“…if you don’t know how you got somewhere, you don’t know where you are.” – James Burke (Science Historian)

An English compound name is made by putting two fitting words together as a name. Two well-known compound names are Edward (meaning: wealthy + a ward/watchman) and Richard (rich/strong + hardy). While Edward is a showing of a true Anglo-Saxon name that has lived through time, Richard is a name that was brought by the Normans in the overthrow of 1066. The book gives some background on where English came from and what that’s all about.

The strength of a compound name like Wolfrich (wolf + rich) over a one-word name like Hunter is that a compound name can be more nuanced and poetic. Wolfrich could mean a hunter; a wolfish hunger for wealth or leadership; a rich man with a wild side; or a dearness for wolves and hounds. Compounding words into names also gives a much greater wealth of names to chose from.

The goal of this book is to give you the compound names that we’ve had since Anglo-Saxon times, those borrowed from other Germanic tongues, and to breathe life into the many more Anglo-Saxon names that might otherwise be forgotten. The book also gives you the longstanding naming-words to help you make your own compound name.

The book gives over 1300 names to choose from. The 323 naming words can be compounded to make over 10,000 names.

My two main grounds for writing the book were Anglish (English Linguistic Purism) and English Heathendom (Germanic Heathenry).

I’ve also made a spreadsheet to spawn compound names for role-players:

English Compound Names Random Generator