[antir-heralds] Name Check - Offa Wulfsen

[Ursula Whitcher]

> Wulfsson might be trickier.  Wulf- seems to be a prototheme, the first
> half of an Anglo Saxon personal name (I'm finding many female names
> that are Wulf-something) but might not be a name on its own.  Ulfr is
> a Norse personal name, and the patronimic form is Ulfsson.  So that's
> a possibility.

There was an Old English name Wulf, it's just rare.  Reaney and Wilson's 
entry for the byname Wolf says:

The derivation from Old English Wulf is very doubtful.  This personal 
name is late and not common in OE . . .

That means it must have existed :)

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 3190

http://www.s-gabriel.org/3190

has a section on patronymics in Old English names:

The usual late Old English patronymic byname (i.e., one naming the
bearer's father) consisted of the father's name in the genitive case,
roughly the equivalent of the modern English possessive form, followed
by the word <sunu> 'son'; it was used both with native names and with
names of foreign origin.  Most Old English masculine names formed
their genitives by adding <-es>, and virtually all of the exceptions
were names ending in vowels.  Foreign masculine names not ending in a
vowel were normally treated similarly and given genitives in <-es>.

That means the correct form of a name meaning 'Wulf's son' would be 
Wulfes sunu.

(While you're bookmarking useful websites, you might want to bookmark 
the Academy reports search tool:

http://www.s-gabriel.org/advancedsearch.html

)

Offa Wulfes sunu is a perfectly registrable Old English name.  However, 
as Teceangl notes, names beginning Wulf- were more common than plain 
Wulf, so your client might also want to check out the Old English 
articles in the MNA:

http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/engoldenglish.shtml

The PASE database in particular has lots of names beginning Wulf-.

Ursula Georges.