medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Monday, October 5, 2009, at 8:46 am, christopher crockett wrote:
> From: John Dillon <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > 5) Utto (Bl.; d. late 8th or very early 9th cent.). U. (in Latin,
> also
> Utho; in German, also Udo)
>
>
> in the first half of the 12th c. (c. 1130-1150, i believe) there is an
> abbot
> of St. Peter's of Chartres who appears in the (Latin) charters of the
> abbey
> consistently as "Udo."
>
> though sometimes (mistakenly, surely) modren French authors francyfy
> his name
> as "Eudes" (i.e., Latin "Odo," one of the traditional names of the
> Counts of
> Blois/Chartres), it has always seemed to me that his name was, indeed,
> [in
> Latin] "Udo" --especially since he styles himself that in multiple
> charters of
> his own creation-- and that this name was quite distinct from (though,
> perhaps, related to) "Odo."
>
> do you intend to say, John, that "Utho" is a Latin form of the name,
> and that
> "Udo" is a German form?
>
> or is the above some kind of typo?
It's not a typo. The attested Latin name forms that I have seen for the Blessed U. are Utto (on the staff), Uto (in the Vita s. Gamelberti), and Utho (reportedly the form of the name in the inscription on his later medieval tomb; also in early modern historical writing). I'm not a Germanic philologist but my supposition is that that these are Bavarian equivalents, with an unvoiced stop (i.e. /t/ rather than /d/), of West Frankish Udo or Odo. The name is said earlier to have been Audo and in that form to be ancestral also to Eudo (whence French Eudes). Bl. U.'s alternate German name form Udo (normally he's also Utto in modern German) is probably a recent normalization in Modern High German.
For another instance of /u/ vs. /o/ and unvoiced stop vs. voiced stop in different national forms of the same Germanic name, cf. Rupert vs. Robert.
Best again,
John Dillon
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