The Role of Gender in Some Viking-Age Innovations in Personal Naming

This article argues that some innovations in Viking-Age personal naming practices reflect differing attitudes towards the naming of male and female children. Gender imbalances in a number of innovative personal name deuterothemes which exist in both male and female versions (the latter developing from the former) suggest that deuterothemes indexing pre-Christian religious life were much more frequently applied to female children. This contrasts with the use of the so- called theophoric protothemes, which were more commonly used in naming males.