William Morris 'Roots of the Mountains'

[navtis]

There was an earlier thread in this forum talking about the anglicized Gothic names in William Morris's novel 'The House of the Wolfings':

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/gothic-l/message/8306

That novel was set some time before Greek contact with the Goths.
I'm interested in the names in his next novel, 'The Roots of the Mountains' which is set later, after Attila's sack of Aquileia. Some of the people in this novel are descended from the Wolfings of the first novel, but some are other related Germanic people. In the first book Morris anglicized the names; in the second, he translated them, so for example 'Thiodulf' in the first book is 'the Folk-wolf' in the second.

I'm not a linguist and don't know if the rest of these 'translated' names have any relation to real or plausible Gothic names, or are simply made up. Some of them sound very bizarre, and sometimes it's unclear which are real names and which are descriptions or nicknames.

Some of the names of the people who are supposed to be Goths are:

Folk-might
Wood-father
Bears-bane
Red-wolf
Wood-wise
War-grove
Sun-beam (f)
Bow-may (f)

The other people are divided into 'Houses'. There is the House of the Face, the House of the Steer, House of the Sickle, House of the Bridge, House of the Bull.

People are often named after their House. For example:

Hall-face
Face-of-God
Iron-face
Stone-face

But not always:

War-well
Penny-thumb
Bristler
Spear-fist
God-swain
Wolf-stone
Gold-ring
Fox

Are these names plausible, or are they complete inventions? I'm most curious about the 'face' names, which seem very odd.

Thanks
Graham



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