Name Your Medieval Character: new resource book

This week I published my first non-fiction title: Name Your Medieval Character: Medieval Christian Names (12th-13th Centuries). 

Here's a description:

Medieval author Joyce DiPastena is always on the lookout for authentic medieval names for her characters. Internet searches are helpful, but occasionally they can lead a writer astray. Accurate lists can be found on the internet, but it can take a deal of searching and double-checking of sources. In Name Your Medieval Character: Medieval Christian Names (12th-13th Centuries), DiPastena has done much of this work for you. Name Your Medieval Character is a compilation of her 30-plus years of research into medieval Christian names. Every name and name variation in this book was borne by a living, breathing medieval man or woman.

Name Your Medieval Character includes over 800 female names (including variations) and over 1500 male names (including variations). This book will prove a treasure trove for historical fiction writers, fantasy writers, gamers, or anyone who just enjoys names!

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I hope some of you will find Name Your Medieval Character helpful and enjoyable. It is available in e-book format on Kindle and Smashwords for just .99 cents! Print version coming soon.

More on names...

Here is a quick and easy tip for both supplementing your collection of names drawn from The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, and for identifying how frequently certain names were, in fact, used during the Middle Ages.

Walk into any library or bookstore and grab a medieval biography off a shelf. In this example, I am using William Rufus, by Frank Barlow. I admit my disappointment in the dry and plodding text of this biography (I’d hoped for a more colorful and lively treatment of this particular king of England). However, I did find it useful in the following manner, a trick which you can use with pretty much any medieval biography.

Flip to the index at the end of the book, and simply run down the list of names referred to in the text. While in the case of William Rufus, you will run across a few new and unusual names such as Achard (an abbot), Amieria (wife of a man named Warin), Boso (name of both a monk and a knight), Gisulf (a royal scribe), and Jarento (a bishop), you will also be able to quickly identify a list of “most popular names in use” during the time period.

For example, citing from the index:

Alan appears 5 times for different men
Baldwin appears 6 times
Geoffrey appears no less than 25 times
Gerald/Gerold appears 5 times
Gilbert, 12 times
Guy, 6 times
Henry, 10 times
Herbert, 4 times
Hugh, 31 times!
Humphrey, 4 times
John, 8 times
Nigel, 4 times
Odo, 6 times
Osbern/Osbert, 7 times
Peter, 6 times
Ralf, 22 times
Ranulf, 7 times
Richard, 19 times
Robert, 44 times!
Roger, 23 times
Simon, 5 times
Stephan/Steven, 5 times
Thomas, 4 times
Thurstin, 7 times
Walter, 15 times
William, 61 times!!! (beating out Robert, hands down)

Because men played a more frequently documented role in medieval times than women, it is harder to draw conclusions about the frequency of individual female names from such biographical indexes. However, from William Rufus we can collect the following information on women:

A form of Adela or Adelaide/Adelais appears 5 times for different women
Judith appears 3 times
Matilda appears 6 times

But it isn’t always necessary to know what the most popular names were in order to arrive at names for our characters…only that certain names were in use at all during the Middle Ages.

Drawing from the index of Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography, by Marion Meade, we can compile the following list of female names in use, at least during the 12th Century:

Aelith
Aenor (the mother of Eleanor of Aquitaine)
Agens
Alais/Alice
Alix
Bertha
Blanche
Constance (appears 4 times)
Eleanor
Emma
Ermengarde
Joanna
Matilda
Melisende

While a quick glance through the index of William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire 1147-1219, by David Crouch, will add such female names as:

Adelina
Aline
Eve
Heloise
Isabel
Joan
Margaret
Nicola
Rohese
Sybil

As you can see, within a very short space of time, you can assemble an excellent starting list of medieval Christian names, merely by running through various indexes in biographies of medieval personages. All for the price of a few minutes’ browsing at a bookstore or your local library!

Never underestimate the value of a good index. In future posts, I will point out additional ways that this book feature can speed along research that will assist in setting a vivid and accurate setting for our medieval fiction.

Next post: I have a name. Now what am I going to wear?

Where do we begin?

When planning to write a medieval fiction novel, the obvious question is: Where to begin?

Speaking for myself (this is, after all, a blog devoted to the way I do my research), I like to start with the characters. And the first step in bringing a character alive is to assign him or her a name.

Since our fiction is set in the Middle Ages, we want our names to be as authentic to the time period as possible. No women named “Dakota” (for obvious reasons), or “Madison”, or “Jamie”, or “Bailey”. (A “bailey” was a walled enclosure of a castle, not a woman’s name.)

Interestingly, the often mocked, “Tiffany” originated as a form of the medieval “Theophania”, with the variant “Teffany” being recorded as early as 1200 AD, and “Tiffany” itself appearing by 1315. Still, since readers tend to be a skeptical audience, unless you intend to provide footnoted-authentication, you might want to leave all “Tiffanys” out of your stories.

As for the men: No “Blade’s”, or “Dillon’s”, or “Devon’s” (a place name, not a man’s name) or even “Jacob’s”, unless the character he’s representing is either a medieval ecclesiastic or a Jew.

How, of all the names circulating in the world today, can we learn which ones of present and past are acceptable for a medieval character?

One of the best resource books I have discovered on the subject is: The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, by E.G. Withycombe. The author not only includes a roster of English Christian names, past and present, but traces most of them back to their historical roots.

An example: "Alan is a Celtic name of a popular early Welsh and Breton saint. It was introduced to England at the time of the Norman Conquest. In French, it was Alain and Alein, and the spellings Allan and Allen have both been used in England. Alain is still a favorite in Brittany, but is not much used in the rest of France today. Other variants are Aleyne and Aleyn."

From this information, I know that if I want to include a character named some version of Alan, my time setting in England must be after the Norman Conquest (October 1066). If I want to use the name for a lower class character, then it should be as a result of an intermingling of the Saxon and Norman races, or I need to set my story a few centuries later when Norman names have "seeped down" to the lower classes. A character from England or Brittany will likely be named Alan, whereas a character from France will be Alain or Alein.
The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names has been an indispensable resource book for me. From this book, I have assembled a list of medieval names, with their variant spellings per country, divided into male and female. Thus, whenever I start a new project or create a new character for a project-in-process, I don’t have to go digging through this book anew, but can simply choose from among the list I have already compiled.

The beauty of The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names for an author doing his/her own research—and may I mention that this volume would be equally helpful in compiling a list of names popular during the Regency or Victorian periods, or later, as well as the Middle Ages—is that you can use it to assemble your own lists in small snippets of time. Keep a pen and notebook handy, and thumb through the book, beginning with the “A’s”, while waiting for a child at piano lessons, or in the dentist or doctor’s office, or simply during a 15-minute break between tasks during your day. When you come across a name in vogue during whatever time period you are interested in, jot down the name and its variants, with any additional historical information you wish, in your notebook. Then later, when you have more time, type up the names you’ve gathered onto your computer and save them, until you’ve worked your way clear through the “Z’s”. At that point, you can print out your list if you wish and keep it in a binder, or simply keep a copy on your computer. (Personally, I prefer a hard copy so that I can refer to it away from the computer, as well as while sitting at the keyboard.)

BONUS: The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names often gives examples of surnames derived from Christian names, so if you are looking for surnames for your characters, you will find this book equally helpful for that, as well.

Regrettably, The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names is no longer in print, but used copies are available on the Internet. The website: http://www.bestwebbuys.com/The_Oxford_Dictionary_of_English_Christian_Names-ISBN_0198691246.html?isrc=b-search will take you to a site offering comparison price shopping for this volume. And always remember that if purchasing a copy is not within your budget, your local public librarian will be happy to locate and order you a copy through the Interlibrary Loan program.