At 1:10:40 AM on Monday, July 13, 2009, Scott wrote:

> Would an woman speaking Old or Medieval Norse/Icelandic
> ever have the byname inn skarpi tungu?

> supposed to mean 'the sharp-tongued woman.'

<Tunga> is feminine, so on purely grammatical grounds it
would be <(h)in skarpa tunga>. However, ON bynames with the
definite article are always adjectival: <(h)inn blindi> 'the
blind', <(h)in fagra> 'the fair' (fem.), etc. Substantival
bynames don't use the article: <Snorri fótr> 'S. foot',
<Björn jįrnhauss> 'B. iron-skull'.

I don't know whether ON had this metaphor, but so far I've
not found an instance. I suspect that if it did, <hvass> is
a likelier candidate than <skarpr> for the 'sharp' element.
I did find an adjective <hvassoršr>, literally
'sharp-worded', which appears to have more or less the
desired meaning, and of course there's the well-known byname
of Gunnlaugr Illugason: <ormstunga>, also <našrstunga>.

Picking a feminine name at random to illustrate the
possibilities:

Gróa (h)in hvassorša
Gróa hvassorša
Gróa ormstunga
Gróa našrstunga

Brian