Anglo-Saxon is much earlier than Middle English. Which do you want?
Sigh. The first time I read that, my eyes played horrible tricks on me and made me want to read "better" instead of "earlier." And just when I thought I'd found someone who took my view of things...
I'm not sure what you were looking for here, so I'll give stuff for OE and ME:
There are a couple of sites for Anglo-Saxon personal names -- unfortunately, I don't remember the links off-hand and the place I can go to *get* them is currently down >.< If you have access to a university library with some strength in English literature or history, George Searle's Onomasticon Anglo-saxonicum is probably the place to start. It's not particularly reliable from a scholarly point of view, but it'll be helpful for fanfic. You can also go to some modern translations Bede's The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which has a ton of names in it, or otherwise flip through some of the longer Old English poetic works, such as Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon, which are a good source as well.
For Middle English, name sources might depend on the period (I'm not as familiar with post-Conquest stuff.) A name concordance to the Domesday Book might be useful. Also, the following is a link to an electronic adaptation of the Dictionary of English Surnames. It only covers women, however, but it's interesting to see various attestations of names and how the spelling of each name changes over the years.
A lot of Middle English names were simply imported from France after the conquest -- thus, the rise of Jehan/Jean/Johan/John, William/Guillaume/Guileme, et cetera. If you want something more specific than my generalizations, though, the Middle English Dictionary by Hans Kuether (last name probably misspelled) might be of help.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head =) Hope this helps some!
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Date: Jan. 12th, 2003 07:22 am (UTC)Sigh. The first time I read that, my eyes played horrible tricks on me and made me want to read "better" instead of "earlier." And just when I thought I'd found someone who took my view of things...
I'm not sure what you were looking for here, so I'll give stuff for OE and ME:
There are a couple of sites for Anglo-Saxon personal names -- unfortunately, I don't remember the links off-hand and the place I can go to *get* them is currently down >.< If you have access to a university library with some strength in English literature or history, George Searle's Onomasticon Anglo-saxonicum is probably the place to start. It's not particularly reliable from a scholarly point of view, but it'll be helpful for fanfic. You can also go to some modern translations Bede's The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which has a ton of names in it, or otherwise flip through some of the longer Old English poetic works, such as Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon, which are a good source as well.
For Middle English, name sources might depend on the period (I'm not as familiar with post-Conquest stuff.) A name concordance to the Domesday Book might be useful. Also, the following is a link to an electronic adaptation of the Dictionary of English Surnames. It only covers women, however, but it's interesting to see various attestations of names and how the spelling of each name changes over the years.
http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/reaneyintro.html
A lot of Middle English names were simply imported from France after the conquest -- thus, the rise of Jehan/Jean/Johan/John, William/Guillaume/Guileme, et cetera. If you want something more specific than my generalizations, though, the Middle English Dictionary by Hans Kuether (last name probably misspelled) might be of help.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head =) Hope this helps some!