf’, which may otherwise have come to us as ‘Beewolf’ if it were still borne in unbroken use.) Unfounded: A name that has cognates in other Germanic tongues but which is not found in Old English.

Make Your Own Name
The following is a hoard of words that are often found in English. (Further reading on Germanic Names on Wikipedia.) These long-standing English naming words can be blended together to make new names. While there are many spellings of words that have come down to us over the years, only the most widespread, well-known shapes are given. So, for the bind-word shape of ‘lea’ we only have ‘-ley’, as in ‘Ashley’ rather than ‘Ashlee’, ‘Ashleigh’ and so on. Since many naming words died out altogether, some of them had to be shaped anew for today’s readers. These are marked with a star (*).

The old Germanic naming way was to blend an adjective (‘beloved’) with a noun (‘fighter’). While some of our names keep this trend, many have come to us through lastnames. This is also why there are not only more (♂) names, but that many of the landmark words (‘east’, ‘field’, ‘hill’, and so on) are linked with naming men. Stanley bears this out, as it comes from a lastname for someone who lived in a stony lea. True Germanic naming words, words that were borne as given names through Old English times and earlier, are marked as ‘given’.

Another Old English naming way is rhyming. A rhyme these days might read like, ‘Alvin, Edwin and Elwin’. Though there are also fore-rhymes, like ‘Edgar and Edward’.

The naming words are marked as (♂),  (♀), or  (⚥) kinds of man, to show you how they've been borne before. However, it’s up to the reader to find the word that fits best for any given name. Ashley, like Stanley, was once a werely name, as it was meant to show kinship, but it has since shifted to mostly a wifely name.

Some craftiness and understanding of how speech works is needed when making bindnames. English has two kinds of consonants, spoken and whispered. Put your finger to your throat, make an ‘f’ and then a ‘v’. You’ll see that you make the same shape in your mouth. But as your finger will tell you, you only whisper the ‘f’, while you speak the ‘v’. Vowels are always spoken. So, when the fricative consonants (s/z, f/v, th/TH) fall between vowels, they’re often spoken too. It’s also needful to think of how the twained staves shift how a word reads, ‘sh’, ‘th’, ‘ch’. You should also think about the ‘unspoken e’ that shifts the lengths of vowels (as in ‘bit’ to ‘bite’). It’s best to speak a name aloud a few times to see how it flows, and then to think of how to put that in writing.

Binding ‘Alf-’ and ‘-win’ yields Alvin (not ‘Alfwin’). When ‘Alf-’ is bound with ‘-win’ it’s smoother to drop the ‘w’. The ‘f’ is spoken since it blurs into the incoming ‘i’ vowel, and the ‘f’ is therefore written as a ‘v’. Binding ‘Os-’ and ‘-helm’ yields ‘Oselm’ (not ‘Oshelm’). Binding ‘Bert-’ and ‘-har’ yields ‘Bertar’ (not ‘Berthar’). Binding ‘Blis-’ and ‘-har’ yields ‘Blissar’ (not ‘Blisar’). Binding ‘Ed-’ and ‘-gith’ yields ‘Edith’ (not ‘Edgith’).

Staves are therefore marked in square brackets [] if they might need to be swapped or dropped.

Groundwork
Addison, WA 1978, Understanding English Surnames, Batsford, London. Arthur, W 1857, An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names: With an Essay on Their Derivation and Import, Sheldon, Blakeman & Co, New York. Bolton, L 2009, The Complete Book of Baby Names, Sourcebook, Naperville. Browne, WAF, Reaney, PH & Wilson, RM 1991, A Dictionary of English Surnames, Routledge, London & New York. Bush, R 1994, Somerset: The Complete Guide, Dovecote Press, Wimbourne, pp. 184–185. Campbell, M 1996, Behind the Name, opened 26 Dec 2019 . Colman, F 2014, The Grammar of Names in Anglo-Saxon England: the linguistics and culture of Old English onomasticon, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Crist, S 2001, Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, opened 4 Nov 2017 . Erwin, P 2006, ‘Children’s evaluative stereotypes of masculine, feminine and androgynous first names’, The Psychological Record, vol. 56, pp. 513-519. Find A Grave.com, digital images (http://www.findagrave.com: opened 13 Jan 2018), photograph by Allen & Cindy Atha, gravestone for Alfrich Heap of Birds (1869–1922), Find A Grave Memorial #84359380, Clinton, Oklahoma.  Forssner, T 1916, Continental-Germanic Personal Names in English in Old and Middle Times, University of Uppsala, Uppsala. Hanks, P, Hardcastle, K & Hodges, F 2006, A Dictionary of First Names, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Hanks, P, Coates, R & McClure, P 2016, The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Harper, D 2001, Online Etymology Dictionary, opened 4 Nov 2017 . Harrison, H 1918, Surnames of the United Kingdom: A Concise Etymological Dictionary, The Morland Press London. King’s College London 2010, Prosopography Of Anglo-Saxon England, opened 4 Nov 2017 . Marshall, L 2007, Myths and Legends of All Nations, Project Gutenberg. Mills, A D 2003, A Dictionary of British Place-Names, Oxford University Press, Oxford. MyHeritage.com, 2018, My Heritage, opened 13 May 2018                                 . Name Origin Research, 2017, The Internet Surname Database, opened 4 Nov 2017 . Okasha, E 2016, Women’s Names in Old English, Routledge, New York. Pfaff, J 2004, Nordic Names Wiki - The Comprehensive Site On Scandinavian First Names, opened 4 Nov 2017 . Pulgram, E 1947, ‘Indo-European Personal Names’, Language, vol. 23, no. 3, pp 189-206. Pulgram, E 1960, ‘New Evidence on Indo-European Names’, Language, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 198-202. Reaney PH 1967, The Origin of English Surnames, Routledge, London & New York. Reaney, PH & Wilson, RM 1995, A Dictionary of English Surnames: The Standard Guide to English Surnames, Oxford, Oxford. Redit, M 1919, Studies on Uncompounded Personal Names in Old English, University of Uppsala, Uppsala. Robinson, C 2022. Puritan baby names of the 17th century, opened 13 June 2022 . Rouse, RA 2005, The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England in Middle English Romance, D.S. Brewer, Cambridge. Sandnes, Berit 2010, ‘Linguistic patterns in the place-names of Norway and the Northern Isles’, Northern Lights, Northern Words, vol. 2, opened 4 Nov 2017 . Searle, WG 1897, Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum: a list of Anglo-Saxon proper names from the time of Bede to that of King John, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Stratmann, FH & Bradley, H 1884, A Middle-English Dictionary, The Clarendon Press, Oxford. Uckleman, SL 2013, The Names of Testators in the Cartularium Saxonicum Malmesburiensem, opened 4 Nov 2017, . Woolf, HB 1938, ‘The Naming of Women in Old English Times’, Modern Philology, vol. 36, no. 2, pp 113-120 Woolf, HB 1938, ‘The Personal Names in the Battle of Maldon’, Modern Language Notes, vol. 53, no. 2, pp 109-112 Yonge, CM 1863, History of Christian Names, Parker and Bourne, London.

Welsh Names
English names of Welsh, or, ‘Insular Celtic’ spring, which were found in Old English.

Greek & Latin Names
This list takes many names found in and  Greek, borrows them into OE, and molds them down into NE. It includes names that actually went through this process (Petrus → Peter), and names that had this process applied to them (Theodorus → Thedder).

Aramaic & Hebrew Names
This lists takes many names found in Aramaic and Hebrew, and Anglicizes them, using Greek and  as middlemen. It includes names that actually went through this process (Miryām → Maria → Mary), and names that had this process applied to them (Elisheva → Elisabeth → Elsbit).