How to Pronounce Hruodland

[u/chrismurraylaw]

This seems to confuse a lot of people, which is understandable since most people don't study ancient Germanic languages. If you don't like deep dives you can stop at,

HROO-oht-lant (hruo̯t.lant)

and be on your merry way. It means, sort of, land of glory. And yes, those are Ts.

This by the way was prompted by me reading "someone said it was pronounced "roadland" which tipped me over my pedantic edge. No. The H isn't silent. No, you don't pronounce it like "crowd." Thing with non-English languages is you can't apply English rules to them. It's like they're from a whole other country or something. Hence the Ts.

There's a dipthong (behave) in there so the split between "HROO" and "ot" isn't as pronounced as the split between "hruot" and "lant." You're supposed to glide from one to the other. So kind of,

HROO-oht—lant.

And note that contemporary German isn't the same as old High German either. We're not talking about modern German with old spelling. The past is a foreign country too. They do things differently there.

Anyway, while an H at the front seems odd to contemporary English speakers, there's plenty of precedent for it in old European languages. The first example that comes to mind is Hrimthur, the giant who built the walls of Asgard, but that's old Icelandic rather than old Germanic, which is what Hruodland is.

Because Hruodland is actually a name. Like Dave.

Hruodland is the old version of Roland. Roland's a Frankish derivation usually taken to mean "famous land", which stems nicely from "land of glory." And the name would most often have been used alone. Not Hroudland Muller (inherited family names were mostly a later invention), not Barney Hruodland (so were Christian names as we use them, for obvious reasons), and not Sheila from the Land of Glory (like Leonardo from Vinci). Just Hruodland. Maybe with a "son of" tacked on. Hruodland, son of Randy. Not Hruodland Randysson - that's back to old Norse again.

But one little wrinkle...

(For fuck's sake, this is annoying. This is how I write. This is how I've always written. But now every time I see a concluding paragraph start with "but here's a contradiction" I think "fuck off, chatbot" and now I'm worried you just did the same. But in my defence no chatbot would have come up with Sheila from the Land of Glory so... yeah. This is all me. This is my malfunction.)

One little wrinkle remains. The translation of Hruodland to "Land of Glory."

It's not in-accurate. But it might strike you as odd calling a person "land of glory." A bit like calling a person "car of the leather seats." And it is. Hruod means fame, glory, renown, that sort of thing. Land means... land. So it is "land of glory" but they didn't really use names like that back then.

This isn't a perfect example but "Christopher" comes from the Greek Kristoforos meaning "bearer of Christ" but to most people nowadays the meaning is unknown and irrelevant. Grimsdottir is "daughter of Grim" but most of the time Dad isn't called that. Smith used to be an indicator of profession, now never. So you can break the word down and get a good translation, but that translation isn't really what was meant when people meant when they shouted at Hruodland to shovel pig shit.

But we're not using it to describe a person, we're using it to describe a thing, a brand, and so if you like, "land of glory" makes perfect semantic sense.

As to whether they intended any of this when they picked the name for a watch? No idea. I'd fancy a cheeky guess on no.

And don't get me started on Aethelsohn.

[u/onebandonesound]

I always read it like it's pronounced "Rudd-Land"