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So my question deals with the name "Hygelac". In Beowulf it's given to a male figure. I've heard that Anglo-Saxons of noble birth usually took two-word compounds for their names and that the last element had to be of masculine gender if they were male or feminine gender if they were female. Hygelac seems a lot like "Mind Play" or something similar. The only catch is that its last element +lac is either feminine or neuter in gender - not masculine. So how could it have been given to a male figure? It'd be like naming this guy Pauline instead of Paul.
I'm also wondering if the last element in an Anglo-Saxon male's name can be neuter if the first is masculine. That would potentially explain this discrepancy away.
I'm also wondering if the last element in an Anglo-Saxon male's name can be neuter if the first is masculine. That would potentially explain this discrepancy away.
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Anglo-Saxon used some name-elements for males, some for females and some on both, but as the last poster said, noun-gender and real gender didn't necessarily correspond at all, and it was quite usual for male names to have feminine word-elements in both first and last place.
-lac seems to have been used exclusively on males. There's St Guthlac, for example, whose name comes from gúð + lac, gúð being a feminine word meaning 'battle'; and king Oslac of Sussex, whose name comes from ós + lac, ós being a masculine word meaning 'god'.
-lac seems to have been used exclusively on males. There's St Guthlac, for example, whose name comes from gúð + lac, gúð being a feminine word meaning 'battle'; and king Oslac of Sussex, whose name comes from ós + lac, ós being a masculine word meaning 'god'.
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That should say 'Anglo-Saxons', sorry, got logged out before I caught the typo.
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I don't know anything specifically about Old English, but there are plenty of examples in other languages that show that grammatical "gender" does not have to have an exact correspondence to real "gender".
In modern German, for example, there is a rule that all nouns which end in the suffix -chen are neuter. So the common German word "Mädchen", meaning "girl", is neuter, not feminine, in German.
In modern German, for example, there is a rule that all nouns which end in the suffix -chen are neuter. So the common German word "Mädchen", meaning "girl", is neuter, not feminine, in German.
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