Re: Meaning of Helsing
in reply to a message by Satu
Hälsing indicates a person or people somehow related to Häls - i.e. the people or descendants of Häls (possibly a place, but more likely a person's name or epithet). Rather than "neck" I would assume it is derived from a word cognate with English háls/héals (health/salvation) Icelandic háls-/heilsa, a very rare name element I know of only from a single name Halsard (that there is no medial vowel hints that the /a/ is long, rather than short as it is in hals "neck", although more variants would be helpful to confirm this). That there is only one instance in English records may indicate that this is a peculiarly Danish/Swedish name. Either the name element was more common there than it would seem from name lists, or the Helsings were/are a prolific dynasty.