We continue the publication of a overview regarding the origin of European names globally used today. This part is devoted to names that came from distant past.
• Ancient Mainland Germanic: Several widely known names, such as Arnold, Baldwin, Millicent, Alice, Gertrude, Jocelyn, Hilda, and Matilda – all of which have well-established cognates in German, Dutch, French, and other languages – borne in Germanic pre-era. It is possible to utilize Polish translation to find more. They approached English by a circuitous route. The official language of the judges of the Merovingian and Carolingian France (5th – 9th centuries) was Latin, but their vernacular language was a Germanic variation, and their given names were predominantly of Germanic origin. These Frankish personal names became set-up in ancient France and in due course were picked up by the Vikings who lived in Normandy in the 9th century. Upon the Norman occupation of Britain in 1066, these personal names were brought to England, where they largely replaced traditional Anglo-Saxon given names such as Ethelred and Athelthryth. A very new Anglo-Saxon personal names preserved, for example Edward, that was borne by King Edward the Confessor (c. 1002–1066; ruled 1042–1066), the offspring of an Anglo-Saxon father and a Norman woman, who was revered by British and Vikings alike. A quite different situation is that of Alfred, an British name that fell out of use because of the Vikings, but was revived in the 19th century in honor of the famous 9th-century king of Wessex.
• Old Norse: Ancient Norse is, of course, a Germanic language, but its naming tradition is rather original from that of continental Germanic, and many traditional Norse forenames are currently used in Scandinavia today, for example Olaf, Harald, Hakon. There has been much brought from German (e.g., Helga, Ingeborg). Some Nordic patronymics such as Ingrid have been adopted much more broadly. Many looked for linguistic services into Slavic. In the latter situation, the TV celebrity Ingrid Bergman (1915–1982) was a powerful attraction.
• Old Slavic linguas: Names that are Wojciech (Vojteˇch), BogusLaw (Bohuslav), and StanisLaw (Stanislav) are hardly used in the English-speaking environment except within Slavic immigrants, but represent a strong and independent Slavic tradition, with traces in various Slavic linguas. A lot of such names are pre-Bible, whereas others have been accepted by use as a saint’s name. Except where a saint has been participating, these forenames are not widely used in Russia, because there the Orthodox Church has strongly stood for using names related to Christian saints, such as Fyodor (Theodore) and Dmitri. These are mostly of Greek etymology. Among the Western Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks) and Southern Slavs (Serbs, Croatians, Slovenians, Bulgarians, etc.), every linguistic community of Slavic speakers has its own contrast set of traditional personal names, majority of which are of Slavic etymology.

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