Note 211 — Chapter IV · SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF NORMANDY DURING THE TENTH CENTURY.[188]

The genuine name is Hrolfr, Rolf, in various spellings. The true French form is Rou. The love of the Old-French tongue for making all nouns end in s, that is, for making them all of the second declension, made this into Rous, and hence came a strange Latin form Rosus. The true Latin form is Rollo, like Cnuto, Sveno, &c. From this Latin form modern French writers have, oddly enough, made a form Rollon. The strangest form is Rodla, which occurs in a late manuscript of the English Chronicles (A. 876. Thorpe’s ed.). This was clearly meant to be an English form of Rollo. The English masculine ending a was substituted for the Latin o, just as Giso and Odo are in English Gisa and Oda. The writer also clearly thought that Rollo was a name of the same type as Robert and others, and he fancied that by putting in a d he was restoring it to its genuine Teutonic shape.