Talk:Arnold (given name)

Arnold seems to be of purely continental (German, Frankish) coinage. The Anglo-Saxon form Earnweald seems to be conjecture. There is 12th century Ernaldus, which can easily be derived from the Frankish. This is in contrast to Arnulf, which is clearly an ancient Germanic name, with clear cognates in Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, and perhaps even East Germanic (brother of Odoacer).

Arnold was thus presumably made up by freely combining name elements in medieval Germany, presumably in the 8th century (Arnulf of Metz was born in the 6th, but presumably he was only in retrospect called Arnold, as the names became conflated). By contrast, Arnulf may be an ancient Germanic name and still reflect a conscious combination of the "eagle" and "wolf" elements (pagan symbolism, reference to Wodan etc.). This is evidently not the case with Arnold, and this name never had a combined meaning of "eagle power" or similar. --dab (𒁳) 12:00, 1 April 2013 (UTC)