-fǫðr

Old Norse Etymology From a contracted form of non faðir father as the secondary element in proper names or from an archaic declension of the same word, ultimately from non gem-pro *fadēr. The nominative u-umlaut ǫ would thus be from analogy with the oblique cases.The Malt stone as a witness of a morphological archaism: Reconstructing the Proto-Nordic and Proto-Germanic systems of kinship terms. / Heltoft, Lars. In: NOWELE, Vol. 73, No. 1, 04.2020, p. 4-21. An alternative explanation advanced by Kuhn and other scholars is that the root is gem-pro *fadiz master,Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Óðins nǫfn 1’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 732. changed to an u-stem. In this case the correct sense of the element would be "leader, master". This etymology faces formal difficulties due to the persistence of u-umlaut and -r- in the genitive non fǫðrs, which suggests that the latter is part of the stem of the word rather than an inflectional ending. The genitive -s rather than -ar is also unusual for an u-stem. The expected genitive form would be non *faðar, for which compare the regular u-stem non mǫgr boy with gen. sg. non magar (< gmq-pro *ᛗᚨᚷᚢᛉ, gmq-pro ᛗᚨᚷᛟᛉ). Noun m -fǫðrs father Usage notes Only attested in compound names for the god Odin. Declension The genitive fǫðs is attested in GKS 2367 4to (R, the Codex Regius of the Prose Edda), but the genitive fǫðrs is reflected by all other manuscripts, including both the closest relatives of R and the stemmatically more archaic DG 11 (U, Codex Upsaliensis) and AM 757 a 4to (B).Þorgeirsson, Haukur. “A Stemmatic Analysis of the Prose Edda.” Saga-Book, vol. 41, 2017, pp. 49–70. and must be taken to be correct.Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Bragi inn gamli Boddason, Þórr’s fishing 1’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 47. Derived terms non Aldafǫðr non Alfǫðr non Herjafǫðr non Sigfǫðr non Valfǫðr References