Se ðe oðran naman wæs geciged: the Naming of Bishops and Clerics in Late Anglo-Saxon England

Abstract

In studying medieval societies, etymology can help us to understand words and their uses. Names, too, can be interpreted as having their own meanings. Moreover, between the Carolingian era and the Gregorian reform, clerics and monks belonged to increasingly distinct categories of society. As these assertions were often true in early medieval England, it is legitimate to ask whether the names of ecclesiastics were affected. Implicit norms affect the choice of their names, which seem less varied than those of the aristocrats. Their names, although belonging to the same culture as the ecclesiastics themselves, were often Latinised or accompanied by specific titles. Sometimes the name was changed when someone became a cleric (cloister name); sometimes double names were adopted; sometimes a child’s name reflected his parents’ intention for him to be an ecclesiastic (clerical name). The aim of this article is to assess the role of these practices in ninth- to eleventh-century England.