Sigmund

Historical scholarship

Passages quoted verbatim from public-domain reference works. They reflect the scholarship of their time, not current consensus, and may use obsolete spellings.

• 1884From the archives

  Sigmund— “conquering protection”

  Some have considered the story to be chiefly Burgundian; and Sigmund, conquering protection, the name of Sigurdr’s father, was that of the first Catholic king of Burgundy, who was canonized both for the recovery of his kingdom from Arianism, and for the severity of his penance, after having killed his son, Sigeric, on a false stepdame’s calumny. His relics were carried to Prague in the fourteenth century, and the effect of the translation appeared at once in the name of the…

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  Some have considered the story to be chiefly Burgundian; and Sigmund, conquering protection, the name of Sigurdr’s father, was that of the first Catholic king of Burgundy, who was canonized both for the recovery of his kingdom from Arianism, and for the severity of his penance, after having killed his son, Sigeric, on a false stepdame’s calumny. His relics were carried to Prague in the fourteenth century, and the effect of the translation appeared at once in the name of the Bohemian-born Emperor Sigismund, from whom this became European, and formed the feminine Sigismunda. Gismonda is thus an old Lombardic feminine.

  Yonge, History of Christian Names (1884), Part VI, Chapter IV (Heroic Names Of The Nibelung), Section II (Sigurd) · Public domain (Project Gutenberg)