Editing Anglo-Saxon Names

# First, all of the headwords that Searle uses have been standardized to a normalized Old English form. As he says on p. viii of the introduction, "The names, whether Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon, or Kentish, have been arranged according to the West Saxon spelling as given in Sweet's Glossary to his Oldest English Text". Sometimes these normalized forms are identical with the documentary forms (that is, the forms as they are found in actual documents), but in general there is no way to tell whether this is the case from the entry alone. The only forms that can safely be assumed to be documentary are the secondary headwords.

# Second, and connected to the first issue, Searle included many non-Old English names, including Continental Germanic and Old Norse names that were found in the English documents that he was using as sources, even when the bearer is known not to have been English. For instance, he lists the Continental Germanic masculine name ''Ebroin'' as an instance of its Old English cognate ''Eoforwine''. However, the fact that ''Ebroin'' was used in the 7th C does not mean that its Old English cognate ''Eoforwine'' was also used at that time. In fact, in some cases the Old English cognate name is not attested at all.

# Third, Searle gives many variant spellings of the individual themes, and these variant spellings should be used with care. Some of the variants that he lists are very rare, perhaps even scribal errors. Some of the variants he may have misidentified; for example, he lists ''bren-'' as a variant spelling of the theme ''beorn-'', but none of the commenters were able to find any examples of a name using the theme ''beorn-'' where the theme was spelled ''bren-'' (Brinwen the Fair, LoAR 05/2008, East-A, q.v.). Furthermore, some variant spellings are the result of different orthographic practices in different dialects, which means that some particular prototheme variant may not be compatible with a particular deuterotheme variant even if both are individually unexceptionable. The variant spellings of themes that Searle gives may only be used if it is demonstrated that they were both used in names which are temporally and dialectically compatible.

* Given these issues, Searle in general should not be relied upon as the sole source of documentation for an Old English name. Whenever possible, any entry in his book should be corroborated with information from another source, such as Tengvik, ''Old English Bynames''; the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England; or Sean Miller's database of Anglo-Saxon charters.