Names from the Cartularium of Saint-Bertin

by Sara L. Uckelman
known in the SCA as Aryanhwy merch Catmael

© 2013 Sara L. Uckelman; all rights reserved
last updated 04Sep13

The following names are taken from the cartularium of the priory of Saint Bertin in Poperinge, Belgium, with other documents associated with Bas-Warneton and Couckelaere. The early records are all written in Latin, and the names are correspondingly Latinized. Many of them appear in an inflected case; I have converted names to the nominative forms where such forms are obvious. Where they are not, I have noted this. Later records are in French and Dutch, and record the names in the vernacular; in the "language" column I have indicated the language of the record that the citations came from. (Note that for the bynames, this is not necessarily the language of the byname, as vernacular bynames sometimes appear in Latin records. The linguistic etymology of the byname where it differs from that of the record it was in is noted in the "notes" section.)

I have not included any information about relative frequency of the names, since many times it is impossible if the occurrence of the same name in different charters is a reference to the same person or not. Names of saints have been omitted.

The first charter is from the mid 8th C, but then there is a gap until the early 12th C; the latest charter is from the mid 14th C. The names which are found in them reflect the change in time. The 8th C charter, for example, shows many Germanic names which have since fallen out of use or which have changed significantly over time (for example the Chrodgarius recorded in 745 is an early form of the name which we now know as Roger). During the 12th C, Germanic names are still common, but one begins to see the influence of saint's names, and other non-Germanic Christian names. Around the turn of the 13th C, saint's names for women in particular show up with a vengeance, nearly eclipsing the original Germanic name-stock (with the exception of Mathildis or Mathilda, which was also the name of a saint).

In one of the charters, I found what appear to be two names of people's houses or households: Boidinjocvels and Alontshuse (1289, charter 124). The former contains the given name Boidin; I cannot identify the second element. The latter contains the given name Alont + huse 'house'.

Feminine given names, alphabetically

Masculine given names, alphabetically

Bynames, alphabetically

In this list of bynames, I have omited descriptives such as decanus 'deacon', presbiter 'priest', clericus 'clerk', etc.

Source

d'Hoop, F.-H., ed., Cartularium. Recueil des Chartes du Prieuré de Saint-Bertin, a Poperinghe, et de ses Dépendances a Bas-Warneton et a Couckelaere, Déposées aux Archives de l'État, a Gand, (Bruges: Imprimé Chez Vandecasteele-Werbrouck, 1870).