[William M]

Hi all,

I am wondering on what is exactly the correct pronunciation of the Seax?
Normally I think of it as "see-axe" or "sax" but recently I am thinking that perhaps it should be "sex"

I base these thoughts on the pronunciation of English county's which retain their saxon names. East saxons = Essex, South Saxons = Sussex , West Saxons = Wessex etc... Basically all counties ending in the "-sex" are former Saxon kingdoms.
Saxon means 'man of the seax'.

Essex for example is pronounced as eh-sex hence my reasoning that the pronunication of the seax should be "sex".

Cheers!

[Robin Smith]

The problem with that line of thinking is that those pronunciations have changed with time as British Standard English pronunciation has changed. I don't think the pronunciations of modern speakers is a good way to draw a conclusion about pronunciation in period.

I'm no linguist though. The person you should ask would be a university professor of Old English.

[Bruno Giordan]

[Matthew Bunker]

Seax (pronounced 'Say Axe' or 'Sea Axe'..depending on regional accent) in Old English and 'Sax' in Old Norse.

Avoid using scramseax/scramaseax as there is no evidence of it being used in Old English.
The only occurrance of the term is in Gregory of Tours' "History of the Franks" where it's written as "scramasaxi" and nobody (despite lots of conjecture on the subject) knows what he was referring to.

[Nathan Robinson]

I say "sax".

[Thomas R.]

In Germany, we call it "Sax".

The "a" is pronounced like the "u" in "sucks" but the "s" is pronounced more like the s in "as". Written down it's "Sax", "Sachs" being the older form.

Thomas