Chapter CXC: Section XI: Weapon Names

Weapons were so nearly divine, so full of the warlike temper of their owners, and so often endowed with powers of their own, that it seemed as if they themselves were living agents in the deeds wrought with them.

The sword forged by supernatural smiths, the terrific helmet, the heavenly shield, are dreams of every warlike nation, either endowing the Deity with the symbols of protection or wrath or of might, or carrying on the tradition of some weapon which, either its own intrinsic superiority or the prowess of its owner, had made an object of enthusiasm or of terror.

Some of these tales of magic weapons are perhaps, as Mr. Campbell suggests, remnants of the days when the iron age was coming in, and the mass of arms being of brass, one iron sword, “a sword of light,” as Gaelic tales call it, would have given irresistible superiority to its wielder, and even, perhaps, earned the worship that was paid by Attila’s Huns to the naked sword.

It accords with this theory that Iron appears as a component part of numerous names in Germany, and probably likewise in Scandinavia, though there the similarity of the sound to _Iis_, ice, occasions a doubt whether the word was intended for ice, or for iron. The North has, indeed, the cold but not inappropriate Snæulf and Snæbiorn, Snæfrid, snow peace, and even the uncomfortable Snælaug; and when their language had dropped the form _eisarn_ for the metal, and called it _jern_, as we do iron, they probably transferred to ice the meaning of the names that once meant iron.

Isa is an old German feminine. Isambart, or iron splendour, is the best known of all the varieties, having been used in France as Ysambar, and travelled to England as the suitable baptismal name of the two engineers, to whom so much of our ‘iron splendour’ is due. Its German contractions are Isabert and Isbert.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Nor. Isgeir; Ger. Isegar, Isgar—Iron spear │
│ Nor. Isbrand; Ger. Isebrand—Iron sword │
│ Ger. Isebald; Fr. Isambaus—Iron prince │
│ Nor. Iarngard; Ger. Isengard—Iron defence │
│ Ger. Isenhard—Iron strong │
│ Nor. Isrid—Iron vehemence │
│ Nor. Isulf—Iron wolf │
│ Nor. Ising—Son of iron │
└────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Steel or Staale, likewise had one name from it in the North, and, perhaps, likewise named even the historical Stilicho of barbarous birth, but the sole hope of Rome in her final fall.

But the stone of the elder age was not forgotten; the stone that at all times is the readiest weapon, and often the mark of the place honoured by conflict. To say nothing of the Seax, whether stone or stone knife of our ancestral Seaxnot, we find the North using the word Stein, both alone and as a prefix and suffix; while in England, though it is not very frequent, we have it in the honoured names of Athelstan and Wulstan.

Norwegian

Stein, }
Sten (_Dan._), } stone.
Steinarna, stone eagle.
Steinbjorn, stone bear.
Steinfinn, white stone.
Steingrimm, stone helmet.
Steinhar, } stone warrior.
Steinar, }
Steinthor, } stone of Thor.
Steindor, }

Steinulf, stone wolf. Steinvar, stone prudence.

Another old word for stone is _hall_, much used in the North; and in a few cases, such as that of the Scottish Halbert, or Hobbie, creeping to our island with its Danish invaders; but except in this, and a few surnames, unknown away from the North, save for the Hallar, or stone warrior, of Germany.

The northern varieties, however, had much reputation in their own country. Hallgerda is in the Njal Saga the haughty wife of Gunnar, of Lithend, the dame whose virulence is the cause of all the vengeance and counter-vengeance of the story.

Hallbiorg, stone protection.
Halldis, stone spirit.
Hallfrid, stone fair.
Hallgerd, stone fence.
Hallgeir, stone spear.
Hallgrim, }stone helmet.
Hallgrima,}
Hallkell, }stone kettle.
Halkatla, }
Hallmund, stone protection.
Hallthor, }
Haldor, }stone of Thor.
Haldora, }
Hallvard, }stone guard.
Halvor, }

_Grjot_, in German _gries_, is another word for a stone. It was not so common as the others; but there was both a masculine and feminine Grjotgard, who in Denmark were rendered, the one into Gregorius, the other into Margarethe. The English lady, Græsia de Bruere (_temp._ Henry III.), must have been named from _gries_, a stone.

So too was Gries-hilda—Stone battle maid. Griselda was the perfectly patient wife whose tale was told by Boccaccio, and narrated by Petrarch to Chaucer, who told it in his own way. The Scots seem to have been peculiarly delighted with the lady Griselidis—and Grizell or Grisell acquired fresh honour with Lady Grisell Baillie. Grizzie or Girzie are the contractions, and there is a Grisley in the register of Madran, Cornwall, dated 1662.

Though in general Borg, or Bjorg, is used to mean protection, yet Bergstein is most probably a mountain stone, and it curiously answers to two names of noted ecclesiastics from Somersetshire, whose first syllable Dun is a hill; the same with our present word _down_, and the _dunes_ on the other side of the Channel, where Dunkirk answers to our Dunchurch. The word is probably the Keltic _don_, dark brown, grey, or dun, used as the epithet of a hill, and lasting on like other Keltic local titles in the _dunum_ of the Romans and the _dun_ of the Teutons.

The two Somerset Duns are the hill-wolf, Dunulf, who is said by one of the traditions that ought to be true, to have been the swineherd whose cakes King Alfred burnt, and to have been afterwards made by him bishop of Winchester, which a Dunulf certainly was. The other was Dunstan, the mighty ascetic Abbot of Glastonbury and Archbishop of Canterbury, whose career, between wisdom and devotion, frenzy and sternness, is one of the least explicable studies of history.

His place in the calendar has given this rugged mountain stone a few namesakes.

There is a race of names, chiefly German, beginning with _hun_, that it would seem natural to ascribe to the Huns of Attila; but the original term for this race seems to have been in their own language Hiognu, and was retained in the pronunciation by other nations before writing and Latin had made the word Hun. In old Germanic poems, the Huns figure as giants or Titans, so that some translate, _huni_, or _hiune_, as a giant. The word _hun_, however, also means a stake, and it is most according to the ordinary analogy of nomenclature to suppose the names thus commencing were used in the sense of a stake, meaning either the weapon or that the bearer was strong and straight as a stake or a support, like the staff in Gustav.

┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
│ English. │ French. │ Italian. │ German. │
│Humfrey │Onfroi │Onufrio │Humfrid │
│Humphrey │ │Onofredo │ │
│Humps │ │ │ │
│Numps │ │ │ │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────┘

The names of this commencement are Huno, Hunnerich, latterly lost in Heinrich, Hunold, the French Hunaud, Hunibert, which was corrupted in France into Humbert, and belonged to various counts of Savoy and dauphins of Auvergne, Hunigar, in Hungeir and Hunifred, which the French much affected in the form of Onfroi, which belonged to one of the short-lived kings of Jerusalem, and was Latinized as Onuphrius. In the form of Humfrey it was much used by the great house of Bohun; and through his mother, their heiress, descended to the ill-fated son of Henry IV., who has left it an open question whether dining with Duke Humfrey alludes to the report that he was starved to death, or to the Elizabethan habit for poor gentility to beguile the dinner-hour by a promenade near the tomb of Duke Humfrey Stafford in old St. Paul’s. From being a noble and knightly name, Humphrey, as we barbarously spell it, came to be a peasant’s appellation, and now is almost disused.

The northern Hundolf, or Hunnolf, and Hungerdur, are in some doubt between the dog and the stake.

The helmet is the most popular piece of armour in Germany. It comes from the word meaning to cover, the very same that furnished _hol_, whole, hale, and holy. To _heal_ a wound is to cover it, and health is soundness. The Teutonic languages teem with derivatives from _hulyan_ and _helan_, of which all that shall be here mentioned are our own; heel, the covered part of the foot, the hold of a ship, its hull, and the provincial hulls (chaff), and hillier (a slater).

The Latin _galea_ was nearly related to the _helm_ of the German, and may be from the same source. Indeed, it is, as has been said before, doubtful whether Galeazzo Visconti was the offspring of a classical or of a Gothic helmet. The only popular northern helmet is Hjalmar, the helmed warrior, apparently in honour of one of the heroes of the Orvarod Saga; but Germany has Helmar, Helmerich, in Friesland Elmark, the helmed king, Helmund, or helmet protection, Helmbold, Helmut, Helmich, Helmtac; besides numerous _helms_ at the end of words, of which Wilhelm is the most notable.

The sword figures in northern and German nomenclature as Brand; but not from the verb _to burn_, but from _brandr_, an elastic staff, transferred to the blade of a sword. It would also mean the staff of a bow, and a short straight stripe of colour, whence a cow so marked is _brandet_ in the north, branded with us. The Brands are many, with German and Frank commencements, such as Hildeprant, Liutprant, &c., but seldom common; though Brand sometimes stands alone in the North, and Brandolf, or sword wolf, is an old name. Perhaps the Zetland Brenda may be the feminine.

Degen, a blade, is another sword name of rarer use, and exclusively German. It also is compounded into Degenhard, then contracted into Deinhard; but the primary meaning is the hero, as it comes from the same word as _tugend_, virtue or valour.

Another very old term for a sword was _hjøru_, or _hiru_, in the North; _hairu_, _heru_, in the Gothic; _heoru_, in Anglo-Saxon. Here we see that the Heruli and Cheruschi, as the Romans called them, were both sword men. Heoruvard, or Hereward the Saxon, was the sword guardian; Heorugar answered to the northern Hjørgeir; there was a Gothic Hairuwolf, or Heruwolf; in the North, Hiørulf, Hiørleif, and Hiørdis also occur; but the syllable gets contracted into Her, and the names are not easily distinguished from those beginning with _her_, a warrior. Hjaraande is another northern form.

Boge, the bow, is sparsely found alone, and as Bauggisel in Iceland, and now and then in Norway at the end of a name. Bogo was Old German, and the surnames in Denmark Bugge, in England Bogue. But its English fame rests upon a champion called Bogo, who was supposed by our ancestors to have been Earl of Southampton at the time of the Norman Conquest; to have fought a battle with the invaders at Cardiff, and to have left his sword as a relic at Arundel Castle. Whether this ever occurred or not, Boge was rendered by Norman tongues into Bevis, or Beavois, and was the subject of an old metrical romance, where his great exploit is killing the tremendous giant Ascapart, who had carried off his wife, the converted Saracen princess Josyan. He lives to a good old age, sees his twin sons kings, and dies happily on the same day as his wife and his good horse Arundel, once doubtless Hirondelle, or the swallow.

His fame travelled to Italy, where Buovo d'Antona is accepted as one of the heroes of romance, though he stands alone, not fitting into any of the cycles. The etymologists of Elizabeth’s time were led by the form Beavois, in which they spelt the word, to imagine that it was Bellovisus, beautiful to behold. But if ‘Bevis of Hampton’ was anybody, he was an Anglo-Danish ‘Bow,’ or Boge, a word which, like bay, bough, and boughsome or buxom, comes from _bygan_, to bend.

The spear and the breastplate, Geir and Brune, will be mentioned in the next chapter. The shield is now and then found in the North, as Skialde, Skioldbjorn, Skiolulf, and Skioldvar, shield bear, wolf, and, more appropriately, shield caution. The shield wolf is capable of being contracted into Schelluf.

_Saro_, _saru_, _searu_, is the entire equipment or suit of armour; Sørle is a Norwegian name for it, contracted into Solle; and among the Normans was called Serlo, and considered to be the same with Saher.

If there were plenty of weapons, there was also balsam to heal their wounds; that is, if the northern names beginning with _Sölv_ are rightly referred to salve, the same word in the North as with us. The _v_ has for the most part been left out by pronunciation, but the dotted _o_ remains to testify that Sölmund, or Saamund, has no connection with Sol, the sun, as little as with Solomon, by which the Danish bishops rendered it. Solveig, healing drink, is now Solva, and Sölvar is Sölvi.[128]

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Footnote 127:

Grimm; Munch; Dasent; _Int. to Nial Saga_; Weber and Jamieson; Spanish
Heraldry (_Quarterly Review_).

Footnote 128:

Munch; Michaelis; Ellis; Campbell; Montalembert.