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

[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".