† bernen.

Etymology: Old English beorn , earlier biorn ( < *bern ) ‘warrior, hero, man of valour,’ hence ‘man’ pre-eminently, vir , ἀνήρ ; a word exclusively poetical; of disputed origin. The Middle English forms were very varied; the most common midland type in 14th cent. was burn(e ; after 1400 the word was retained chiefly in the north, where it was a favourite term of alliterative poetry; in the form berne it survived in Scotch till after 1550. In some of its spellings it was occasionally confounded with forms of bairn n., and baron n.; with the latter it was often actually interchanged: see quots. c1275, a1400. Phonetically, Old English beorn ‘man of valour’ answers exactly to Old Norse bjǫrn , genitive bjarnar , ‘bear’( < Germanic bernu-z , the Celtic representative of which Prof. Rhys sees in the Gaulish proper name Brennus ); but the Old Norse word has never the sense of ‘warrior,’ while the Old English has never that of ‘bear.’ To this, however, a striking analogy is offered by the case of Old English eofor , Old Norse jǫfurr ( < Germanic eƀuro-z = Latin aper ), which has in Old English only the sense of ‘wild boar,’ in Old Norse only that of ‘warrior, hero.’ The use of the name of a fierce animal as a figurative appellation for ‘warrior, brave,’ seems very natural, and the fact that Old English beorn belonged only to the language of poetry and is never found in prose, suggests that it was a word of which the literal sense was lost, and only a figurative one traditionally retained. Nevertheless some eminent Germanic scholars doubt the identification. Some have considered the word to be an early variant of bearn , bairn n., or at least a cognate derivative of beran to bear v.¹ Mr. H. Bradley has suggested the possibility of connecting it with the British root of Beornice Bernicia, Welsh bryneich, and of Welsh brenhin king; but the nature of the connection is not apparent.