sveinn

Forms

sveinn m (genitive sveins, plural sveinar)^[1] Viking Age runic spellings: suain and suin (accusative singular), sueinaR and suinaR (nominative plural).^[2][3][4][5] Old Norwegian svæinn, with svæin and svæinar, in AM 619 4to.^[6]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Germanic *swainaz (“relative, young man, servant”).^[1][7][8] The West Germanic cognates mostly mean a herdsman: Old English swān (“herdsman, swineherd, (poetic) man, warrior”), Old Saxon swēn (“swineherd”) and Old High German swein (“swineherd, servant”).^[8][9][10]

Most scholars derive it from the reflexive pronoun, Proto-Indo-European *s(w)e- (“oneself, one's own”): Falk and Torp start from its locative, with the suffix of sinn (“his own”), so that the first meaning was “one who belongs to oneself”, a member of the household.^[11][12][13] The closest form outside Germanic is Lithuanian sváinis (“husband of a wife's sister”), with Latvian svainis (“wife's brother”).^[14][10] Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon puts it with svili (“brother-in-law”) and svás (“dear, own”), and with Old High German gaswīo (“brother-in-law”).^[14]

Orel instead derives it from the word for swine, Proto-Germanic *swīną,^[8] while Torp and Falk–Torp hold that it cannot belong there despite the West Germanic sense “swineherd”.^[10][11] Wiktionary allows that both sources may have fed the West Germanic sense.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is first dated on the Danish runestone DR 344 at Simris, of 1050–1100, in the sense of a man's follower: Bjôrngeirr lét reisa stein þenna eptir Hrafn, bróður sinn, svein Gunnulfs á Svíþjóðu “Bjǫrngeirr had this stone set up for Hrafn, his brother, who was Gunnulfr's man in Sweden”.^[3] Undated Swedish stones of the Viking Age use it of a young man, as Ög 66 does: eptir Styfjald, bróður sinn, svein algóðan “for Styfjaldr, his brother, an excellent young man”.^[2] In the manuscripts it is common from the first Icelandic and Norwegian homily books on.^[15][6][16]

Semantic evolution

The core meaning is a boy, from a newborn male child to a young man.^[17][18] In the plural it was a familiar way of addressing grown men, as in hart ríði þér, sveinar! “you ride hard, lads!”.^[17][19] From the young man in a lord's company it came to mean a servant or attendant, a page or squire, as in the compounds skósveinn and skutilsveinn;^[19][20] the Norwegian laws use it also of an unfree man.^[19][21] In poetry it can mean a son, and the young warriors of a chieftain.^[22][23]

It continues as Icelandic sveinn, Faroese sveinur, Norwegian Nynorsk svein, Swedish sven and Danish svend; the sense “journeyman” in Icelandic and Danish came later, and Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon takes it in Icelandic as a loan meaning.^[14] English swain is from it, through Middle English swein, first recorded in the mid-12th century for a young man attending a knight.^[24][13][11]

Timeline

• 1050–1100 – svein Gunnulfs “Gunnulfr's man” on the Danish runestone DR 344.^[3]
• 1150 – sveinn and sveininn in the Icelandic Homily Book, by IcePaHC's dating.^[15]
• 1150–1248 – en sveinninn á mik “but the lad owns me” on a rune-stick from Bryggen in Bergen (N 291).^[25][26]
• 1200–1225 – svæinn in the Norwegian AM 619 4to and sveinn in the Icelandic AM 677 4to.^[6][27]
• Mid-12th century – Middle English swein, from the Old Norse word.^[24]

Meanings

Noun

1. a boy, a male child.^[17][18]
2. a young man, a lad; in the plural, in addressing grown men, “lads!”.^[17][19]
3. a servant or attendant; a page, squire.^[17][20]
4. (law) an unfree man, a bondsman.^[19][21]
5. (poetic) a son; a young warrior of a chieftain's following.^[22][28]

Word family

• sveinbarn
• sveindómr
• sveinligr
• sveinaleikr
• skósveinn
• skutilsveinn
• kertisveinn
• hirðsveinn

Descendants

• Icelandic sveinn^[1]
• Faroese sveinur^[1]
• Norwegian Nynorsk svein^[1]
• Old Swedish svēn^[1]
• Swedish sven^[1]
• Old Danish swæn^[1]
• Danish svend^[1]
• Middle English swein (→ English swain)^[24][13]

Related words

• svili
• svás

Usage notes

Sveinn was also a very common man's name, first a byname, and an element of names such as Sveinbjǫrn and Bergsveinn;^[13][14][1] Lind's earliest dated record of the name is from 1270.^[29] The name passed into other languages, among them Old English Swegen and Finnish Soini.^[13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata 3.1), Uppsala universitet (inscriptions by signum), p. Ög 66
3. ^ a b c Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata 3.1), Uppsala universitet (inscriptions by signum), p. DR 344
4. ^ Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata 3.1), Uppsala universitet (inscriptions by signum), p. Sm 16
5. ^ Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata 3.1), Uppsala universitet (inscriptions by signum), p. U 225
6. ^ a b c Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 619 4to
7. ^ Köbler, Gerhard, Altnordisches Wörterbuch, online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary database copy), p. s.v. sveinn
8. ^ a b c Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 390
9. ^ Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. col. 1519
10. ^ a b c Torp, Alf (1909), Wortschatz der germanischen Spracheinheit (Fick, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen, 4th ed., vol. 3), Göttingen, p. 543
11. ^ a b c Falk, Hjalmar; Torp, Alf (1910–1911), Norwegisch-dänisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg, p. s.v. svend
12. ^ Hellquist, Elof (1922), Svensk etymologisk ordbok, Lund, p. s.v. sven
13. ^ a b c d e de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 567
14. ^ a b c d Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989), Íslensk orðsifjabók, Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans, ordsifjabok.arnastofnun.is, p. s.v. sveinn
15. ^ a b Wallenberg, Joel C.; Ingason, Anton Karl; Sigurðsson, Einar Freyr; Rögnvaldsson, Eiríkur, Icelandic Parsed Historical Corpus, version 0.9
16. ^ Larsson, Ludvig (1891), Ordförrådet i de älsta islänska handskrifterna, Lund: Ph. Lindstedt, p. 319
17. ^ a b c d e Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. sveinn
18. ^ a b Fritzner, Johan (1886–1896), Ordbog over det gamle norske Sprog, 2nd ed., Kristiania, p. s.v. sveinn
19. ^ a b c d e Cleasby, Richard; Vigfússon, Guðbrandur (1874), An Icelandic-English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 608
20. ^ a b Baetke, Walter (1965–1968), Wörterbuch zur altnordischen Prosaliteratur, Berlin (digital ed. Greifswald 2006), p. 624
21. ^ a b Hægstad, Marius; Torp, Alf (1909), Gamalnorsk ordbok med nynorsk tyding, Kristiania: Det norske samlaget, p. 444
22. ^ a b Finnur Jónsson (1931), Lexicon Poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis, 2nd ed., Copenhagen: S. L. Møller, p. 551
23. ^ Faulkes, Anthony (2011), A New Introduction to Old Norse III: Glossary and Index of Names, 4th ed., London: Viking Society for Northern Research, p. s.v. sveinn
24. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
25. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. N 291
26. ^ Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata 3.1), Uppsala universitet (inscriptions by signum), p. N 291
27. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 677 4to
28. ^ Gering, Hugo (1915), Glossar zu den Liedern der Edda, 4th ed., Paderborn, p. 172
29. ^ Lind, E. H. (1905–1915), Norsk-isländska dopnamn ock fingerade namn från medeltiden, Uppsala & Leipzig, p. col. 918