Esku (Esku)

Old farm/man’s name. Probably from an early Scandinavian name, Askel, Æskil, Askil, Eskil, Áskæll, Áskell, short forms of ON Ásketill, broken down to mean ‘God’s helmet’ (áss [god], and ketill, [helmet or kettle]). This, in Estonian, became jumalakiiver, prob. from Russian кивер (kiver: shako, itself from the Hungarian for ‘peak’, csákó). Rajandi’s Raamat nimedest (book of names) claims the name has long been used in Estonian coastal areas (probably Swedish). But helmet or kettle?... ON already had a word for helmet (hjálmr). So ‘kettle’ was likely a contemporary or later development as it spread through Scandinavia to mean cauldron, cooking-pot, basin, bowl, boiler (see Katleri), etc. There’s something oddly unquixotic about this! As our hero borrows a barber’s shaving-basin for a helmet, boys will pilfer their mums’ saucepans too, so why then would any self-respecting Norse warrior not nick his missus’ casserole to protect his shoulder-rock, as Norse kennings so poetically describe a head (deadpan humor?). I rest my case.