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Surname
Distribution
At my Web site is
the text of my article "What surname distribution can't tell us" from
the June 1997 issue of Family Tree Magazine where I dispute Geoffrey
Hodgson's supposed Norse etymology for the name. The article is at www.spub.co.uk/surnames.pdf
in PDF format.
Looking through
the other linguistic material on the SHARE web site, I noticed a few
other things that strike me as doubtful (certainly in the absence of
any reference to proper scholarly resources). For example, there's even
less basis for regarding McLeod as derived from Odd - people don't just
shove an extra L in at the beginning of words!
As to the relation
between Odd and Odin, my immediate reaction - I have studied old Norse,
but haven't actually got a Norse etymological dictionary to hand - is
that this too is probably sheer guesswork unsupported by any evidence.
Odd comes from an earlier form starting uzd- where the z has has been
assimilated to the d, producing a double consonant (the equivalent German
word is Ort, where the z didn't become assimilated but became r). I
don't see how Odin can't have come from a form starting uzd. Double
consonants in Old Norse were completely distinct sounds from single
ones, not just a vagary of spelling as they would be in modern English.
Given the strange status of names of gods, I wouldn't swear to this
without looking it up, but I'd be interested to see any scholarly source
for "kinship" of Odd and Odin. I'm afraid this all just looks fanciful
to me.
The derivation
of Hrothgar is from two nouns (not just syllables) hroth+gar = renown
+ spear, but these probably aren't to be interpreted as if they were
adjective + noun - they were used much more like two forenames are now:
to make a link between the child and two different adults, which is
why particular first or second syllables run in families. Do we know
that the Norman settlers in Northern France were specifically Danish?
In any case the difference between the language of the Danes and other
forms of Norse is more or less negligible until after the Norman Conquest.
The idea that Hrothgar
got "corrupted" to Roger is a popular way of looking at perfectly normal
linguistic developments - this notion of linguistic corruption is a
myth (one of the modern reflexes of the myth of the golden age, I suppose),
not something that has any validity in etymology. And Hodge must come
from Roger, not directly from Hrothgar because English preserves the
-th- when it comes from Norse or Anglo-Saxon.
Regards, Peter
Christian MA FSG, Genealogical author, editor & lecturer.
What Peter Christian
says is interesting, but does not affect the arguments concerning the
origin of the Hodgson surname very much. The crucial evidence is the
surname distribution evidence, and Mr Christian ignores this entirely.
He does not seem to have read my book "THE HODGSON SURNAME".
A relationship
between Odd and Odin does not imply a common etymological origin. The
relationship was metaphorical, symbolic and poetic. In Norse mythology,
Odin was typically seen carrying a spear, and the meaning of Odd relates
to a spear or arrow.
In the past I have
suggested the POSSIBILITY that McLeod may have come from Odd, given
the ABSENCE of adequate explanations of the McLeod surname elsewhere.
I have never been anywhere near certain of this and in my view "McLeod"
should be removed from the list of Hodgson variants. The idea that McLeod
relates to Odd is a hypothesis, nothing more. I am more convinced that
the surname McOttar relates to Odd, but even here we cannot be 100%
sure.
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