Seaxwine

Male
DWP
4 of 5

Discussion of the name

Seaxwine is an otherwise unrecorded Old English masculine name comprising the elements seax ‘knife’ and wine ‘friend, protector, lord’.

Von Feilitzen (1937: 352) could not decide if the DB form Saxwinus represented an unrecorded OE *Seaxwine or the corresponding Continental Germanic name Saxwin, which is on record in a handful of continental sources (Förstemann 1900: 1288; Morlet 1968: 194). Despite von Feiltizen’s hesitation, however, there are three good reasons to adopt the OE interpretation. Firstly, the DB instance refers to a small-scale landholder, Seaxwine 2, who in pre-Conquest England is more likely to have been of insular than of continental origin. Secondly, OE -wine is a frequent second element and OE Seax-, although not the most productive first element in forming OE personal names, was certainly still in use during the tenth, eleventh and even twelfth centuries (e.g. Searle 1897: 412-13, 575; von Feilitizen 1945: 88; Insley et al. 2007: 146). Thirdly, some otherwise unrecorded personal names in OE Seax- are known from place-names such as Saxlingham (from *Seaxel) and Saxmundham (from *Seaxmund), which suggests that there were more personal names using this element than occur in surviving records (Ekwall 1960: 406; Watts 2004: 529). For these reasons, therefore, the OE interpretation and the head-form Seaxwine are adopted here.

Bibliography

Ekwall 1960: E. Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, 4th edn. (Oxford, 1960)

von Feilitzen 1937: O. von Feilitzen, The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book (Uppsala, 1937)

von Feilitizen 1945: O. von Feilitzen, ‘Some unrecorded Old and Middle English personal Names’, Namn och Bygd 33 (1945), 69-98

Förstemann 1900: E. Förstemann, Altdeutsches Namenbuch. Erster Band: Personennamen (Bonn, 1900)

Insley et al. 2007: J. Insley and D. Rollason with P. McClure, ‘A.3 English dithematic names’, in ed. D. and L. Rollason, The Durham Liber Vitae: Volume II (London, 2007), 81-165

Morlet 1968: M-T. Morlet, Les Noms de Personne sur le Territoire de l’Ancienne Gaule du VIe au XIIe Siècle (Paris, 1968)

Searle 1897: W. G. Searle, Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum (Cambridge, 1897)

Watts 2004: V. E. Watts, ed., The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names (Cambridge, 2004)

Forms of the name

Spellings in Domesday Book: Saxwinus

Forms in modern scholarship:

  von Feilitzen head form: Saxwinus

  Phillimore edition: Saxwin

  Alecto edition: Saxwine

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
Suffolk 31,35 Cotton Saxwinus Seaxwine 'of Cotton' Burgheard, son of Earl Ælfgar Hugh de Montfort - 0.17 0.00 0.00 C Map
Totals