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From: Richard Borthwick< >
Subject: Re: wife of Odoacre/Odoacer, Count of Flanders
Date: 6 Jun 1998 05:41:59 -0700


At 07:17 PM 4/06/98 GMT, you wrote:
> (Richard Borthwick) wrote:
>
>>In the first case a Balduinus (Bodilo) was a son of St Sadlaberga (mid to
>>latter C7th). See also pp.528-31 where Sadlaberga is shown as a member of
>>the Autcharing goup. The discussion in which this reference comes up is on
>>the family of St Ledger (Leudegarius) d.677.
>
>I don't see the reason for regarding Balduinus and Bodilo as the same
>name. Does Chaume justify this, or indicate which spelling(s) of the
>name appear in the original manuscripts?
>
>Stewart Baldwin
>
In footnote 2 on p.22 Chaume refers to Appendix I of an earlier work *Le
sentiment national bourguinons* (no publication info given) in which he says
he shas shown that the names borne by St Leger's uncle [Bodilo] and by his
nephews [Leutwinus] match names occurrring in the family of St Salaberge who
was mother of a [Balduinus] ([Bodilo]) and sister of a [Leuduinus]
([Leodoinus cognomento Bodo]). Everyting in square brackets is in italics in
his text. It is clear that these are supposed to be the forms found in the
sources.

As I was checking references for this post I came accross another reference
to 'Baldwin' on p.177 n.1 of Chaume's *Les origines...* I. He gives this set
of eqivalences using the same conventions as above:
"...[Badilo] (= [Balduinus], [Bivinus], [Bovo])...".
No justification is offered.

Caution needs to be exercised in claiming that a root-form is a variant of
another such. That 'Ebbo' could be a short-form of 'Eberhard' looks
plausible as does 'Poppo/Boppo' for 'Hrodobert' (cf. our version of the
latter pairing'Bob'/'Robert'). But some are not at all obvious (or possibly
are not even true). I am not immediately persuaded that 'Bego' or'Picco'
(root: 'pik') is a short-form of Gerhard ('gair/hard') since I have also
seen it claimed as a short-form of 'Eberhard' ('ebur/hard').

Identifying name-roots may be scientific in a purely taxonomic sense. The
business of identifying variants of a root-form can also be scientific where
the identification can be plausibly justified by reference to empirically
well-based linguistic transformation rules. I suspect that in some cases
correctly spotting variants of a root-form is as much an art as a science
(maybe a bit like expert wine-tasting?!). An identification of a root-form
variant may be justified by reference to a known (as opposed to a
conjectural) genealogical structure or a conjectured identification of root-
or name-form variants could be used to justify a genealogical construction.
It is not always clear what the justification relationship is in some of the
literature.

In the 'Baldwin' and 'Bodilo' case the root-form variants being identified
are bad, bod, baud and bald I think there is an overwhelming case for the
identification of the last two, but as to the others I just don't know.

Richard Borthwick

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