athelind: (Eye of the Dragon)
athelind ([personal profile] athelind) wrote2010-03-07 08:28 pm

Understanding Athelind's ... name.

It's actually spelled Æþelind, and pronounced with a long "A".

It means "noble serpent" in Old English, and I've discovered, to my surprise, that a very similar name was actually used historically.

Originally, I spelled it "Æthelind" when writing by hand, but "Aethelind" just looked wrong when typing. I think one of my early BBS hang-outs or e-mail providers had a maximum of eight letters—which is particularly amusing in this day and age, when 6 to 8 alphanumerics is often a minimum.

If I actually have proper Unicode access, of course, then "AE Ligature-Thorn-E-L-I-N-D" is eight letters, but I'm not going to fight with log-in screens and Old English characters.



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