A few years ago my sister did that whole family tree thing, and discovered that we have ancestors in the South Lakes area of England. This is along the southern shores of Morecambe Bay, near the towns of Lancaster and Arnside. Apparently, in the middle ages we were basket weavers. Although that may have been a ruse by my sister to justify a large rustic basket as a Christmas present.
I did a little more research of my own, and discovered that my name, Richard, was in common use way back then. Or at least a version of it was. The language they spoke in that area was Old Cumbric, and in that language they called people a name they probably pronounced a bit like "Rukhudth".
The written form of Old Cumbric is difficult to pin down, but those records we do have (mostly bibles) tend to use a mixture of norse runes and english letters. The closest we can manage to reproduce the way they spelled my name with our modern alpahbet is "Roughearth";
- "R" as you would expect
- "ou" as a simple short "uh"
- "g" as a hard buk not voiced "k"
- the rest almost the way it looks to a modern english speaker, like the hearth of a fireplace, but voicing the final "th" like at the end of "with"
So there you have it "Roughearth", the Old Cumbric form of "Richard".