This is the first Sylloge volume to reveal the splendor of the Hermitage Museum coin collection, one of the largest and most important in the world. Some 1500 Anglo-Saxon coins from the eighth to early eleventh centuries are catalogued. The formation of the collection is described, and there is a synopsis of the finds that contain coins appearing in this and three subsequent Hermitage volumes.

This is the first Sylloge volume to reveal the splendor of the Hermitage Museum coin collection, one of the largest and most important in the world. Some 1500 Anglo-Saxon coins from the eighth to early eleventh centuries are catalogued. The formation of the collection is described, and there is a synopsis of the finds that contain coins appearing in this and three subsequent Hermitage volumes.

This book examines personal names, including given and acquired (or nick-) names, and how they were used in Anglo-Saxon England. It discusses their etymologies, semantics, and grammatical behaviour, and considers their evolving place in Anglo-Saxon history and culture. From that culture survive thousands of names on coins, in manuscripts, on stone and other inscriptions. Names are important and their absence a stigma (Grendel's parents have no names); they may have particular functions in ritual and magic; they mark individuals, generally people but also beings with close human contact such as dogs, cats, birds, and horses; and they may provide indications of rank and gender. Dr Colman explores the place of names within the structure of Old English, their derivation, formation, and other linguistic behaviour, and compares them with the products of other Germanic (e.g., Present-day German) and non-Germanic (e.g., Ancient and Present-day Greek) naming systems. Old English personal names typically followed the Germanic system of elements based on common words like leof (adjective 'beloved') and wulf (noun 'wolf'), which give Leofa and Wulf, and often combined as in Wulfraed, (ræd noun, 'advice, counsel') or as in Leofing (with the diminutive suffix -ing). The author looks at the combinatorial and sequencing possibilities of these elements in name formation, and assesses the extent to which, in origin, names may be selected to express qualities manifested by, or expected in, an individual. She examines their different modes of inflection and the variable behaviour of names classified as masculine or feminine. The results of her wide-ranging investigation are provocative and stimulating.

The rich collections of the Hermitage Museum include a remarkable series of Norman and later medieval British coins. Unlike the Hermitage's Anglo-Saxon coins which are mainly from Russian finds, the coins in this volume come from three major private collectors of the nineteenth century, Reichel, Stroganov and Plushkin, who purchased internationally. Thus they include some 60 coins of William I that were purchased in London at the Brumell sale of 1850 and derive from the 1833 hoard from Beauworth, Sussex. For the later middle ages the collection is particularly rich in gold coinage. Virtually all of the 493 coins are illustrated for the first time. They will be a valuable source for medieval numismatists and for those interested in the history of the Hermitage and its collections. This volume complements Hermitage Museum, Part I (SCBI 50, ISBN 0-19-726187-6). Parts II and III will follow.