n.
Gaw berʒe
'mound'
(Modern English barrow)Probably straightforwardly from OE beorg (Angl. berg) (masc.) ‘mountain, hill; mountain range; barrow, tumulus, burial mound’ (thus TGD, GDS, OED) , cp. OFris berch, OS, OHG berg, Go baírgahei ‘hill country’, OIcel berg, bjarg (neut.)(both forms are frequently occurring; OIcel berg has generalized the stem-vowel originally proper to the dat. sg. berg-i without fracture, whereas bjarg has extended through the paradigm the vocalism of the nom./acc. sg. with fracture) ‘hill, cliff, prominence in the landscape, crag, cliff-face; boulder, rock; (as material) rock, stone, rocky ground, foundation of rock’. But place-names in -berg could in principle derive from the ON cognate, esp. when the first element is of ON origin (so Smith EPNE, VEPN), and so one could allow for a reinforcement of OE beorg from this source, esp. in areas of significant ON input into the onomasticon (this is probably MED's implication).
PGmc Ancestor
*ƀerʒa-
Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)
berg, bjarg (neut.) ‘hill, cliff, prominence in the landscape, crag, cliff-face; boulder, rock; (as material) rock, stone, rocky ground, foundation of rock’
(ONP berg (sb.); bjarg (sb.))
Other Scandinavian Reflexes
Far berg, bjarg, bjørg, Icel berg, bjarg, Norw berg, björg, ODan bjærg, Dan bjerg, OSw biärgh, Sw berg
OE Cognate
beorg (Angl. berg) ‘mountain, hill; mountain range; barrow, tumulus, burial mound’
Phonological and morphological markers
Summary category
CCC5a
MED cites a small handful of attestations in literary texts (from c1150 Wenne Wenne (Roy 4.A.14) onwards, mainly in alliterative verse inc. LB and PP), but the majority of its citations are in place- and personal names.
Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus
Gaw 2172, 2178