name construction and Appendix A

[ursula]

sporky_rat asked for, "More information on the basics of onomastics on the not-English and not-French. Like Spanish names. How does one find the general usual rules for a woman's name in Christian Spain, 1500's?"

(If you'd like to suggest a topic for me to post about in January, the collection of questions is here.)

If you want basic information about medieval name construction in a reasonably popular European language, the place to start is SENA Appendix A. ("SENA" stands for "Standards for Evaluation of Names and Armory".) There's some general information about abbreviations at the beginning of the appendix, and then tables for different languages. The tables are grouped by big geographical regions; you may have to use the search function in your browser, or scroll a bit, to find the exact culture you're interested in. Castilian Spanish is in the Iberian table.

The table has columns for different types of name structures that often show up in medieval documents: Double Given Names, Locative, Patronymic, Other relationship (such as relationships to mothers, siblings, or spouses), Descriptive/Occupational, Dictus (for "also known as" names), and Double Bynames. The final column, Order, tells you how different types of name were typically combined.

Underneath the table, there are notes. The notes may explain more complicated constructions. For example, the notes for Spanish suggest some ways to form a name based on the father's name. Usually, the notes also link to one or two articles that provide a more detailed discussion.

You can also find information on medieval names from specific cultures by going to The Medieval Names Archive or the heraldry.sca.org name articles page and following links for the culture you're interested in. However, for popular cultures there may be quite a few links to wade through. Appendix A is supposed to highlight the articles that an expert would check first.

Maintaining Appendix A is one of my jobs as the SCA's Palimpsest Herald, so if you have questions about how to use it, or are particularly pining for more detail on a specific culture, let me know!

Comments

[eller]

I have a question about Appendix A, locatives in German. "Locatives based on place names use the forms von X; generic toponymics use vom Y, or another form of der; the form de X is found before about 1300. Locatives based on generic toponyms, house names or inn-sign names use the form zum Z." - sounds correct enough, except I'm surprised at the last part about house or inn-sign names.

I'm not a historian, so I can only talk about modern German, but "zum" is short for "zu dem", which is the dativ of the male form. The female form would be "zur" ("zu der") and used if the following noun the inn is named after is feminine. An inn named after an oak tree would be called "Zur Eiche", not "Zum Eiche" - of course the language changed during the centuries, but "Zum Eiche" sounds completely off. (Or it changed at some point, in which case the time at which the "zur" form came into use should be noted - but either way, it seems the appendix is incomplete there.)

Oh, and another remark about inn names: The "zum" (or "zur") form can be used with any kind of noun. "Zum Einhorn" is clearly not a valid statement of location, but a perfectly valid inn name. In cases like this, the form specifies the inn being dedicated to the unicorn. Again, I'm clueless as to how to call that form, but, uh, I'm not sure it's a locative.

[ursula]

Good catch! Bahlow's Dictionary of German Names has someone called zur Eiche in 1298. (Also a house called zum Eichhorn in Freiburg in 1460, which is cute.) I'll check with someone who has spent more time looking at medieval German names than I have, but it does sound like this needs an expansion.

[eller]

I think the confusing issue here is that nouns are actually gendered in German. "zum X" and "zur X" both literally mean "to the X" or "by the X" or (antiquated but still understood) "dedicated to X", but the form you choose depends on the gender of noun X in German. (Masculine and neutral are "zum", feminine is "zur".) It's one of the things that non-native speakers tend to have difficulties with. People and places named after trees should typically use "zur"; most trees (with some notable exceptions: maple is masculine... no one was talking about logic here) are feminine in German. (It's also "zur Linde", "zur Tanne", and so on.)

You could also just google modern names, I don't think naming conventions have changed much during the last few centuries. The few old names I've seen at renaissance fairs and the like are perfectly understandable to modern Germans. Also, Mittelhochdeutsch isn't that different when compared to some modern German dialects. (I can read it without ever having studied it, so...)

Some random examples for the use of "zum" and "zur" in modern inn names:
https://www.zur-krone-tann.de/ Inn "Zur Krone" (dedicated tothe crown - note that "Krone" is feminine)
https://www.zurtanne.de/ Rural inn "Zur Tanne" (This can refer to the inn being near a fir tree or simply named after one. German language doesn't differentiate here.)
https://www.zumbraunenhirsch.de/ Hotel "Zum braunen Hirsch" (I have no idea how to translate the "zum" here - the hotel is clearly neither near the nor dedicated to the brown stag.)
https://www.gasthof-zur-quelle.de/ Rural inn "Zur Quelle" (This is the only of the examples I found actually referring to a location: it's most likely near a wellspring or at the very least the inn owners would like their customers to believe that.)

In names of persons, however, the conventions are probably slightly different. You cannot dedicate someone to something, so these really would have to be locatives... Also, in really old names, you might have to look for "zer" instead of "zur". This site here https://www.heraldrysinstitute.com/lang/de/cognomi/zur+Eiche/Deutschland/idc/728191/# mentions one Gregor zer Eiche. Which is the same name as zur Eiche, just in seriously old-fashioned. It's a complicated topic and I'm, unfortunately, quite clueless.

[ursula]

You don't have to explain gendered nouns to me :) I also speak French, have studied Latin and classical Greek, and can fake my way to reading knowledge of a bunch of other languages.

I'm checking with Aelfwynn to make sure we get the spelling right; they will have looked at enough medieval German naming data to be able to make a guess about when zer vs. zur was most common, and may also be able to make recommendations about High vs. Low German spellings.

[eller]

Great! :) About writing Low German, you don't need to worry much: most of these languages were never meant to be written down, so there are no standardized spellings. Also, almost every village had its own dialect, so unless you need to generate a correct name for someone from a specific village (of maybe 1000 or less inhabitants) anything vaguely correct-sounding is correct. XD I think most of the written versions of names would be church records, so name spellings usually depend on what the priest in charge thought a name should be spelled. My father did a bit of genealogical research, and even less than 100 years ago, the name entries at a person's birth and their marriage and death can be spelled entirely different. (No one can tell if my great-aunt was officially called Dorothee, Dorette or Dredde; she even had different name versions on her passport and travel documents! And she didn't live that long ago - I still met her.) I think the whole concept of "things should be spelled in a certain way" is fairly new in Germany. Anything recorded before the Third Reich has a certain random element thrown in. :)

[ursula]

Um, I think you're underestimating the depths of my nerdiness on the topic of historical spellings? There's a big difference between "variations existed" and "there are no rules"!

[eller]

Nah, but in this case, there are no rules. ;) While my native language is High German, I have native Low German speakers in my family (my father among them). And, really, if the spelling rule is "names in village A in the first half of century X are spelled in the way priest Z, who was responsible for church records because no one else wanted the job, thought they should look like when written down" - that's not really a spelling rule. Especially not if a person born in village A but died in village B, five kilometers from village A, is recorded in two fundamentally different spellings. (Of course, we're talking about people who were usually not able to write and thus could offer no opinion what their names should look like in written form.)

[ursula]

No, but there is a rule: the spelling has to be something that phonetically represents a sound that a person from that time and place would actually have made. Furthermore, it has to make sense using the correspondences between sounds and letters that people in that time and place actually believed in. Moreover, I have to be able to recommend a plausible pattern to people who might only speak modern English.

So, for example, in English, zer, zir, zerr, zirr, zur, zurr, zerre, zurre, zirre, zyr, zyrr, zuhr, zuhrre, and zyrre can all represent the same sound, but I suspect you wouldn't find all of those forms in medieval Low German documents. (Indeed, I assume you will immediately tell me that some of those are Just Plain Wrong.)

[eller]

I wouldn't rule out several of these forms showing up not only in the same area and time but even the same document! (Except for zuhrre, I've never seen that one.) Low German spelling (or rather, the lack thereof) sucks. There have been attempts to link phonetics to certain letter combinations, but these efforts have all been made within the last 50 years. They also tend to contradict each other.

Something that might amuse you: during the Third Reich, there were active attempts to extinguish northern Low German dialects, because it was assumed that the lack of phonetic order would damage children's brains if they grew up speaking Platt as native language!

[ursula]

Eek.

What about x's? Could you do xer or xir?

(I feel like you're expecting me to manifest a level of astonishment at spelling variation that is just not going to happen. I mean, I just wrote an entire story in Middle English.)

[eller]

I can only talk about Northern German Platt in the fen areas around Bremen, but... no. Starting any word with an X is highly unlikely. You could try "ßer", though - I've seen that at least once. (In High German, of course, words can't start with ß. In Low German, however, there are no spelling rules, so...)

I don't expect you to be astonished at all - I just feel that trying to find standardized spelling for Low German is a futile exercise. People around here (native speakers) are trying, and failing badly. Even Platt phonetics differ from village to village, and there are dialects around that are spoken by only a few hundred people.

[ursula]

Oh, I don't want a standardized spelling, I just want a popular spelling! Popular in the sense of "frequent in medieval documents", that is.

[eller]

At least modern attempts to write Platt down do not contain the letter x at all, so probably any spelling without x is safe? Unfortunately I don't know which spellings are likely to be found in medieval documents. If you're interested in (semi-)modern Platt, you could look at this: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/ut-mine-stromtid-1383/1 "Ut mine Stromtid" by Fritz Reuter, from 1862, is one of the best-known Platt texts (it's Mecklenburg Platt) and there are not many older Platt texts around, LOL - Platt was always the language of un-educated peasants who can't write, and educated people wouldn't have used such a vulgar language!
Of course, a Mecklenburg Platt speaker wouldn't necessarily be able to communicate with a Platt speaker from the northern coast, or worse, someone from Bavaria. (In fact... If I need to talk to someone from Bavaria, we usually speak English because I don't understand a word of Bavarian.) So it would have to be "popular in the correct area"...

[ursula]

Also, for the Hotel "Zum braunen Hirsch", English just wouldn't use a preposition: it's the Brown Stag Hotel, or the Brown Hart Hotel if you want to sound fancy, and the name surely references a sign painted with a brown stag. The Middle English name equivalent would be something like "atte Broune Hart".

[eller]

Wait - "Hotel Brauner Hirsch" is be perfectly valid in German as well, and inevitably, it actually exists! https://hotel-braunerhirsch.de/ I'm not sure it means quite the same thing as "Zum Braunen Hirsch", though. It's almost the same, sure, but the inflection... Eh... One references the animal itself, the other references... um... the hotel itself dedicated to the concept of a brown stag?!? (And it can refer to a location, although it doesn't have to: the place where a brown stag was sighted or hunted or is a local crest or emblem...) I have no idea how to explain this! ;_;

[ursula]

Bet you one can find a medieval building referred to using both constructions ;)

[eller]

Oh, probably. :D

[eirias]

The SENA page's entry on Finnish names really surprised me. Finnish is not a Scandinavian language, or even Indo-European. The -son names are definitely Swedish in origin. Finnish family names are more likely to be diminutives or place names.

The Wikipedia article on Finnish names is interesting. Finland was controlled by Sweden for many centuries during the period I most associate with the SCA, and this article notes that Finns of higher status tended to adopt Swedish names during this period. Do SCA personas tend to be high status? That could explain it... although it still seems weird that truly Finnish naming styles don't get a mention.

[ursula]

The organization here is political, not linguistic. What's happening is that a lot of the data we have on medieval Finnish names comes from documents written in Swedish, so it uses Swedish name constructions, even though the underlying Finnish name was likely different. You can see what some of that data looks like if you scroll to the end of the article here. (That said, there are some examples of Finnish constructions there, too; if you see one that's well-attested enough to summarize, I suspect the modern Finns would love to have their own row in the table.)

You might also enjoy ffride's article Names of Finns from the Birch Bark Letters of Novgorod the Great, Pskov, and Staraja Russa, which has some really interesting examples of names of medieval Finns rendered in Slavic contexts.

[eirias]

Oh, these are interesting links. Thanks! The Slavic one is especially interesting - relatively few of the Swedish names were too surprising, given exposure to modern Finnish names in an urban place with a relatively high proportion of Swedes, but basically all of the Slavic renderings were.

I notice "Ursula" is attested in Finland. Huh. Also impressed by "MIKSITÄR".

[sporky_rat]

Ooooh. Yes.

Thank you.

This makes much more sense. At some point I want to sit down with someone and write all over my copy of SENA with someone who's much better with it.

[ursula]

We should make a SENA date at Gulf Wars!

[sporky_rat]

Let's! (As long as it's not while cries are going out, gotta work then.)