Fraujaz - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

*Fraujaz or *Frauwaz feminine *Frawjō (OHG frouwâ, later also frû, Old Saxon frūa, Old English frōwe, Goth. *fraujô, Old Norse

Old Norse

Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....

freyja) is a Common Germanic honorific meaning "lord

Lord

Lord is a title with various meanings. It can denote a prince or a feudal superior . The title today is mostly used in connection with the peerage of the United Kingdom or its predecessor countries, although some users of the title do not themselves hold peerages, and use it 'by courtesy'...

", "lady

Lady

The word lady is a polite term for a woman, specifically the female equivalent to, or spouse of, a lord or gentleman, and in many contexts a term for any adult woman...

", especially of deities.

The epithet came to be taken as the proper name of two separate deities in Norse mythology

Norse mythology

Norse mythology, a subset of Germanic mythology, is the overall term for the myths, legends and beliefs about supernatural beings of Norse pagans. It flourished prior to the Christianization of Scandinavia, during the Early Middle Ages, and passed into Nordic folklore, with some aspects surviving...

, Freyr

Freyr

Freyr is one of the most important gods of Norse paganism. Freyr was highly associated with farming, weather and, as a phallic fertility god, Freyr "bestows peace and pleasure on mortals"...

and Freyja. In both Old Norse and Old High German the female epithet became a female honorific "lady

Lady

The word lady is a polite term for a woman, specifically the female equivalent to, or spouse of, a lord or gentleman, and in many contexts a term for any adult woman...

", in German Frau further weakened to the standard address "Mrs." and further to the normal word for "woman

Woman

A woman , pl: women is a female human. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent...

", replacing earlier wîp (English wife) and qinô (English queen) "woman".
Just like Norse Freyja is usually interpreted as a hypostasis of *Frijjō
Frijjō
*Frijjō is the reconstructed name or epithet of a hypothesized Common Germanic love goddess giving rise to both Frigg and Freyja....

(Frigg

Frigg

Frigg is a major goddess in Norse paganism, a subset of Germanic paganism. She is said to be the wife of Odin, and is the "foremost among the goddesses" and the queen of Asgard. Frigg appears primarily in Norse mythological stories as a wife and a mother. She is also described as having the power...

), Norse Freyr is associated with Ingwaz (Yngvi

Yngvi

Yngvi, Yngvin, Ingwine, Inguin are names that relate to an older theonym Ing and which appears to have been the older name for the god Freyr ....

) based on the Ynglingasaga which names Yngvi-Freyr as the ancestor of the kings of Sweden, which as Common Germanic *Ingwia-fraujaz would have designated the "lord of the Ingvaeones. Both Freyr and Freyja are represented zoomorphically by the pig

Pig

A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the Suidae family of even-toed ungulates. Pigs include the domestic pig, its ancestor the wild boar, and several other wild relatives...

: Freyr has Gullinbursti
Gullinbursti
Gullinbursti is a boar in Norse mythology.When Loki had Sif's hair, Freyr's ship Skíðblaðnir and Odin's spear Gungnir fashioned by the Sons of Ivaldi, he bet his own head with Brokkr that his brother Eitri wouldn't have been able to make items to match the quality of those mentioned above.So to...

("golden bristles") while Freyjahas Hildisvini
Hildisvini
In Norse mythology, Hildisvíni is Freyja's boar which she rides when not using her cat-drawn chariot.It is also said to be Freyja's human lover, Ottar, in disguise, and is the reason why Loki consistently accuses her of being "wanton" by riding her lover in public.It was also the helmet of Áli...

has ("battle-pig"), and one of Freyja's many names is Syr, i.e. "sow".

The term's etymology is ultimately from a PIE

Pie

A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that covers or completely contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients....

*pro-w-(y)o-s, containing *pro- "in front" (c.f. first, Fürst
Fürst
Fürst is a German title of nobility, usually translated into English as Prince.The term refers to the head of a principality and is distinguished from the son of a monarch, who is referred to as Prinz...

and Sanskrit purohita "high priest", lit. "placed foremost or in front"). Variants indicate n-stems *fraujan-, *frōwōn-. The feminine *frawjō "lady, domina" in Old English is attested only in a single isolated occurrence as frēo "woman" in the translation of the fragmentary Old Saxon Genesis poem, in the alliterating phrase frēo fægroste "fairest of women". The stem was confused from early times with *frīj-
Frijjō
*Frijjō is the reconstructed name or epithet of a hypothesized Common Germanic love goddess giving rise to both Frigg and Freyja....

, which has variants frēo-, frīo-, frēa- (a contraction of *īj- and a following back vowel) beside a less frequent frīg- (/fri:j-/), by development of a glide between ī and a following front vowel. The two forms would originally have figured in complementary distribution within the same paradigm (e.g. masculine nominative singular frēo, masculine genitive singular frīges), but in attested Old English analogical forms are already present and the distribution is no longer complementary

For Old Norse, Snorri says that freyja is a tignarnafn (name of honour) derived from the goddess, that grand ladies, rîkiskonur, are freyjur. The goddess should be in Swed. Fröa, Dan. Fröe; the Swed. folk-song of Thor's hammer calls Freyja Froijenborg (the Dan. Fridlefsborg), a Danish one has already the foreign Fru. Saxo is silent about this goddess and her father altogether; he would no doubt have named her Fröa. The Merseburg charm has Frûâ = Frôwâ as the proper name of the goddess.

In Germanic Christianity

Germanic Christianity

The Germanic people underwent gradual Christianization in the course of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. By the 8th century, England and the Frankish Empire were Christian, and by AD 1100 Germanic paganism had also ceased to have political influence in Scandinavia.-History:In the 4th...

, the epithet became a name of God

God in Christianity

In Christianity, God is the eternal being that created and preserves the universe. God is believed by most Christians to be immanent , while others believe the plan of redemption show he will be immanent later...

, translating , (Gothic frauja, Old English frēa, Old High German frô).

Old Norse Freyr would correspond to a Gothic *fráus or *fravis, instead of which Ulfila has fráuja (gen. fráujins) to translate , pointing to a proto-form *frawjaz in North Germanic, but a *frauwaz in West Germanic and Gothic.
In Old High German, the full form *frouwo was already lost, the writers preferring truhtîn and hêrro "lord". In the Old Low German, it survives in the vocative, as frô mîn! "my lord!" The Heliand

Heliand

The Heliand is an epic poem in Old Saxon, written in the first half of the 9th century. The title means saviour in Old Saxon , and the poem is a Biblical paraphrase that recounts the life of Jesus in the alliterative verse style of a Germanic saga...

has frô mîn the gôdo, waldand frô mîn, drohtîn frô mîn, besides frôho (gen. frôhon) and frâho (gen. frâhon).

Old English freá (gen. freán, for freâan, freâwan) is more common in poetry, as in freá ælmihtig (Cædmon

Cædmon

Cædmon is the earliest English poet whose name is known. An Anglo-Saxon who cared for the animals and was attached to the double monastery of Streonæshalch during the abbacy of St. Hilda , he was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but learned to compose one night in the course of a dream,...

1.9; 10.1), and it also forms compounds: âgendfreá, aldorfreá, folcfreá and even combines with dryhten (freádryhten, Cædm. 54.29, gen. freahdrihtnes', Beowulf 1585, dat. freodryhtne 5150).

By the side of OHG frô, there is found the indeclinable adjective frôno, which, placed before or after substantives, imparts the notion of lordly, high and holy, as in der frône bote "the angel of the Lord", conspicuously avoiding the genitive singular (*frôin bote).
It survives in Modern German as Fron- in compounds such as Frondienst "socage
Socage
Socage was one of the feudal duties and hence land tenure forms in the feudal system. A farmer, for example, held the land in exchange for a clearly defined, fixed payment to be made at specified intervals to his feudal lord, who in turn had his own feudal obligations, to the farmer and to the Crown...

", whence also a verb frönen.

Grimm attaches significance to the avoidance and the grammatical peculiarities of the lexeme in OHG:

"the reference to a higher being is unmistakable, and in the Middle ages there still seems to hang about the compounds with vrôn something weird, unearthly, a sense of old sacredness; this may account for the rare occurrence and the early disappearance of the OHG. frô, and even for the grammatical immobility of frôno; it is as though an echo of heathenism could still be detected in them."

The word occurs in given names, such as Gothic Fráuja or Fráujila, OHG Frewilo, AS Wûscfreá Old English freáwine in Beowulf
Beowulf
Beowulf , but modern scholars agree in naming it after the hero whose life is its subject." of an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature.It survives in a single...

is an epithet of divine or god-loved heroes and kings, but Freáwine (Saxo's Frowinus) is also attested as a personal name, reflected also as OHG Frôwin, while the Edda has usesFreys vinr of Sigurðr and Saxo says of the Swedish heroes in the Bravalla fight that they were Frö dei necessarii. Skaldic fiörnis freyr, myrðifreyr (Kormakssaga) means "hero" or "man". In the same way the Kormakssaga uses fem. freyja in the sense "woman, lady".

See also