Top of page Discussion Bibliography Forms Distribution Map Property List People of this Name Bottom of page

Ludi

Discussion of the name

The name Ludi occurs nowhere outside Domesday Book. The tentative suggestion that it was the same name as Ludig (Redin 1919: 158; von Feilitzen 1937: 321), recorded only as a moneyer under King Alfred (PASE: Ludig 1), has much to recommend it, but the name was clearly not much used in the upper levels of late Anglo-Saxon society.

The name which DB gives as Ledi has been identified as Scandinavian, standing for ON Leði, OSw Ledhe (von Feilitzen 1937: 319). That name, however, is not otherwise recorded in England, and it seems preferable to adopt the suggestion made elsewhere (Lewis 1990, 19–20), that DB’s Ledi was a mistake for Ludi, since the two estates in question were adjacent.

An alternative suggestion, that Ledi stood for Leduui, also recorded in Shropshire (Redin 1919: 124), is much less likely, since Leduui’s manor was at the opposite end of the shire over forty miles away.

Phillimore and Alecto both use the DB spelling Ludi; they render DB Ledi respectively as Lethi and Ledhe.

Bibliography

Lewis 1990: CPL, ‘An Introduction to the Shropshire Domesday’, in The Shropshire Domesday, ed. A. Williams and R. W. H. Erskine (London, 1990)

Redin 1919: Studies on Uncompounded Personal Names in Old English (Uppsala: A.-B. Akademska Bokhandeln, 1919)

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: Ledi, Ludi

Forms in modern scholarship:

  von Feilitzen head forms: Leði

  Phillimore edition: Ludi, Lethi

  Alecto edition: Ludi, Ledhe

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 Herefordshire	Phil. ref. 32,1	Vill Marston Stannett	DB Spelling Ludi	Holder 1066 Ludi 'of Huntington'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Rayner the carpenter	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 0.50	1066 Value 0.20	1086 Value 0.20	Confidence B	Map
Shire Shropshire	Phil. ref. 4,11,2	Vill Huntington	DB Spelling Ludi	Holder 1066 Ludi 'of Huntington'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Roger, earl	1086 Subtenant Ralph de Mortimer	Fiscal Value 1.50	1066 Value 0.50	1086 Value 0.50	Confidence B	Map
Shire Shropshire	Phil. ref. 5,3	Vill Ashford Carbonel	DB Spelling Ledi	Holder 1066 Ludi 'of Huntington'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Osbern fitzRichard	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 2.00	1066 Value 0.80	1086 Value 0.40	Confidence D	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

People of this name

• Ludi 2 - Ludi ‘of Huntington’ (Salop.), fl. 1066