Heluna Ellasdatter - deleted suffix "princess of Norway"

:)

I"m glad to see that. Maybe if she turns over in her grave we'll be able to find her ;)

Well, I' also noticed her yesterday among the most popular profiles, maybe I had something to do with that with my comment about her name, I don't know? I also do not know if someone have trolled me, but I'm sure that I didn't troll since I only wanted to have a logical approach, but logic and genealogy maybe shouldn't be mixed and maybe using statistic methods in order to try to count in reliability is also wrong?

I'm also starting to question my self for trying to correct profiles when I see cases there the children shows up as elder then their parents, what is illogical with that, nothing apparently by the lack of response and reaction from several other users who seems to be fully satisfied with that, and or just rather complain towards me when I sort it out.
I would probably beat any of you easily in chess, but in genealogy you really strike me.

wow

The possibility that it was her name may be ever so low, but by using the source implies to use the name Blæja also as if it really were her actual name as long as we can't prove otherwise. Regarding the second name Heluna, we can state that it is without questioning a fabricated name because that name reflects a later contemporary name that weren't in use 500 years earlier. But we can not assume only because of this that the earlier mentioned name also belong to this kind of category without making a fallacy, like if person B fabricated a name, person A must have done this also.

It is likely that he also did that, but that should be placed in the about me section among other questionable things, because it is not beyond every doubt that our speculations are indeed right.

Can anyone actually prove that her name wasn't Blæja?

If we use that as her given name, are we fabricating history?

The answer should be NO to both questions unless anyone can bring up evidence that states otherwise.

wow.

Ulf, this is a very simple case of people coming up with different conclusions. It's not fabricating evidence if someone thinks the proof is not good enough. You think there's enough evidence to call her Blæja for now. Other people disagree. Is that so surprising?

Sometimes there is good to have an debate, to reach a conclusion, sometimes it gives us one choice between two alternative or rules out bad candidates, in this case we have no one else to pick, just a choice to accept both names mentioned, one of them or neither. Blæja sounds like a Norse name, or word, but I can't prove that, I can not even say which ethnicity she and her parents had, or what dialect they spoke?

This is a prayer in Northumbrian dialect and Swedish under as a compare. Could she have a name as Blæja, my answer is yes.

FADER USÆR ðu arðin heofnu
fader vår du som är i himlen

Sie gehalgad NOMA ÐIN.
helgat vare ditt namn

Tocymeð RÍC ÐIN.
Tillkomme riket ditt

Sie WILLO ÐIN
så vilja din

suæ is in heofne and in eorðo.
såsom i himmelen och i jorden

HLAF USERNE of'wistlic sel ús todæg,
giv oss vårt dagliga bröd idag

and f'gef us SCYLDA USRA,
och förlåt oss våra skulder

suæ uoe f'gefon SCYLDGUM USUM.
så och dem som skyldiga oss äro

And ne inlæd usih in costunge,
och inled oss icke i frestelse

ah gefrig usich from yfle.
och fräls oss ifrån ondo.

Ulf, at a certain point you need to ask yourself whether you are persuading anyone. None of us win every battle.

I said earlier that my personal preference would be to show her name as Blæja / Heluna. I would probably still do that, but I think the arguments are better for the way it is now.

It's always possible to argue that something could have been someone's name, but it doesn't mean anything without reliable evidence. And people can always disagree about whether something is reliable.

English royal names in this period are very distinctive. You can spot them a mile away. They often begin with Æ or Os-. They are often compound names with Æthel or Ælf-, and -wulf, -wald, and -behrt.

Blæja and Heluna don't fit the pattern. As far as I can tell Blæja is a Norse word for a fine cloth, such as an altar cover, a bed sheet, or a shroud. In the Eddas, blæju-hvalr is a kind of whale. Maybe not a likely name for the daughter of an English king ;)

We could look at the question again if (1) someone finds a reference that shows Blæja or Heluna were real Northumbrian names at the time, or (2) someone finds out that Heluna is not just a form of Helena.

"blæja, u, f. [cp. Germ. blege = limbus, prob. derived from A. S. bleoh = colour; prob. an Engl. word, cp. Enskar blæjur, Eb. 256]:—a fine, coloured cloth; hon hafði knýtt urn sik blæju, ok vóru í mörk blá, Ld. 244: a burial sheet, Am. 101, Gkv. 1. 13, Grág. i. 207: the cover of a bed, Gg. 7, 25, Rm. 20, Bb. 1. 12, Eb. l. c.: cover of an altar table, Vm. 65, Dipl. iii. 4: poët., hildar b., a shield, the b. of the mast = the sail, etc.: mod. a veil. COMPDS: blseju-endi, a, m. the end of a b., Ld. l. c. blæju-horn, n. the corner of a b., Ld. 246. blæju-hvalr, m. [Germ. bleie], a kind of whale, alburnus, Edda (Gl.)"

http://norse.ulver.com/dct/cleasby/b.html

Thinking now about the story, there seems to be a wonderful dry humor here.

In the story, Sigurd Snake kills King Ælla, who had killed Sigurd's father, then Sigurd marries Ælla's daughter "Shroud".

A Norse audience would have understood the joke instantly because it was in their own language.

Lovely. Lovely. Hadn't caught that, thanks.

Well I'm just hunting myself, but you forget one thing, the king was from common people, he had not a royal background. Doesn't that change the ground for any common royal typical names?

First I thought that her name had something to do with blue, or black, but it could also be the word for a sacrifice, in old german, "bluozan".
It would also fit with your suggestion about a dry humor.

Talking about dry (or wet) humor. "Blæje" in modern norwegian (bleie) translates to "diaper" :-) How is that for a shroud!

Better and better!

The Swedish word for that sort of container is "blöja", but i guess a lot of women back then were a quite monthly messy story, did they really wear panties, if not, what kept their sanitary napkins in place???

Maybe we should have a project for unusually name that didn't become a tradition, blæja would absolutely be there. But if we split the word, into bl / æja, we find that there are still names with that end, like "eja", eivor,
or (h / eidi), going over in meaning to fortune, richness, blessedness,
and just by taken that last one, bless, (Northumbrian "bloedsian") we may find the actual meaning of blæja.

I'm enjoying these meanings of related words.

The etymology I posted above shows that blæja probably comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for color, and perhaps specifically for blue.

I don't think we need to look any deeper for the meaning of blæja. The sagas were meant to be enjoyed. When the author says Blæja, surely he intended for his audience to understand the word in their own language.

I haven't forgotten that Ælle was a usurper. That doesn't mean he was from the common people. I don't think we should be thinking of him as a backwoods farmer leading a mob with pitchforks. He must have been someone important.

Two sources say he was not the legitimate king. One says he was brother of Osberht, the legitimate king. One says he was "ignoblis", which can be translated as "not noble" but also as "obscure", "insignficant", "undistinguished", "morally corrupt", etc.

Ælle is a royal or noble name, a contraction of Æthel (noble). It was the name of two earlier kings. Maybe he took a royal name to look more legitimate, but then wouldn't he have given his children better names too? And why are there no documented Anglo-Saxon names that are anywhere close to Blæja, for nobles or for peasants?

Justin Durand, There was a similar discussion about Eric the Red's mother-in-law's nickname if etymology floats your boat.

I'll even give a link to make it easier to find!
http://www.geni.com/discussions/150095?msg=1045200

Thanks. I missed that one.

Justin wrote: "The etymology I posted above shows that blæja probably comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for color, and perhaps specifically for blue."

Yes, that were also my initial thought, but I have reason to believe it was a bit hasty to make that simple conclusion, the second one presented follows a name giving pattern that is known, Blessed in Swedish, Välsignad, here we have the created name Signe, well known, built on the same principle of ideas, but with another root, "sign", in it's base.

Blæja fits very well in this thinking pattern and also, it would most likely also be understandable 400 years later in a Nordic speaking world, as the word have the same origin in the Germanic word for "blood".

It gives the saga the pun needed, the father were killed, the daughter becomes this blood sacrifice, Germanic "blōtan", and I'm left here wondering if it's an intentional creation, or just a fitting coincidence?

But it's a tortuous path, filled with guesses.

This is something I find very troubling about the Geni culture -- the lengths people will go to create arguments that there is a hidden puzzle behind the plain reading a text.

Let's see. If we light a black candle at midnight on the night of the first full moon after the winter solstice, turn widdershins seven times, and invoke the angel Saraquiel, change the word to something else with the same first letter, then look for the closest equivalent in a Hindu dictionary, all will be revealed ;)

It's seems you need some basic understanding of how words are created, the very idea behind the base for any word, etymology, relationships, how we build up and recombines new words out of the roots of existing words, the intuitive thinking pattern behind.

There are some people that actually believe that words are created out of random vocals and consonants, that any word actually could consist of any random letters, well, big surprise, you are totally wrong!

Yes, if I thought that I would be wrong. But I don't think it, so I don't understand your argument here.

I think the problem is something else. I like and respect academic texts. You don't. You like the quirky possibilities, but I'm always going to be skeptical when someone without a formal education in a particular area starts spinning theories.

Blæja is a normal word in Norse, and we see it here in a Norse text as the name of a woman who lived 400 years earlier. I'm going to assume that the Norse knew their own language.

An academic dictionary shows that the word blæja appears in many Norse texts, always with the meaning of a kind of cloth. It can mean a grave cloth (shroud), an altar cloth, a bed cover, and in different compounds it means other kinds of cloth, such as a ship's sail or even poetically a battle cloth (shield).

Then, for etymology the same academic dictionary says it comes probably from the Anglo-Saxon word bleoh, which means color. Bleoh is cognate with the English word blue. The dictionary doesn't say it, but I already know that from a paper I wrote years ago.

What you want to do is throw out all the academic crap that is getting in the way of your theory. You think the Norse didn't know their language, so when they said her name was Blæja, they really meant something along the lines of blóð (blood), blót (sacrifice), blezan (blessing).

That's a very different group of words, although the stems for both go way back to a Proto-Indo-European root that has something to do with burning (if I remember my Linguistics 101 correctly).

Yours is an interesting theory, but too speculative for my taste. I'm going to stay grounded in academic reality.

Here you go, Justin Durand --

Old English blod "blood," from Proto-Germanic *blodam "blood" (cognates: Old Frisian blod, Old Saxon blôd, Old Norse bloð, Middle Dutch bloet, Dutch bloed, Old High German bluot, German Blut, Gothic bloþ), from PIE *bhlo-to-, perhaps meaning "to swell, gush, spurt," or "that which bursts out" (compare Gothic bloþ "blood," bloma "flower"), in which case it would be from suffixed form of *bhle-, extended form of root *bhel- (3) "to thrive, bloom"

and

Old English bletsian, bledsian, Northumbrian bloedsian "to consecrate, make holy, give thanks," from Proto-Germanic *blodison "hallow with blood, mark with blood," from *blotham "blood" (see blood (n.)). Originally a blood sprinkling on pagan altars. This word was chosen in Old English bibles to translate Latin benedicere and Greek eulogein, both of which have a ground sense of "to speak well of, to praise," but were used in Scripture to translate Hebrew brk "to bend (the knee), worship, praise, invoke blessings." L.R. Palmer ("The Latin Language") writes, "There is nothing surprising in the semantic development of a word denoting originally a special ritual act into the more generalized meanings to 'sacrifice,' 'worship,' 'bless,'" and compares Latin immolare (see immolate). Meaning shifted in late Old English toward "pronounce or make happy," by resemblance to unrelated bliss. No cognates in other languages.

I had that blue color idea in my first post Justin, but I abandoned it because I have difficulties to see how that could work as a real name, as a nickname it's good enough, but not as a given name. As for veils cloth etc, I have the same problem to see how it would work out other than as a nick name.

When it comes to academic texts, I don't despise them, but you seems to forget that they are done by people, people sometimes disagree with or without any scholar background, sometimes they do not find the solution either, sometimes they actually only guess and sometimes the best exposition wins and becomes a fact even if that not always are fully correct, and that I keep in my mind. I don't have a mind that by default disparages people without formal schooling, instead I'm making an individual evaluation from case to case, even a fool can sometimes convey something of value.

Yes, there are many guesses besides those made my academics, and there are many academic questions that don't get answered. But, there's often (not always) a big difference in reliability, don't you think?

If you wanted to argue that her name was really Cathy Wilson, I'd listen politely but I wouldn't be persuaded ;)

I don't believe in asserting anything at all ad absurdum, I hopefully still? knows where to stop and maybe just smile about it, and this is my end in this subject summarized as, nothing has changed, I have not influenced anyone or anything.

Ulf, I find it curious when you say "I have not influenced anyone or anything."

In your very first post to this discussion you said:

"Apropos, Blaeja / Heluna, My thought is that Blaeja, means just dark eye, initially as a standing epithet that matched the husbands "snake in the eye", at some point it breaks into two versions of her name."

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

How can you claim to not have influenced anyone or anything when the profile currently matches exactly what you posted in your very first message? You explained that Blaeja is a epithet /nickname which compliments her husband's epithet. This is exactly what the profile shows!

We do not know her name so it the profile is created N.N. we do know her epithet/nickname so this is placed in her Also Known As data field and in the Display Name, then we know the later byname which she is refered to by "Heluna" so this is also in her Also Known As data field and is put into her Display Name field in brackets to clarify the situtaion better to a casual browser of the Tree.

Ulf, you have not just "influenced" the discussion your post was the foundation stone for the entire profile.

I think that it's likely that her real name with a little modification become that nickname, if someone already had a name that resembled what was to be the nickname, I hope you understand what I aimed at. I don't think that people historically did derive name from names from clothes, yes, we have Ladbroke, as an contemporary example for a nickname, but not a real name, have you seen any Mrs Trouser, Mr Pantie, any child named Sock, I haven't. As a last name people can use such name, but nat as a given name. I'm convinced that if the story are true, then her real name were something very close to Blaeja, but with the meaning more to have been the blessed one, we still have similar name in Sweden, built on the same idea, like Signe, and we have also a name Blenda, with an unknown origin supposedly to mean, the shiny, like in the English word Blithe. Old English bliþe "joyous, kind, cheerful, pleasant," from Proto-Germanic *blithiz "gentle, kind" (cognates: Old Saxon bliði "bright, happy," Middle Dutch blide, Dutch blijde, Old Norse bliðr "mild, gentle," Old High German blidi "gay, friendly," Gothic bleiþs "kind, friendly, merciful").
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=b...

Since we were talking about nicknames, I noticed this article yesterday about viking nicknames and thought it would be an interesting addition to the discussion.

From Olafir Thick-Legged to Ragnar Fur-Pants, Viking nicknames were colorful, descriptive and fascinating
http://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-traditions/olafir-th...

Some of these are a bit too off-color to record honestly on Geni, but I particularly liked Ragnar Furry Pants, which is what we would say today if we didn't already have a long tradition in English of calling him Ragnar Hairy Breeks.