Old English names

Old English, also called Anglo-Saxon, was the West Germanic language spoken in England from roughly the 5th century to the 11th, until the Norman Conquest of 1066 began to reshape it. Its closest relatives were Old Frisian and Old Saxon, not the French and Latin that flooded in afterward. It is the language of Beowulf, and to a modern reader it looks foreign, with grammar and vocabulary very different from the English spoken today. The names collected under this tag reach back to that pre-Norman layer of the language.

Anglo-Saxon personal names were typically compounds, built by joining two meaning-elements. The element ead, meaning wealth or fortune, gives Edward, from ead plus weard "guardian," Edmund, from ead plus mund "protection," and Edith, from ead plus guth "battle." Other common building blocks include aelf "elf," seen in a name like Aelfric, the ending ric "ruler, king," and wine "friend." A few of these compounds survive as given names. Audrey descends from Aethelthryth, formed from aethele "noble" and thryth "strength," worn down over centuries through the name of a medieval saint.

Most names filed here reach modern parents by a different route. Many popular Old English names today are surnames and place names built from Old English words and only later revived as first names. Ashton comes from a place name meaning "ash-tree town," from aesc "ash tree" and tun "enclosure, town." Everly traces to eofor "boar" and leah "woodland, clearing," and Harley to hara "hare" and that same leah. Addison and Emerson are patronymic surnames, "son of Adam" and "son of Emery." In each case the path runs from an Old English word to an English surname or place name and only then to a given name. Later English-language coinages and word names, which never passed through Old English, belong under the sibling English tag.

The representative library names show the mix. Audrey is a surviving Anglo-Saxon compound. Austin and Bennett are medieval English forms of the Latin names Augustine and Benedict. Addison, Ashton, Beckett, Emerson, Everly, and Harley are surnames revived as given names, each built from Old English words for places, trees, and family lines. Avery reaches English through a Norman French rendering of an older Germanic name, and sits at the edge of this group.