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Offa
Male
DWP
4 of 5
Discussion of the name
Offa is an Old English masculine name of uncertain derivation. It may have arisen independently from more than one origin and the most likely explanations are a development from a Germanic stem *ub‑ ‘malevolent, unfriendly’, a pet-form of names such as Osfrith, or a short form of names with OE wulf as first or second element (Redin 1919: 101-5; von Feilitzen 1937: 334-5).There are eleven entries for the name Offa in the PASE corpus, all of which pre-date the eleventh century except for Offa 11, a catch-all category for occurrences in DB. This suggests that the name was unusual and perhaps becoming rare by the time of the Conquest.
Bibliography
M. Redin, Uncompounded Personal Names in Old English (Uppsala, 1919)von Feilitzen 1937: O. von Feilitzen, The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book (Uppsala, 1937), pp. 334-5.
Forms of the name
Spellings in Domesday Book: Offa, OffoForms in modern scholarship:
von Feilitzen head forms: Offa
Phillimore edition: Offa
Alecto edition: Offa