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HelpRe: Girls' names from England, 1250-1450 (D-F)
in reply to a message by Amphelise
I've never seen names with apostrophes at the end before. Do you know if it changes the pronunciation somehow? Or maybe it's a stand-in for a diacritical mark that doesn't exist in modern English, like how some people type Renee' when they mean Renée.
I like/love*/find interesting:
Eleanor*
Elena*
Elianora
Elizabet
Elizabeth
Emeline (any idea if medieval English speakers would have used the -leen or -line pronunciation?)
Emma
Eva*
Eve*
I like/love*/find interesting:
Eleanor*
Elena*
Elianora
Elizabet
Elizabeth
Emeline (any idea if medieval English speakers would have used the -leen or -line pronunciation?)
Emma
Eva*
Eve*
This message was edited 8/14/2014, 7:45 PM
Archived Thread - replies disabled
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Replies
The apostrophe is from the original text, and means that the scribe was abbreviating. Names were almost always recorded in their Latin forms, which added 'a', 'ae' etc at the end of names that wouldn't usually have them. The apostrophe might indicate that the scribe left off the artificial Latin ending... so for example recording an Elisot as Elisot' instead of the Latin, Elisota.
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Ah, thank you. That makes sense!
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