Heluna Ellasdatter - deleted suffix "princess of Norway"

So you rather go from having 3 possible names to NN, though she might have been given the birth name Blæja just because you don't want to guess a name? I rather stick to any of the name mentioned and choose the most likely because that is how we find her in the sources no matter what name she ever had. Well I can live without any surname, but it seems ridiculous to write N.N.

When it comes to Anne Brannen's declaration of no habit to use last name for daughters, you forget that initially the Norse had their habits with them, it takes time to change and it doesn't happen over one night. I'm pretty sure there also existed runestones even in UK, at least, it's on them we have find the earliest proof for patronymic for daughters here and one of the Scottish language were Norn, similar to Norse, it didn't disappear over one night but instead developed into Lowland Scots.

When you mentioned Anglosaxare, you may also know that they were there earlier, but Northumbria lies in the more northern parts and in this case we are in the first quarter of the 800's century, not 500 years earlier, and this later time coinciding with the vikings attacks and settlement in this areas and cultural influences are usually bi-directional, whatever which cultural habits that wins in the end, it is likely difficult to determine exactly what was applied at all locations at a given historic time unless just what the scant findings tells us about, so to state some kind of historic Anglo Saxon overall one common way and practice feels very uncertain.

It's absolutely true that the Viking influence on Anglo Saxon culture was strongest and earliest in the North, but the dates for this profile are extremely early; the Scandinavians had been raiding the coast for a few decades but had not at this point started their colonization of the area; and it would be a while after that when we would see a lot of cultural interchange.

so, the people of the area would be very unlikely to be influenced yet by Scandinavian naming conventions.

The Anglo-Saxon (or Anglo-Frisian) runes are used for poetry, and inscriptions on special objects, and the like, and indeed names do show up, and I haven't seen any patronymics in them -- just the first names, sometimes with a describing adjective.

Her identity is so very questionable I can't think why anyone would try for certainty.

There is room to doubt she existed. She is not mentioned in English sources. Ælla's only relative is a brother Osberht. No children.

There is room to doubt her name. She's first mentioned 400 years after her life when someone calls her Blæja and says she was the daughter of King Ælla. 500 years after her life someone else calls her Heluna and says she was the daughter of King Ælla. There are good reasons for thinking both names are invented. Blæja is too poetic, and would not be a usual English name of the period. Heluna is anachronistic.

There is room to doubt she had a patronymic. She was English. English women of her time did not use patronymics. The Norse sources could have given her a patronymic but don't, even though they describe her relationship to Ælla.

Any argument is a house of cards. The best we can ever say is that later sources, of unknown reliability, say Ælla had a daughter and they give her name as Blæja or Heluna, neither of which can be right.

Anything more than that would be making up stories to suit our prejudices. Please, let's not do that. In medieval genealogy living with ambiguity is sometimes the only honest answer.

I know that the sources about her are both questionably and scarce Justin, but there are thousands of profiles out there with just as little meat on the bones, so what I am suggesting is not to create false names, but to use the only names mentioned, that's the difference. Nothing of this will strengthen the reliability but it will also not weaken it as long as there are no other candidates mentioned. The reason for this have to do with a basic common sense that the profiles putted up correspond to the sources, this concerns not only this profiles but other as well.

When I puts up new profiles, I'm also doing regularly searches to see if they already exist, when I hit a match here on Geni I quit and merge them together, if I don't find any matches I continue. Often I found out later that the profiles actually already did exist, but they were named in a way that made them hard to find, this creates double work, totally unnecessary if they had followed the named mentioned regarding profiles. We save a lot of time, merging, etc, if we could agree on this method instead of debating whether this profile actually did exist or not or had any other unknown given births names.

I'm not having that problem. A search on Heluna finds her (and many duplicates). A search on Blæja finds her. A search on Blaeja finds her.

A search on Ælla finds him. I just added an aka so that a search on Aella will also find Ælla.

We do all of this by using only the names mentioned in the sources.

I don't see how adding an undocumented surname will improve the search. If you think someone is likely to search on Aellasdotter, etc. you are welcome to add those as AKAs.

I'm not having that problem. A search on Heluna finds her (and many duplicates). ; )

That was actual funny, thanks for the laugh!

I have seen a lot of things in the fields reserved for names in Geni, like occupation, the way the profile died, defects, nicknames, and even whore, but I have no intention to make things more complicated, like those who adds "possible daughter of" in the name fields, because such things should be put up in the right field or in the about me section.

Ulf the display name field can be used a lot more loosely than the name fields. That is what you see here.

I hope when you come across rubbish profiles with jobs and other silly things in the name fields you delete it. Of course moving any data to the appropriate field or into the About or a Discussion.

Rurik is a good example that I know you are aware of. The only name field that is being used is his first name but then the display name expands this to Grand Duke of Novgorod Rurik so as to help a new user get an immediate sense of the person

I don't want to be a pain, but every profile here on Geni should only exist in one single original, to accomplish this, the profiles must be as comprehensive as possible and we must have one set of rules where vague lineage in turn should be based from what is actually known no matter if it is from a second or third hand source, the names should be displayed in that order they appeared in history, just to minimize the risk that people creates new profiles just because they can't find them here.

I have had my share of shit thrown at me from people who have questioned why I have created new profiles that already existed, but those profiles were named in a way that made them impossible to find or identify in an easy straight way, abbreviations, nicknames, names in wrong fields, misspelled, or the husbands family name where it shouldn't be etc.

If everything is done right, when we then merge two duplicates that's it, no post corrections are needed, it's that simple.

So, to make it understandable even for a simpleton, if you chose to use
"Blæja" (later known as Heluna) then you chose the sources also even if they are uncertain, created much later etc, and you chose the first source as her name, and the second source as her alias, or you do not use it at all, there's really no point to have semi profiles. When or if a better source turns up, well, then you makes the appropriate correction.

I'm not sure what you're saying. Do you believe that this profile is not supported by sources?

He is saying that the oldest source for her is Blaeja and the only other source we have names her Heluna so the First Name field needs to be Blaeja and Heluna needs to go in the AKA field and anything else is an unacceptable aberration. I cannot tell his stance on Display Name, the lack of mention implies he does not use them (at least that is how this simpleton interprets it).

Frankly i am tired of this, it was a pathetic piece of shit valueless profile when i first found it, it may not be perfect now but it is what it is. Frankly i think anyone following this discussion (still) must be wondering why we are bothering to argue about it.

Yes, very tedious but at this point it also happens to be a wonderful example of a problem we often see with old sources -- how you ask the question can drive the answer.

Assuming that she was a real person, you can ask just one question -- is she Blaeja daughter of Ælla, or is she Heluna daughter of Ælla? The earliest mention is Blaeja so the answer seems obvious. She should be Blaeja.

But you could also separate the problem into two questions, (1) Is she the daughter of Ælla, and (2) was her name Blaeja or Heluna or something else? If you ask the question this way then representing her on Geni is much more complicated. NN. becomes a serious choice in a way it wouldn't be if you ask the question the first way.

So many of the endless quibbles we see on Geni are nothing more than this. People insisting that their way of defining the problem is the only way.

To Alex: Again a wery good work where you try to add a name to nameless profiles ! Stand and do not give up.

In this branch of the tree it is more to do: birthyears has to be changed where childs is born long time before the father.

Arnfred Nilsen

It shall be: where children is born long time before the father

Alex wrote
" I cannot tell his stance on Display Name, the lack of mention implies he does not use them (at least that is how this simpleton interprets it). "

Well, this simpleton use the same name that are in the source used, it will therefor be the same name both in the displayed name and in the name fields, example. If a profile in the source is named Max Anderson, then the name would be Max, the surname, Anderson, and the displayed named as Max Anderson. I guess you would use, Displayed name as "Max Anderson", name as NN and surname leaved out blank.

But I'm still stupid curios, where did you find the source for "NN" when it comes to this actual profile?

A, this branch of the tree is probably the hardest i have ever worked at the very shadowy edge of history. I have basically given up on it already but not on Geni. I made in another discussion what i thought was a very strong argument for Ragnar's date of birth but the reality is that i do not believe that Ragnar as we show him on Geni actually existed so trying to argue about dates is a little pointless. :)

Ulf, two sources for the fact that Blaeja's original name is unknown, or N.N., which are J Swanström 2015, pers. comm., 3 September and U Martinsson 2015, pers. comm., 3 September.

here is some links:

http://www.geni.com/discussions/149468?msg=1040007

http://www.geni.com/discussions/149468?msg=1039993

http://www.geni.com/discussions/149468?msg=1040023

http://www.geni.com/discussions/149468?msg=1040025

It's fairly common for the display name to expand the information in the basic name fields, by providing additional information or by providing a more familiar name.

For example, Marion Robert Morrison's display name is John Wayne.

The advantages should be obvious. If we buried the famous name in the AKA -- if we didn't have the ability to set the display name to something different -- we'd get new, duplicate profiles every week.

It's the same with this woman. Her name is apparently unknown, but she's known to later generations as "Blæja" and "Heluna".

Alex, my idea with my earlier comments that you refereed to is built on the fact that some names are slightly transformed to be easier to pronounce in some cases, like my name, Ulf to Ulv, or translated to another language like, Wolf, Lupo, Vilk, Volk, or Faolchu.

Ulf,

I think that whether Blaeja was a name that Sigurd invented completely or only a small variation on the woman's original name does not change the issue.

The issue is as I see it, 1, Heluna was a variation of a contemporary name when that piece was written down around 1387 - 1394 ca. 500 years after she supposedly lived, thus not likely mirroring her real name.

2, Blæja at the other hand, although also written down about 1300, ca. 400 years after she lived, is a name that more sounds like a nickname than a real name, but that is the first and oldest of these two names, leaving us with the probability that either of them were her true given name, but, if we don't want to act inconsistently, by using this sources we have to use the first name also, just because that was the first mentioned, secondly, we can not fully rule out that it also wasn't her real name, how odd and unlikely it ever seems, otherwise we have a conflicting profile because you choose to have only parts from the source.

I believe that the only way to deal in this case are either to reject everything, or accept everything, if we accept the father, than we have to accept the daughter, since we actually do not know if that first presented name Blæja are true or a result of an nordic adaptation and we still do not have any proof that it's false, we have no other alternative than to use it as her given name, different from when it comes to the name Heluna, we ( I ) can definitely state that that name almost certainly didn't exist 500 years earlier and are a later construction.

Ulf, that's a good explanation of how we disagree.

You said, "I believe that the only way to deal in this case are either to reject everything, or accept everything".

I see it differently. I think details in the sagas are suspect, but there's usually no way to argue. We have to take the information at face value, unless there is some solid reason to doubt it. For example, I don't believe this woman is real but I don't have a way to show she isn't. Just my skepticism, which isn't proof of anything ;)

But, I see very good reasons to doubt her name. There are only two sources, they contradict each other, and they both very unlikely.

So, we have good reason to doubt her names but no solid reason to doubt the relationship.

The bottom line is that we don't have to accept everything or reject everything. There are multiple data elements here. We can accept the ones we can't disprove and reject the ones we can disprove.

Without wanting to side-track the discussion:

We currently are showing Ælla, king of Northumbria as father of Osbeorht, king of Northumbria despite "most sources [describe Ælla ] as a tyrant, and not a rightful king, one source states that he was Osberht's brother"

So either Ælla is Osberht's brother or not related to him at all rather than his father.

Anyone disagree with moving them to be brothers with a Curator Note that the relationship is questionable?

Might be worth exploring PASE just a bit more. What I see on a cursory look is that Ælle was the brother and successor of Osberht, whom he overthrew, according to Symeon of Durham, Historia de Sancto Cuthberto.

Ælla is called "ignoblis" by Chronicle of Æthelweard and "tyrannus" by Asser's Vita Alfredi.

Some different pieces that don't quite seem to fit together:

The people of that country (Anonymi 2492), aroused to fury, expelled their king, Osberht 6, from the throne, which he held legitimately.: Æthelweard.Chron iv.2 (p. 36) (867)

The Northumbrians had expelled their legitimate king, Osberht 6, from the kingdom.: Asser.VitAlfredi 27

All the people of that land alike (Anonymi 2492) chose a king [sc. Ælle 3], who was not noble, over themselves: Æthelweard.Chron iv.2 (p. 36) (867).

In these snippets Ælle 3 and Osberht 6 are just database identifiers within the PASE system to differentiate them from other Ælles and Osberhts in the system.

"Blæja" (later known as Heluna)

Heluna-Ellusdotter, when people creates profiles because they do not find them, I guess, created today.

If you search either Heluna of Blaeja, the profile we've been talking about is the first one in the queue -- at least, that's what just came up for me.

People create duplicate profiles of Master Profiles all the time, putting in their own trees.

This one is especially interesting, though. Besides being highly problematic in itself, as far as I can tell, the person who created it is a new geni user, Blaeja/Helena's great-great grandson! That's much closer than my relation to her. And! He's about 1,165 years old!

Surely I'm misreading this.

But he's very active, for such an old guy.

Anne,

The only mystery here is whether Ulf unsuccessfully tried to troll us or if someone else has successfully trolled Ulf.
If i was Ulf i am not sure which scenario i would find more embarrassing.

I know. My thoughts exactly.

random question. if Ælla really did have a snake pit, where would he have sourced his snakes from? is the english adder venomous enough to kill a man?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/bitten-by-an-adder-the-doctors...

Assuming by "English Adder" we are discussing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipera_berus#Venom then apparently "Relatively speaking, bites from this species are not highly dangerous."
quoting [Mallow D, Ludwig D, Nilson G. (2003). True Vipers: Natural History and Toxinology of Old World Vipers. Malabar, Florida: Krieger Publishing Company. ISBN 0-89464-877-2.]

Maybe that's why the initial bites didnt kill Ragnar, nothing to do with magic clothes just need a whole lot of venom to kill him.

Hey, for someone who may never have existed Blaeja has made it to the "Hottest 100" list http://www.geni.com/popular