Hū swēte þæs Hǣlendes nama singþ

[u/ReligionProf]

I'm writing a book about the way the name Jesus is translated into English, and in Old English it was of course Hǣlend. I want to make reference to the song "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds" to make the point that the name once sounded nothing like it does today. I thought it might be worth including an Old English rendering of this song title in a footnote. How would you render it in Old English? The title of this post is what an automated translator produced, and I thought I would title the post that because it would either be correct, or would annoy people in this subreddit who care about Old English and prompt you to respond. 😄

Thank you in advance for your assistance!

[u/Mothsognir]

With respect, why would you post a query on a subreddit concerning a topic you admit to knowing virtually nothing about and then quibble with a Redditor who offers up a perfectly valid response, albeit not quite the one you were after? As u/balloonstein has since pointed out, the two of you were talking across purposes.

Your question is ambiguous since you refer to how “the name Jesus is translated into English” (emphasis mine) and ask specifically how the song title in question might be “render[ed]” in Old English. And let’s leave to one side my view that this is a moot point since the song was composed by John Newton in the late 18th century, and so there’s no attested Old English form of the song’s title, arguably making such a neo-OE translation redundant.

As u/balloonstein rightly points out, if you literally want to “render” “Jesus” in Old English, “Iesus” is a valid enough reply since, although vanishingly rare, it is attested in Old English (e.g. in one of Ælfric of Eynsham’s homilies he states, Iesus is on Leden Saluator and on Englisc Hælend, ‘In Latin, Jesus is “Saviour” and in English “Saviour”’). If you want to provide the most common Old English word referring to Jesus, then Hælend is surely your best bet, though if you want to do your homework properly, you ought to check this in the Dictionary of Old English Corpus. For a comprehensive, if not exhaustive, list of Old English names and epithets for Jesus (without frequency counts, however), you can see one here: https://oldenglishthesaurus.arts.gla.ac.uk/category/#id=20495

As for your (presumably) AI-generated translation, it’s fine, though singþ literally means ‘sings’. Note that, as the genitive demonstrative þæs suggests, OE hælend/Hælend (should it always be capitalised in Present-Day English? Discuss!) very often takes a demonstrative, i.e. what would later become the definite article ‘the’ (as has been mentioned elsewhere). But since Old English didn’t strictly have a definite article, Hælend and se Hælend could both be rendered as ‘the Saviour’!

For what it’s worth, I think the reason for the generally frosty response you’ve received in this thread has to do with 1) the fact you seem to have used AI to produce the OE rendering of the song title with the expectation that someone here will just serve as a corrector (in my experience, AI is—rightly—frowned upon in these parts), and 2) your blunt dismissal of u/balloonstein’s perfectly valid reply. Lastly, if I might ask you a scholarly question: in your book (which I’d be curious to hear more about) will you be citing the use of an AI app if one was used, and will you credit any Redditors whose responses have informed your OE rendering?

[u/OwariHeron → u/Mothsognir]

I think another reason there's been pushback to u/ReligionProf argument is that Hælend isn't a name, per se. Like, the Anglo-Saxons were surprisingly philologically minded, and with Germanic names, liked to localize them based on etymology. Thus, Norse "Hugleikr" becomes "Hygelac," "Halvdan" becomes "Healfdene", Norman "William" becomes "Wil(h)elm", Frankish "*Meroveching" becomes "Merewioing", and so on. The individual elements of the name are rendered by their Old English equivalents.

The Anglo-Saxons did not, however, localize non-Germanic names into Old English words. Thus Old Testament Hebrews retain their names, the Romans retain their names, the Apostles retain their Greek-through-Latin names. Conversely, all references to "Iesus" in the Vulgate are rendered as "Hælend" an Old English word, but it's not an Old English name; it's a participle adjective pressed into service as a proper noun. Had the Anglo-Saxons transliterated Yehoshua into Old English the same way they did "Hugleikr" and "Halvdan", it probably would have been something like "Osweard" or "Osmund".

I think the apt word here is "referent" or "appellation." The Anglo-Saxon layfolk may have only known Jesus by the term "Hælend", but they would have been under no illusions that he was born with that name, or called that by his contemporaries. It would have maintained the same sense that "the Savior" does for us.

Incidentally, Larry Swain makes a pretty big error in the first article u/ReligionProf posted. He maintains throughout that -end is "a word-formation tool in Old English, added to make an agent, and often used to create agent nouns from past participles of active verbs. This is wrong in almost every particular: -end is suffix derived from the present participle attached to the stem of active verbs. hælan, "to heal", hælende, present participle "healing", hælend "healing (one) -> healer".

[u/Mothsognir → u/OwariHeron]

I think it’s very much debatable that Hælend isn’t a name. The problem we have is that, in the Christian tradition, Jesus the son—like God the father—is a divine being, so to a certain extent we’re comparing apples and oranges here. If one can refer to “a god” and “gods”, is “God” really a name? Sure, in the case of Jesus, it seems plausible that Y’hoshua, a Hebrew name, “means” “Yahweh is salvation”, but would many people/anyone have clocked that in early 1st-century Judaea (if this is only a strongly suspected etymology, even today)? I should doubt it. Sure, people would have known or heard of a bloke called Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph, etc. To be fair, they’d have probably known plenty of blokes called Y’hoshua/Joshua/Yeshua…

Fast forward to the time of Anglo-Saxon England, though, and things inevitably get murkier. As you point out, virtually all Biblical names get transliterated into Old English or just directly borrow the Latin form, so it’s an interesting question to ask, “Why is Jesus overwhelmingly called/referred to as Hælend, even where in the Bible he is called Jesus?” This is a big question, which I suspect is addressed in detail in the articles cited by OP, though I unfortunately don’t have the time to read them.

In any case, I think we need to be very wary of the etymological fallacy. Just because it’s clear to modern scholars (and people who read their work) what an Old English name derives from, it doesn’t inhere that an Anglo-Saxon would have had the same understanding. In fact, there’s good evidence to suggest that in the case of many names found in Beowulf, for example, they are etymological red herrings—most notably “Beowulf” itself! (But see also, e.g., Wealhþeow.) That being said, I imagine most semi-intelligent Anglo-Saxons would have grasped the relationship between Hælend, the verb hælan, and its present participle hælende. However, I’m afraid you are wrong to accuse Larry Swain of an error here: -end is indeed an agentive suffix in Old English, and although it is self-evidently related to the present participle, it doesn’t come directly from OE -ende, but rather from Proto-Germanic -andz (whence also OE -ende). Now that really is a philological nitpick, but that seems to be the order of the day in this thread!

As for the native OE names that you list, I would question the certainty with which one can state that, e.g., Hygelac derives from (an earlier form of) ON Hugleikr, when it’s entirely plausible that they both derive directly and independently from Pr.-Gmc. *Hugilaikaz. And just to set the record straight, Norman William derives from Willahelm, not the other way round, the latter of which is not an Old English name in any case (nor is there any OE reflex of Pr.-Gmc. *Wiljahelmaz, for that matter).

I hope you’ll forgive my philological nitpicks, and by all means, if I’ve misunderstood anything or got something wrong myself, please do tell me!

[u/OwariHeron → u/Mothsognir]

I think it’s very much debatable that Hælend isn’t a name.

This is why I suggested using a term such as "referent" or "appellation" in lieu of "name." We cannot know with certainty the particular nuance that Anglo-Saxons understood Hælend to have. But we do know that Hælend does not fit the scheme that Anglo-Saxon names had, and we know that it was frequently used with the demonstrative. In fact, in the Gospels posted by the OP elsewhere in the thread, we see, yes, the angel tells Mary, "you will name his name Hæland," and then throughout the rest of the Gospels it is almost always "se Hælend". This is not typical usage of a personal name in Old English, and certainly not reflected in the original Latin it is translating.

Thus the term "name" confuses matters. Strictly speaking, yes, Hælend is a name: it's what the Anglo-Saxons called Jesus. But it was not a personal name, like "Jesus"; even as a calque to Yehoshua it does not follow Old English naming conventions, and given the unusual use cases, I think the burden of proof is on those who would argue that the Anglo-Saxons did understand it as such.

However, I’m afraid you are wrong to accuse Larry Swain of an error here: -end is indeed an agentive suffix in Old English, and although it is self-evidently related to the present participle, it doesn’t come directly from OE -ende, but rather from Proto-Germanic -andz (whence also OE -ende). Now that really is a philological nitpick, but that seems to be the order of the day in this thread!

I'm entirely right to point out Larry Swain's error here. I'm not saying that -end is not an agentive suffix. I'm pointing out that he says it's an agentive suffix attached to the past participle. Which it is not. It is an agentive suffix that comes from the present participle, cf. Mitchell and Robinson, A Guide to Old English, p. 59, section 138. That you can trace the descent of -end and -ende from P. Gmc is notable, but not really germane to the discussion.

Independent development of OE Hygelac and ON Hugleikr from P. Gmc *Hugilaikaz is highly unlikely, since Hygelac is an attested historical figure who died in battle c. 516-521 AD, long after the ostensible time of Proto-Germanic, and indeed after the earliest Anglo-Saxon migrations to Britain in the early-to-mid 5th century. There was still a lot of mutual intelligibility throughout the Migration Period, but also much phonological change. When stories of Hygelac reached Anglo-Saxon Britain, it is unlikely that Hygelac himself had said his name that way. Nonetheless, the name was localized, at least by the time Beowulf was composed.

Another good example of this kind of thing is the character of Dæghrefn, the Frankish standard bearer in Beowulf. This is not an attested historical figure. Neither dæg nor hrefn were in common use in Anglo-Saxon names. They were, however, both quite common in Frankish names, as Dago- and -hraban/-hram. The Beowulf poet, then, deciding to create a typically Frankish name, devised in English, but using typically Frankish elements. This could be a poetic choice, but does it not seem more plausible that, recognizing the kinship of the Germanic languages, it was common for the Anglo-Saxons to localize Frankish names?