View Message

One website says “Old Norse name (maybe from Old English)” https://www.nordicnames.de/wiki/Sumarli%C3%B0i and it lists Sumarliði as the main form and Sumarliðr as a later variant. The Anglo-Saxon form was Sumerlida (with many variations). An Anglo-Saxon origin seems more likely because both elements were also used in other names: Sælida (sea + sailor), Winterlida (Winter + sailor), Sumerfugol (Summer + bird), although none of these were common. In Anglo-Saxon, lid (or lit, or lith) meant a ship or vessel, so lida was a seaman or sailor. Obviously, if the Anglo-Saxon form is the earliest, then it would have been originally a description of Norsemen who raided in the Summer, subsequently taken up as a personal names. The same thing happened with the word Northman.

---

There are some listings of Anglo-Saxons (or Danes) called Sumerlida on these pages:
http://pase.ac.uk/jsp/pdb?dosp=VIEW_RECORDS&st=PERSON_NAME&value=17473&level=1&lbl=Sumerlida
https://archive.org/details/onomasticonangl00seargoog/page/n492
https://archive.org/details/indexsaxonicusa00bircgoog/page/n122
(On that last page, the numbers after the names are not dates, but references to documents.)

---

One document http://www.esawyer.org.uk/charter/1448a.html from about 983 or 985 contains this sentence:
“These are [the sureties] whom the widow of Wineman of Raunds found for Abbot Ealdulf for the one hide at Warmington, namely first her own son and her three brothers - Osulf and Fastulf and Beornheah - and Æthelwold, Frithegist's son, and Sumerlida the priest and Sumerlida of Stoke and Thurferth, Rolf's son, and Cytel his brother and Oswig of Elton and Edwin, Eadric's son, and Ælfweard of Denton.”