Germanic Names, Vernacular Sounds, and Latin Spellings in Early Anglo-Saxon and Alemannic Charters

This chapter focuses on the graphemic representation of names in early single-sheet charters from Anglo-Saxon England and from the abbey of St Gall. Personal and place-names in Latin charters are among the earliest written evidence for Old English and Old High German. Given their ambiguous lexico-semantic status, scribes could choose whether to treat names as vernacular items or as part of the Latin (con)text. This is reflected in the spellings which they use for the representation of specifically Germanic sounds as well as in their choice of inflectional endings. An analysis of the distribution of these features shows that there is a strong correlation between spellings/endings and different sections of the charters: Latinized spellings and case endings dominate in the dispositive section of charters, whereas more vernacular forms are used in the witness list and, for the St Gall charters, in the charter drafts. A second factor that influences the written representation of names is the social status of the people involved: the names of important people, such as kings, counts or bishops, are more often Latinized than those of more ordinary witnesses. Moreover, the type of name also plays a role as place-names generally display a higher degree of vernacular features than personal names. Thus, the graphemic variation attested in these charters turns out to be highly functional and is indicative of different communicative purposes attached to separate sections of the charters.