[1] The etymology of the name has been studied most thoroughly by John Insley, who concluded that cognate forms of the name Oisc are found in Old Saxon (Ōsic, alongside the corresponding weak noun Ōsica),[1] to which later scholarship possibly adds the runic inscription on a shield boss dating from between 150 and 220 CE found on Thorsberg moor in Schleswig-Holstein which in 2015 Lisbeth M. Imer interpreted as a Roman-influenced maker's mark reading aṇsgz h.[2][3]: 79–80 In Insley's interpretation, in Oisc the ōs element is combined with a suffix which in Proto-Germanic took the form **ika, which in this context had a diminutive function.
[1] In this reading, the phonetic development of the name from Proto-Germanic to early Old English was *[ans-ika-] => *[oːs-ika-] (by the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law) => [øːs-ika-] (by i-mutation) => [øːsk] (by high vowel loss and apocope).
Insley interprets these spellings as etymologically incorrect attempts by later Old English-speakers to update the then unfamiliar word Oisc into their variety of the language, influenced by the familiar name-element Æsc-.
[5][4]: 111–15 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which in its present form was compiled by people who knew Bede's account, portrays Oisc as ruling 488–512CE.
[7] This says that "in oceano vero occidentale est insula quae dicitur Britania, ubi olim gens Saxonum veniens ab antiqua Saxonia cum principe suo nomine Ansehis modo habitare videtur" (indeed in the western ocean is an island which is called Britania, which the people of the Saxons, coming from Old Saxony under their chief, named Ansehis, seem now to inhabit".