Oisc (early Old English or ), or, in a later spelling, Ēsc () was, if he existed, an early

king King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

and, according to

Bede Bede (; ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, Bede of Jarrow, the Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable (), was an English monk, author and scholar. He was one of the most known writers during the Early Middle Ages, and his most f ...

, the eponymous founder of the tribe known as ''

Oiscingas This is a list of the kings of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Kent. The regnal dates for the earlier kings are known only from Bede. Some kings are known mainly from charters, of which several are forgeries, while others have been subjected to tampe ...

'' (early Old English .

Etymology and spellings

Most scholars agree that, like many names in the Germanic languages, the

root In vascular plants, the roots are the plant organ, organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often bel ...

of the name ''Oisc'' is an Old English word ''ōs'', meaning '(non-Christian) god',

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical effects on both the s ...

with

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

'' Áss'' (deriving from

Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic languages, Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from ...

'). The etymology of the name has been studied most thoroughly by John Insley, who concluded that cognate forms of the name ''Oisc'' are found in

Old Saxon Old Saxon (), also known as Old Low German (), was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Eur ...

(''Ōsic'', alongside the corresponding

weak noun Weak nouns are nouns that follow a weak inflection paradigm, in contrast with strong nouns. They are present in several Germanic languages. English Modern English has only two vestiges of the weak noun inflection in common use: ''ox'', whose pl ...

''Ōsica''),J. Insley, 'Oiscingas', in ''Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde'', ed. by Heinrich Beck, Dieter Geuenich and Heiko Steuer, 2nd edn (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2002), XXII 33–38 . to which later scholarship possibly adds the runic inscription on a shield boss dating from between 150 and 220 CE found on

Thorsberg moor The Thorsberg moor (, or ''Thorsbjerg Mose'', South Jutlandic: ''Tosbarch'', ''Tåsbjerre'' "Thor's hill") near Süderbrarup in Angeln, Anglia, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, is a peat bog in which the Angles (tribe), Angles deposited votive off ...

Schleswig-Holstein Schleswig-Holstein (; ; ; ; ; occasionally in English ''Sleswick-Holsatia'') is the Northern Germany, northernmost of the 16 states of Germany, comprising most of the historical Duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of S ...

which in 2015 Lisbeth M. Imer interpreted as a Roman-influenced maker's mark reading aṇsgz h.Bernard Mees, ''The English Language Before England: An Epigraphic Account'' (New York: Routledge, 2022); . In Insley's interpretation, in ''Oisc'' the ''ōs'' element is combined with a suffix which in Proto-Germanic took the form *, which in this context had a

diminutive A diminutive is a word obtained by modifying a root word to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment, and sometimes to belittle s ...

function. The name was thus a

hypocoristic A hypocorism ( or ; from Ancient Greek ; sometimes also ''hypocoristic''), or pet name, is a name used to show affection for a person. It may be a diminutive form of a person's name, such as '' Izzy'' for Isabel or '' Bob'' for Robert, or it ...

(nickname) form of longer dithematic names beginning in ''Ōs''- such as ''Ōswald'' and ''Ōsrīc''. In this reading, the phonetic development of the name from Proto-Germanic to early Old English was * => * (by the

Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law In historical linguistics, the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law (also called the Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic nasal spirant law) is a description of a phonological development that occurred in the Ingvaeonic dialects of the West Germanic ...

) => (by

i-mutation I-mutation (also known as umlaut, front mutation, i-umlaut, i/j-mutation or i/j-umlaut) is a type of sound change in which a back vowel is fronted or a front vowel is raised if the following syllable contains , or (a voiced palatal approxi ...

) => (by high vowel loss and apocope). This form was represented graphically in early Old English as ''Oisc'' and ''Oesc''.Seiichi Suzuki, ''The Quoit Brooch Style and Anglo-Saxon Settlement: A Casting and Recasting of Cultural Identity Symbols'' (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000); . Later in Old English, the vowel developed to , giving the spelling ''Ēsc''. Bernard Mees, however, has suggested that ''Oisc'' and its cognates come from the Germanic root ' found in, for example, the Old Norse verb ('to breathe'), combined with the suffix ; other adjectives formed with this suffix generally mean something like 'quick, lively, brave'.

Mis-spellings

The name is also found in a couple of West Saxon sources as ''Æsc'' (along with the tribal name ''Æscingas''). Insley interprets these spellings as etymologically incorrect attempts by later Old English-speakers to update the then unfamiliar word ''Oisc'' into their variety of the language, influenced by the familiar name-element ''Æsc''-. An early modern transcription of the early medieval manuscript London, British Library, Cotton Otho B. xi by

Laurence Nowell Laurence (or Lawrence) Nowell (1530 – ) was an English antiquarian, cartographer and pioneering scholar of the Old English language and literature. Life Laurence Nowell was born in 1530 in Whalley, Lancashire, the second son of Alexander N ...

gives not the name ''Oeric'' and ''Oisc'' as found in Bede, but ''ósric'' and ''oese'', but Insley concluded that these are merely inaccurate transcriptions.

Portrayal in the early sources

Little is known about Oisc, and the information that does survive regarding his life is often vague and suspect. Anglo-Saxon king-lists generally present Oisc as the son or the grandson of Hengest, who according to other sources led the initial

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

conquest and settlement of Kent. According to

's ''

Ecclesiastical History of the English People The ''Ecclesiastical History of the English People'' (), written by Bede in about AD 731, is a history of the Christian Churches in England, and of England generally; its main focus is on the growth of Christianity. It was composed in Latin, and ...

'', Oisc's given name was Oeric. Bede indicates that he was the son of Hengest and travelled to

Britain Britain most often refers to: * Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales * The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...

with him, with the permission of the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

king

Vortigern Vortigern (; , ; ; ; Old Breton: ''Gurdiern'', ''Gurthiern''; ; , , , etc.), also spelled Vortiger, Vortigan, Voertigern and Vortigen, was a 5th-century warlord in Sub-Roman Britain, Britain, known perhaps as a king of the Britons or at least ...

. He was the father of

Octa The Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) is the transportation planning commission for Orange County, California, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. OCTA is responsible for funding and implementing transit and capital projects for ...

, who succeeded him. His descendants called themselves "Oiscingas" after him. The ''

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the ninth century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of ...

'', which in its present form was compiled by people who knew Bede's account, portrays Oisc as ruling 488–512CE.

Possible portrayal in the ''Ravenna Cosmography''

Oisc has been widely viewed the same person as one Ansehis, who is described as a leader of the Saxon invaders of Britain in the ''

Ravenna Cosmography The ''Ravenna Cosmography'' (, "The Cosmography of the Unknown Ravennese") is a work describing the Ecumene, known world from India to Ireland, compiled by an anonymous cleric in Ravenna around 700 AD. It consists of five books describing ...

''. This says that "in oceano vero occidentale est insula quae dicitur Britania, ubi olim gens Saxonum veniens ab antiqua Saxonia cum principe suo nomine Ansehis modo habitare videtur" (indeed in the western ocean is an island which is called ''Britania'', which the people of the Saxons, coming from Old Saxony under their chief, named ''Ansehis'', seem now to inhabit". ''Ansehis'' (or, as some manuscripts have it, ''Ansehys'') is plausibly an error for ''Anschis'', which would be a plausible archaic or Continental Germanic form of Oisc's name.Patrick Sims-Williams, 'The Settlement of England in Bede and the Chronicle', ''Anglo-Saxon England'', 12 (1983), 1–41. However, Insley has argued that an older idea, that ''Anschis'' would also be a plausible attempt to represent proto-Old English *''Hangista''-, is more plausible, and that it is Hengest whom the ''Ravenna Cosmography'' represents.

References

External links