Badwina. A Dutch reflex of Baduhenna?
My attempt to trace a Frisian war-goddess back into our own linguistic soil
Baduhenna (or BaΓ°uhenna, if we follow standardised spelling) is one of those figures who appear suddenly in the written record and then disappear without explanation. We meet her only once, in Tacitusβ Annales IV.73, in the phrase lucum Baduhennae, βthe grove of Baduhennaβ. That single mention leaves us with a familiar challenge: we have a Latin surface form of what was almost certainly a Frisian or wider Germanic name, but not the original form itself.
As with Vegtamr and other ancient names, if I want to understand what this goddess might have been called in her own linguistic environment, and what her name meant, I need to peel away the Latin layer and work backwards.
Time to pull out the dictionaries again.
Starting with Tacitus
Tacitus gives us Baduhenna, but that form is unmistakably Latin. It has the shape of a Latinised feminine genitive, not an authentic Germanic spelling. So before I can think about a Dutch reflex, I need the underlying Germanic form.
The reconstructed name: *BadwinjΕ
Germanic philologists (Kroonen, LΓΌhr, Simek) converge on one plausible reconstruction:
*BadwinjΕ
badu- βbattle, strifeβ
-winjΕ βfeminine name-suffixβ
This suffix appears widely in early Germanic: Haduwina, Gerwina, Bertwina, Alwina.
In that pattern, *BadwinjΕ means βshe who belongs to battleβ β exactly the kind of theonym we would expect in a war-context.
How *BadwinjΕ became Tacitusβ Baduhenna
Here we enter the territory of Latin adaptation.
Roman scribes frequently reshaped unfamiliar Germanic endings into the -henae / -hennae pattern we see in Matronae inscriptions such as Austriahenae and Vacallinehae. In that light, *BadwinjΕ β Baduhenna is simply an expected orthographic accommodation. The meaning remains Germanic; only the spelling becomes Latin.
From Proto-Germanic to Old Dutch: Badwina
Once we have the reconstructed Germanic form, we can ask what the name would have looked like if it had been preserved in Old Dutch rather than through Tacitus.
The development is remarkably stable:
the suffix -winjΕ becomes -wina, -wine, or -winne in Old Dutch and Old Frankish.
Historical examples include:
- Alwina
- Hadewina
- Wicbwina (8thβ9th century)
So the expected Old Dutch form is:
*BadwinjΕ β Badwina
The first element badu- appears to have been preserved in early regional forms, some scholars even connect it, cautiously, to Baduheim, a proposed older form of Beetgum (Friesland). Whether or not that identification holds, it shows the element remained recognisable in the region.
Does this match patterns we already know?
Broadly, yes. The development is exactly the kind we see in other Germanic divine names when they meet Dutch phonology:
- WΕΓ°anaz β Wodan β Woen(sdag)
- Γunraz β Donar β Donder(dag)
- *BadwinjΕ β Badwina
The structure holds.
The meaning stays intact.
And the phonology behaves just as we would expect in the Low Countries.
A name with Celtic echoes
What makes this reconstruction even more interesting is that Badwinaβs name connects her to a wider family of Indo-European war-goddesses.
The root badu- / badwo- (βbattle, strifeβ) corresponds directly to Celtic bodwΔ-, the same root behind the name of one of Irelandβs most formidable figures: Badb.
Badb (roughly βbiveβ in modern Irish) is a war goddess who appears as a crow on the battlefield. Under the title Badb Catha (βbattle-crowβ), she terrifies armies, sows confusion, and foreshadows slaughter. She does not merely watch battles, she shapes them.
Tacitusβ story surrounding Baduhennaβs grove; a violent clash followed by panic and Roman soldiers turning on one another, fits this wider pattern of female battle-powers who exert influence not just through physical force, but through fear, chaos, and psychological collapse.
Both figures are also tied to sacred landscapes:
- Baduhenna rules a grove.
- Badb appears at fords, thresholds, and battlefields.
Different cultures, similar roles: female presences who stand at the boundary where human will collapses into fate.
The linguistic connection (Germanic badwo- and Celtic bodwΔ-) hints at a shared ancient tradition, not of identical goddesses, but of related archetypes: women of battle, decisive and terrifying, whose arrival marks the turning point of war.
Why I consider Badwina the best Dutch form
For me, three things make the case:
- It preserves the meaning
βshe who belongs to battleβ remains fully present.
- It follows normal Dutch phonology
The -wina ending is well attested and historically natural.
- It sits comfortably in Dutch name tradition
-wina appears in genuine Old Dutch womenβs names.
Taken together, Badwina feels like a name that could have survived in a medieval Dutch manuscript as a local echo of a Frisian war-goddess otherwise known only through the eyes of a Roman historian.
And knowing her linguistic and thematic kinship with Badb, makes that loss feel all the more striking.
