Annina Seiler on the scripting of Germanic names

Last week, Dr Annina Seiler (Zurich) delivered a lecture in Vitoria on ‘Ego UUalto scripsi: Germanic names, vernacular sounds, and Latin spellings in early Alemannic and Anglo-Saxon charters’, in which she explored how Germanic names were transliterated in Latin charters. Comparison of early Anglo-Saxon charters with the archive of St Gall showed both similarities and differences in how these Germanic-speaking communities Latinised and spelled their vernacular names, and how graphemic practice developed across the late seventh and eighth centuries. Dr Seiler was thus able to cast new light on scribal attitudes to different languages and the use of the vernacular in early medieval legal documents.

Dr Seiler recently published a monograph based on her doctoral thesis, entitled The Scripting of the Germanic Languages: A Comparative Study of “Spelling Difficulties” in Old English, Old High German and Old Saxon.