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ArchivesPagans and Pæga and Paige
Question: Do you think the name Paige derives in part from the Anglo-Saxon name Pæga? And did Pæga come from the word Pagan or Paganism? Thoughts.
This message was edited 6/2/2019, 8:57 AM
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Replies
First question: I don't think so. The "g" in Pæga is a hard g (ipa /g/) while Paige has a soft g (ipa /dʒ/) indicating a French origin of that name. There is also a gender mismatch.
Second question: I really don't know. A (week) counterargument is: Were the derivation of Pæga from "pagan" obvious, it would be the accepted etymology right now.
--elbowin
Second question: I really don't know. A (week) counterargument is: Were the derivation of Pæga from "pagan" obvious, it would be the accepted etymology right now.
--elbowin
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I definitely agree with you that Paige is not related to Pæga because of the sound difference. Pagan and Payne are the English surnames derived from the medieval given name based on Latin Paganus.
However, you shouldn't use the "gender mismatch" as part of the argument. Like most given names derived from surnames, Paige was originally given almost exclusively to males. For example, all 16 examples of a person with Paige as a given name in the 1860 United States census are male. The use of Paige as a female name is a more recent phenomenon.
However, you shouldn't use the "gender mismatch" as part of the argument. Like most given names derived from surnames, Paige was originally given almost exclusively to males. For example, all 16 examples of a person with Paige as a given name in the 1860 United States census are male. The use of Paige as a female name is a more recent phenomenon.
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Pæga may have been an Anglo-Saxon name, but it's origin must be either Latin (or a Romanized Germanic name) or British. This is unusual, but not unknown in Saxon/Anglian territory. British names survived in land-owning families into the 8th C, and only a few (e.e. Cyneric, Cynebil) were Anglicized, and not every individual found in Old English records were Anglo-Saxon - many professionals (mainly clerics) from the continent worked for long periods in the British Isles and vice versa. It's possible that Pǽga is a Romanized pronunciation (with P for B) of an Old English name such as Bǽga (ring, crown), but more likely the two individuals so named were not Anglo-Saxon, but clerics from the continent.
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