Anglo Saxon Names beginning in Æ

Question

Is there a WikiTree convention for Anglo Saxon names beginning in Æ? I assume it favors use of this older form, but is substituting AE ever permissible?

Comments

Good question, David.

As a random example, a quick first name search shows there is one Aethelred, managed by the Medieval Project, and four Æthelreds, two of which are managed by the same project. So unfortunately it looks as if no convention is consistently observed.

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Thanks Richard.  A little backstory might be interesting.  When I got back to this time and place in my genealogical journey I simply copied the ligature from WikiTree and pasted into my tree.  The problem was I could never search my master tree for any name that started with it and I began to convert the ligature to it's constituent letters, A E.  This week I discovered the correct keyboard strokes to type it, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Æ - :~:text=Typing the character,-Nordic+Danish keyboard&text=The Æ character is accessible,on a US-International keyboard.

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How complicated! Æ or æ is just a long press on the "a" key on the English soft keyboard on an iPad :-)

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Thanks Jim, I didn't know that. Æ also works on a MacBook.
Even an old dog can sometimes learn new tricks.

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I have just changed the one Aethelred to Æthelred, which accords with the bio.

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Thanks Michael. Maybe Aethelric Bernicia needs the same treatment. There aren't any Æthelrics at present.

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Thanks, Jim. Done. This is the first Bernician Anglo-Saxon whose profile I have looked at. There will probably be other Anglo-Saxon profiles. My long-term ambition - I stress, long-term as I have other priorities - is to improve as many Anglo-Saxon profiles as possible, and remove nonsenses resulting from old GEDCOM imports etc. I would envisage looking at name spelling as part of this. So far, I have tackled the House of Wessex and their immediate family connections.

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There were two aspects to the question I suppose. One is the technical question of how to write this symbol, but the other question is whether to use it. i suppose there might be a concern about whether it makes it harder to search for Anglo Saxons. Don't think so, but I am not sure.

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I agree there are two questions, that's where I started.  Let me add a new question; does this only apply to Anglo Saxon (Germanic) names?  What about Irish or Welch (Celtic) names such as Aed Find "the White"mac Eochaid III, Find-16?

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For Anglo-Saxons most profiles have used Æ rather than Ae, and I have standardised on that when I have revised the smaller number of profiles which used Ae. (Incidentally, this accords with what I was taught when I studied Old English at University, and with the practice of most of the standard books on Anglo-Saxon history and many other historical books. Wikipedia also uses Æ for Anglo-Saxons.)

I am not competent to comment on Welsh/Irish names. Though I note that, like Wikitree, Wikipedia has Áed Find - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Áed_Find - and Wikipedia seems to use the Áed spelling for others. For those, like me, with weaker eyesight, the A has an acute accent.

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Thanks for the reply.

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This baby name list might be a useful prompt. It led me to an Aelfric that could be changed to Ælfric.

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Thanks, that Aelfric has the preferred name Ælfric - Aelfric is given as a nickname, so I think I will leave the profile as it is for now.

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Interesting I just trialled what happened if you searched the WikiTree First Name search box for Aethelred and the only profile that was found was Æthelred Mucil but if I searched for Æthelred, then there were 5 profiles including Æthelred Mucil.  Perhaps because Michael has just changed the name on that profile?

It might be a good idea to let sysops(?) know that searching for names starting with Ae should bring up  names starting with Æ ? This works on Wikipedia, so hopefully will work on WikiTree..

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Thanks, John. I have asked if this can be done.

Answer 1

"æ" can be created on a Macbook by pressing OPTION then '. For the upper case "Æ" use OPTION SHIFT then '.