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Ocsen

Discussion of the name

Ocsen is the DB form of an as-yet unidentified personal name, although it is unlikely that it represents an Old English one. Von Feilitizen (1937: 333) regarded it as obscure but rejected a derivation from an Anglo-Scandinavian form *Oschell (presumably with a scribal error ‘n’ for ‘ll’) of the Old Norse name Áskell. Dodgson (1985: 47) suggested a triple sequence of scribal errors – ‘c’ for ‘t’, ‘s’ for ‘f’ and ‘n’ for ‘r’ – to produce *Otfer as a form of the Continental Germanic name Odfrid; since the form Ocsen occurs twice in DB, however, this suggestion probably requires that a compound error of this sort originated at an earlier documentary stage of DB. Another possibility is that a scribal error of ‘c’ for ‘t’ together with the loss of final ‘t’ or ‘d’ after a consonant would give an underlying form Otsend, which is a recorded form of the Continental Germanic masculine name Audsind; a feminine form is also theoretically possible but unrecorded (cf. Forssner 1916: 24, 36-7, 194; von Feilitzen 1937: 94-5; Morlet 1968: 45). The question remains open, however, so Ocsen is retained as the head-form here.

Bibliography

Dodgson 1985: J. McN. Dodgson, ‘Some Domesday personal-names, mainly post-Conquest’, Nomina 9 (1985), 41-51

Forssner 1916: Thorvald Forssner, Continental-Germanic Personal Names in England in Old and Middle English Times (Uppsala, 1916)

Morlet 1968: Marie-Thérèse Morlet, Les Noms de personne sur le territoire de l’ancienne Gaule du VI^e au XII^e siècle, I: Les noms issus du germanique continental et les creations gallo-germaniques (Paris: Editions de Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1968)

von Feilitzen 1937: Olof von Feilitzen, The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book, Nomina Germanica 3 (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksells, 1937)

Forms of the name

Spellings in Domesday Book: Ocsen

Forms in modern scholarship:

  von Feilitzen head forms: Ocsen

  Phillimore edition: Ocsen

  Alecto edition: Ocsen

Distribution map of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

List of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

Holder 1066

Shire	Phil. ref.	Vill	DB Spelling	Holder 1066	Lord 1066	Tenant-in-Chief 1086	1086 Subtenant	Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value	Conf.	Show on Map
Shire Hampshire	Phil. ref. 46,1	Vill Will Hall	DB Spelling Ocsen	Holder 1066 Ocsen 'of Gierdaleah'	Lord 1066 Edward, king	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Walter fitzOther	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 1.00	1066 Value 2.00	1086 Value 2.00	Confidence B	Map
Shire Hampshire	Phil. ref. 46,2	Vill Malshanger	DB Spelling Ocsen	Holder 1066 Ocsen 'of Gierdaleah'	Lord 1066 Edward, king	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Walter fitzOther	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 3.00	1066 Value 1.50	1086 Value 2.00	Confidence B	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

People of this name

• Ocsen 2 - Ocsen ‘of Gierdaleah’ (Hants), fl. 1066