LAND ÞISRE WORULDE

I have set out on this page the names of countries in Old English, for use in modern composition in Old English. I have stuck with modern states. Where provinces, cities, river and other places within that state are known then I have provided those on a separate webpage, with a link. I am jotting down ists of British place-names separately (and if someone with better sources I do not mind their lending a hand on that one).

You will notice an oddity: how can a modern state unknown to our Englisc-speaking ancestors have an name in Englisc? For that I have provided an explanation at the bottom.

The sources for genuine names are varied. I have listed these in the table; most are from King Alfred's free translation of Orosius's History, with its famous digressions from Ohthere and Wulfstan. There is also the Chronicle, poems etc. Some names are known only in Norse, which is a fair northern source where others are lacking. Where just the names of peoples are given these are in Italics.

Europe, Asia, Africa, Pacific / Oceanea, America, The Seas

EUROPE

ASIA

AFRICA

PACIFIC ("OCEANEA")

THE AMERICAS

THE SEAS

An explanation

Many of the foreign lands our ancestors knew a thousand years ago are still known to us. France, Germany, Italy and all the Scandinavian lands were known then as now and called much the same names. Spain was familiar, though its political position and it borders have much altered. (A thousand years ago Spain was divided between the Moors and various Christian kingdoms, but it was all "Spain", including what we now call Portugal.) Poland and Wendland (or Weonodland) are much the same. Persia, Persealand, is the same, even if we now tend to call it "Iran". (Persia was always called "Iran" in its native tongue: it has not changed its name in four millennia, let alone one.)

Many now seek to write modern works in Old English. How do you write about events in Afghanistan when Afghanistan was not known to the speakers of that Englisc? The land was there of course: it did not rise out of the sea in in 1800. It had no one name though a thousand years ago. What of Iraq? Modern Iraq was created after the Great War ended in 1918, but the name existed in King Alfred's day. "Irak" then was much the same as Iraq today. English travellers to the region (we know there were some) would have heard the name. However there is no record in Englisc.

One cannot compare old with new too readily. Roman Helvetia might be in the same place as Switzerland but it is not the same state or nation. Switzerland was a deliberate, artificial creation at a fixed date in the Middle Ages. Romania and Datia are not quite the same. Or are they?

It all becomes subjunctive: I have invented names where there are none known or where there cannot be any genuine Old English name. In Africa many of the countries have (or did have) names given to them by Britons; names first given in English. Those can be adopted as the earliest English name known. However if those explorers had been speaking Old English rather than Modern English, with its very different grammar, then they would have framed the names differently. It is a case of "Were it that an Anglo-Saxon had come across this land what would he have called it? (I knew a professor who often retorted to silly questions "If I had a brother, would he like fish?") It is a nonsense if you look at it seriously. However as an intellectual game it is a good and worthy thing. I take it as a game.

Think of all those scholars who have for a thousand years invented new Latin names for things, and for places. The Romans did not call Poland "Polonia". However, as the scholars would tell you, had there been a Poland at the time the Latin tongue might have rendered it thus, so all Latin texts since the Middle Ages have given it that name. "Polonia" is indeed Latin for Poland.

Applying that to Old English; the Sotho people in their own language call themselves in the plural "Basutu" (or so it is pronounced), so if an Old English speaker had first come them would he have called them "Basute" and their land "Basutaland"? (The Modern English called it "Basutoland", now known by the native "Lesotho".) Across the world, "Fiji" is a native name. An ear listening in Old English would hear it end with a syllable that might almost be written as "iege" ("islands"), which is appropriate. The name would be rendered "Ficg Iege" or "Ficgiege". And so it goes on. Please do not think too harshly of me for this.

In any choosing of names there is a capricious element. If there is an element of satire, so be it. I am making the world look right to the eyes of the Anglecynn. What could be more British, or indeed Englisc?

(Back to Engliscan Leaf)