Albruna


Albruna was a Germanic seeress. She is mentioned by the Roman historian Tacitus in his book, Germania. It is thought that she was observed during the campaign of Drusus and Tiberius, and for this reason appears in Tacitus' account. Other than her name, nothing else is known about her. According to sources, her function as a seeress is implied by the etymology of the name and by her association with the seeress Veleda.
Albruna means "Possessor of the secret wisdom of the elves". The name Albruna is a nineteenth century proposal from the handwritten forms Aurinia Albrinia, and Flurinia, which was made scientifically mainstream by Wilhelm Wackernagel and Karl Müllenhoff.

The name *Albruna – Aurinia

In the various manuscripts of Germania the common Latin rendering Aurinia varies in essential aspects:
Auriniam
Fluriniam
Albriniam
Β = Codex Vaticanus Lat. 1862
b = Codex Leidensis Perizonianus
C = Codex Vaticanus Lat. 1518
c = Codex Neapolitanus IV C 21
Ε = Codex Aesinas

Etymology of Aurinia

interpreted the names of the seeresses Veleda and Aurinia in Tacitus as having a Germanic origin. For Aurinia, he posits Germanic *Aurini related to the root *auraz similar to Old Icelandic aurr for "sand" or "luster". The final ending -ia is a Latinized Germanic i consistent with the suffix formation -ini. Robert Nedoma rejected Schramm's interpretation as unconvincing, pointing to the weakness of Schramm's explanation, saying that the suffix formation, and therefore the convergence to the handwritten German result Aurinia, "means nothing".
Roland Schuhmann also rejected Schramm's interpretation of Aurinia as a genuinely Germanic form. He similarly points to the Celtic origin of the name Veleda and to Nedoma's criticism of Schramm. Schuhmann himself sees in Aurinia a mixed Celtic-Latin form consisting of the Latin prefix aurum, borrowed from Celtic as in aurum for "gold" and the genuinely Celtic suffix -inios, -inia. He refers, among other things, to a male form of Auriniacus. According to him, therefore, Aurinia had the original meaning "Goldine".
An older attempt at an etymology is that of Gilbert Trathnigg cited by Helmut Birkhan. Trathnigg, who calls Aurinia the correct form, associates the name with the Old English éar.