Wade's Name Page

The name I am using, Wade Anderson of Many Places is one that grew over time and there will likely be further changes to it. To start off with, I first started going by the name "Wade" a couple of years before I even knew about the SCA. True it is my legal middle name but I rarely used it except where I had to fill out my full name on official forms and the like. I became part of a small short lived medieval recreation group based in the University of Calgary before the SCA had made it there.

I was going to be half Norse in that group, the Barony of West End and everyone was choosing alternate names to use for club functions. I'd heard that my middle name was chosen in part because my Mother's maiden name "Wiig" began with "W". My Mother's family has it's roots in Norway and I've always been interested in Vikings. So I figured I'd start using my middle name. Perhaps not very logical, but a progression.

Anyhow that is where the "Wade" part of my name came from. When I joined up with the SCA folk at Simon Fraser University a few years later I decided to use "Wade" for my SCA activities. But, I found that just having the one name was not enough. People needed a "by name" as well. Now I can tend towards the melancholy and since my move from Calgary to North Delta (a suburb of Vancouver, BC) I had felt a bit detached and alone. A bit of a wanderer looking for a place to call home. When I finally went to my first actual Event, I felt perhaps I had found a bit of a home with friends and such. For a while I contemplated calling myself "Wade of Lions Gate" but I didn't know if that were appropriate. I contemplated and decided on the slightly humorous "Wade of Many Places". Anyhow that is what I started using and am still essentially using even now.

There came a time when I was registering an SCA heraldic device and with that one needed to also register their name. So I submitted my device and my name. To start they had problems with "Wade" as they didn't think it was used as a personal name in period. (pre 1600 AD) But since Wade indeed is my middle name they accepted it. Since then I have found that "Wade" actually was used in period and in fact it is mentioned in Chaucer's Works. More about that later.

So for years I have been using Wade of Many Places. I even figured out how to spell out "Wade" in Runes. To get "Wade" I did have to use Anglo-Saxon Runes rather than Norse. I also was including the final silent "e". Later I dropped the "e". I normally sign my name with runes in SCA type stuff.

Fairly recently I was invited to join a large service oriented household, Clan Mac Andrew. It was customary to take on a clan name at that time and with a Norse/12th Century Norwegian persona I decided it better to take a Norse variation. I had heard of another member who took Androvich so I decided to take on Anderson. Hence I have been using for a few years, "Wade Anderson of Many Places". The household since then has disbanded so I am not sure about whether to keep the "Anderson" part.

I have become more active in heraldry in the SCA and while I'm comfortable with "Wade of Many Places" it is apparently not of period construction. True the Norse often had non-flattering bynames and indeed "of Many Places" could be looked at as non-flattering as in shiftless or homeless, but even if it would be plausible in construction it doesn't work to use a perhaps Norse naming practice with English words.

So I began to do some research and see if I could find anything I could be comfortable and that would be a better example of construction.

First off, I have settled on having a persona of a 12th Century Merchant ship owner whose Father was a Norwegian Merchant and whose Mother was the daughter of a rich Frisian Merchant. That ties with both my Norwegian roots and indeed with my Father's slightly less direct Frisian roots. I could look at 12th Century Norwegian names, or Frisian names, or even stick with an Anglo-Saxon name.

I started by researching "Wade" and found that it was mentioned in Chaucer in "The Merchant's Tale" and in Chaucer's Troilus. Most of the roots to my research on the name "Wade" has a base on a web page by someone looking up information on the name, "The Tale of Wade". I used this as a springboard to further research on the name including some variants as would be used by other peoples. The following are excerpted from this page:

To Iyken hir, or that hir laughen made
He song; she pleyed he told tale of Wade
Geoffrey Chaucer, 'Troilus'

The origins of Wade¹ lie in Nordic myth and saga^2,3,4. Scholars speculate that he was originally a sea-giant known to the coastal tribes around the North Sea and Baltic regions. The earliest knowledge we have of him is a brief mention of his name in the 7th-century Old English poem Widsith² There is further information on Wade in a 13th century German poem called Kundrun. Here, Wade is a white-haired, faithful retainer who led the fleet that came to rescue Kundrun, the heroine of the tale. He is described as skilled at healing, which he learned from certain 'wild women' .

1. I've kept the name of the giant as Wade throughout this article. The name has been altered both by changes in our language and the fact that sometimes it has been translated from other European tongues. Thus he was Vathe in Thidrek's Saga, Wate in Kundrun, Gado in Map's De Nugis Curialium, and Wadde in Leland's reference. His name comes from a germanic word meaning 'to wade'⁴.

Most surviving references to Wade come from England. The largest of these is contained in a tale set down by Walter Map⁷ in the 12th century. He records that Wade was the son of a Vandal king who left his homeland in boyhood and roamed the world in search of adventure. He was a lover of peace though he was also a skilled warrior; he was moreover a lover of justice. Though he took part in many conflicts he would always enquire about the motives of each side so that he would champion what was right. His experiences gave him great wisdom and he could speak all the world's languages.

7. Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, Camden Society 1850.

Anyhow that gave me some indication that the name was period and an interesting story which somehow suited the persona I had developed. Not by any means is there a claim to being Wade the Giant of the legends. However it is very likely that the legends would have been familiar had Wade lived on and about the North Sea in the 12th Century. It also gave me some additional names to look up for Wade as I envision him was born in Frisia with his parents living closer to his Mother's family in Frisia. Then Wade's family moved to North Norway for a large part of Wade's childhood where his Father's family is from. Large slices of his life were also spent in the British Isles which might be a reason for the Anglo-Saxon root of the name. That is if I keep the name.

Perhaps the variants of Vathe, Wate, Gado, or Wadde might be of interest. I had a thought that while known as Wade in Anglo-Saxon circles he might be known as Vathe in ones of Scandinavian ones. so I wanted to look to see if Vathe was a valid name for a 12th Century Norwegian or Frisian.