In the Name of the Wolven King

The origin of the Wilk-root surnames ultimately lies in the mists of the early medieval period when huge movements of peoples migrated, warred or formed alliances with each other, and intermingled across Europe as the old order of the Roman Empire collapsed. Inter-tribal assimilation, by definition, involves the borrowing and incorporation of neighboring peoples’ culture, both material and immaterial. Language, including naming conventions, are a part of this dynamic. The cross-cultural practice of borrowing proper names from one tribe, ethnicity, and culture is universally understood. During the age of migrations (between roughly AD 300 to 700), in the 4th Century AD, Germanic tribes such as the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, left Scandinavia and the lower Vistula and Oder river basins, and migrated south to the Black Sea, Danube basin and generally along the Roman frontier in Eastern Europe. The Rugii, Vandals and Burgundians, similarly pressed south in this same time frame. Around AD 375, the nomadic Huns of Central Asia invaded the Pontic Steppe (what is now modern Ukraine) forcing a new cycle of tribal refugees out of eastern Europe and into the central and western regions of the continent. Fleeing Hunnic pressure, Vandals, Suebi, Alans, and Burgundians clashed with Romanized western tribes (e.g., the Franks), and penetrated as far as the Iberian Peninsula of what is now Spain and Portugal. At Attila’s death in 453 AD, the Hunnic empire collapsed, creating yet another power vacuum and prompting still more movement of European peoples. During this same era, Slavic peoples from the Vistula and Dnieper basins migrated westward into central Europe and southward into the Balkans. As Germanic tribes such as the Gepidae, Lombards and others vacated due to pressures from the Huns and Avars, Slavs moved into the voids left by the Germanic evacuation. Slavic tribes moved over significant distances from the eastern European steppe into what is now the central and northwest regions of Germany, southern Denmark and even the Netherlands. During this age, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes migrated to Roma Briton. By the 7th Century AD, the Slavs had settled in the regions of the Elbe-Saale, Pomerania, and the Baltic coast, establishing flourishing communities between the Elbe and Vistula. The Slavic Wends (the westernmost tribes of Slavs, sometimes also referred to as Polabian Slavs), a large confederation of who were ultimately called the Wilzi by their Germanic co-inhabitants, were among those who migrated from the east into, and settled throughout, the Balto-Germanic region. The Wends settled primarily in Upper and Lower Lusatia, Mecklenburg, Brandenburg and Pomerania by AD 500 to 700. Wend relations and interaction with their Germano-Norse neighbors varied, sometimes in conflict and sometimes in alliance. They allied with, even intermarried among, the Danes in particular. They fought the Saxons and, also, the Franks. These great movements of tribes and peoples in Europe in the centuries just prior to and after the fall of Rome, resulted in a steady and long-lasting intermingling of Slavic and Germanic tribes in Central Europe and along the Baltic coast: In Europe migrations of whole peoples— Visigoth, Teutonic, Slavic—ended in the eleventh century…. [P]easant migrations made Central Europe a zone of interspersed Slavic and Germanic settlement. “The term Slavic applies to language. There are three subgroups of Slavic languages. East Slavic includes Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian. Polish, Czech and Slovak constitute the West Slavic linguistic grouping. South Slavic includes Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Bulgarian and Macedonian…. Political units are not the same as linguistic ones. Speakers of a particular language can live outside the country of their language, both in neighboring territories and in new homelands far away.” The Slavic migrations and geographic dispersions are also discussed in GIMBUTIENE, THE SLAVS (1971) at 128: The arrival of the Slavs in north-western Germany may date back to the sixth century, as was the case in the Middle Elbe basin. During the eighth century AD, Slavic settlement in eastern Holstein, western Mecklenburg and the Spree-Havel river area was typified by the so-called ‘Menkendorf pottery’ derived from the Prague type. Another group of Slavic settlements, known by large high-lying hill forts, spread in eastern and middle Mecklenburg. A feature of this area is its “Feldberg type’ pottery. Typological study of this pottery reveals its relationship to late Migration period pottery of the Upper Oder area. Written sources of the eighth and ninth centuries make it possible to identify the Feldberg group with the Vilzi, and the Lower Elbe settlements with the Obodriti tribe. Another group of colonists made up of Milzane, Lusizi and Selpoli tribes settled in Lusatia and southern Brandenburg. In this area a number of small lowland hill forts were recorded. A type site is Tornow in the district of Calau, after which the whole archaeological complex is named the “Tornow group’. Pottery from these hill-forts and open settlements is related to that of the Vilzi (Feldberg group) and to early Slavic sites in Poland. These sites have their origins in the sixth-seventh centuries and a continuity of habitation to the eleventh century is documented. The Tornow group pottery included wheel-made types which derive probably from late Roman ceramic production centres in southern Poland. That the Slavs began to settle between the Elbe and the Oder during the course of the fifth-sixth centuries AD in this area may well be the reason why corresponding archaeological material of Germanic character drastically diminished. In western Poland, some early Slavic sites may date back to the same period [emphases added, internal citations omitted]. Most relevant to the subject of our present etymological inquiry are the Wendish settlements among the Baltic German coast (what is now Mecklenberg-Vorpommern, formerly Pomerania and Prussia), in lower Saxony including areas in what is now southern Denmark, and in Frisia (now The Netherlands). These Slavs used their word for wolf – “wilk” (of course with variation) – as a given name, just as their Norse and Teutonic counterparts did the same in their language with the names “Ulf” and “Wulf” respectively. Many of these Slavic Wends ended up assimilating into the majority Norse and Teutonic populations over the course of these centuries as gradual Germanization of the region became dominant. The cultural blending and cross-influence in the border areas between Danes and Slavs in particular has been explored in recent scholarship: In these complex landscapes one can find evidence for many of the cultural processes that are described… e.g. hybridity in the sphere of material culture, [and the presence of seemingly contradicting identities[.]… Hybridity… the connective tissue between colonizer and colonized…. Developments of new identities and practices in the context of sometimes asymmetrical power relations…Mixed material culture, entangled identities and allegiances of people that inhabit these zones illustrate that a complex merger is possible. The study of archaeological data and new historical analyses of medieval texts have brought about a more nuanced understanding of Danish-Slavic relations. The positive aspects of contacts such as trade, cultural influences and dynastic intermarriages were underlined[.] Slavic placenames tend to concentrate along the coastline, suggesting that easy access to sea routes and maintenance of contact with old homelands might have been important considerations for the newcomers[]… [and] indicates that Danes and Slavs could have lived quite closely to one another. The convivencia on the islands [of Lolland and Falster] resulted in borrowings, changes and inventions in material cultures and languages in Saxony, Pomerania, Denmark, and England.