In the hunt for pre-Conquest nicknames, it’s easy to be drawn in by the amusing and extreme examples: the Alfred ‘Toad Testicles’ of the world. But if we’re interested in how these nicknames work, how they are created and circulated and what they might ‘mean’, we need to pay as much attention to the more ‘mundane’ examples.
Hewald 'the White' and Hewald 'the Black': seventh century missionaries and martyrs
Great stuff yet again!