Börje

Börje is a old Swedish male name. It is the same name as Birger; Börje is the form that has developed naturally according to the sound change laws of Swedish, whilst Birger is a literary form that has been common since the nineteenth century, when archaic forms of names became fashionable.

The etymology of Börje is uncertain. Probably it is a short form of names beginning with Berg‐. Less likely it means ”helper”, from the verb bärga. It has also been suggested that it is derived from the name element ‑ger (spear).

Börje developed from Old Swedish Birghir which was pronounced with a voiced velar fricative [ɣ]: [birɣir]. The voiced velar fricative was spelled ⟨gh⟩ i Old Swedish and changed to /j/ after /r/ in modern Svenska.

Börje is an ija‑stem. Ija‑stems ended in ‑ir i Old Swedish, which regularly developed into a word final ‑e in modern Swedish. This explains why Börje has grave pitch accent) today: since the synkope at the transition from Proto-norse to Norse the name has been disyllabic, which leads to a word being pronounced with the grave accent in modern Swedish. Hence, the vowel in the second syllable of old Swedish Birghir or Birgher was no svarabhaktivowel like the ‑e‑ in modern Swedish words such as the a‑stem dager, which at one stage was monosyllabic (dagr) and therefore has (acute pitch accent).

The first vowel ‑i‑ of Birghir between a b and an r changed into an ‑y‑ and then into an ‑ö‑. The vowel was ‑i‑ labialised by the influence of the initial /b/.

The form Birger has in the last 200 years been revived from the old language. The mistake was made to pronounce the name with acute pitch accent, that is, like an a‑stem with a nominativesuffix consisting of the svarabhakti‐vowel ‑e‑ plus ‑r. It is a common phenomenon that romantic Swedish of the nineteenth century names revived from medieval sources have an incorrect form or pronunciation.

Börje was very common as a given name in 1930–49. Today it is almost never given as a first name that is used to address the person. In 2017 approximately 7 500 persons had the name as their first name or name of address.

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Wikipedia