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How to pronounce Æðelflæd?
How do you pronounce Æðelflæd?I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has passed I will turn my inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
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I've always pronounced ð as an eth- or a th- and the æ as a regular -a- (like cat), so Æðelflæd would be pronounced something like ath-el-fled or ath-el-flad. However, the æ has always been confusing for me- apparently in Old English it was pronounced like ash which later became -a- in Middle English, I don't know why. But apparently it is commonly said like cat or bat. I posted some links below that explains some of it- the last two links show how the ð and the æ are pronounced.
https://oldenglish.info/advpronunciationguide.html
https://thegriffon.wordpress.com/name-list/ae/aethelflaed/
https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2011/05/ae-digraph-ligature.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kwDHWHZJ8c
https://mythatsenglish.blogspot.com/2011/12/pronunciation-vs.html
https://www.englishlanguageclub.co.uk/th-sound/
https://www.englishlanguageclub.co.uk/ae-sound/
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to be precise the first æ is short, like cat or bat or ash (the latter is the name of the rune for this digraph). the second in flæd is long, like in bad, or pad. in Kent the spelling and pronunciation became Eðelfled (with a long final e similar in sound to "flair"). ð or þ were interchangeable, depending on the particular scribal school, since the Latin alphabet lacked a symbol for this sound (modern English /th/, technically this is two different phonemes, but since it didn't develop in Latin, no alternative grapheme was ever used until relatively modern times when ð and þ are (sometimes) used to distinguish voiced from unvoiced). Middle English is a bit of a mess, with Norman scribes trying to figure out new ways of writing English that a French-speaking aristocracy would understand. Thanks for the link :-)The original sense of -flæd is only documented in the later high German f. antonym unvlat "dirtiness, untidiness", from which developed the modern German unflat "dirt". This fits the standard meaning given for -flæd and it's continental cognates, of "beauty", even though it is only recorded in names.

This message was edited 5/30/2020, 5:16 AM

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Thank you so much
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From what I can dig up with regards to Old English phonology, to me, it seems that this name is pronounced as A-dhel-FLAD [ˈæ.ðelˌflæd].
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Thank you :)
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