Namenkundliche Informationen

Familiennamen deutscher Herkunft in der ostböhmischen Stadt Pardubitz

Bianca Beníšek — 2023-06-27

German surnames are not uncommon in the Czech Republic. They bear witness to centuries of common history and mutual influence. The East Bohemian town of Pardubice, though not close to the border with Germany, also features such names. This article presents the results of a study conducted to determine how many surnames in this city can be regarded as being of German origin. Furthermore, reference is made to the peculiarity of the Czech system of names, which inflects surnames according to gender. This also applies to family names taken from German, which are often modified in their spelling. Names that have retained their German spelling include, for example, Müller and Wagner with their female variants Müllerová and Wagnerová. Other surnames such as Dydrych or Šyndlář have adopted the Czech spelling beyond Czech pronunciation and have also changed in their pronunciation. The typology of surnames commonly used in German onomastics is used in this article by assigning examples of names to the individual groups. In order to preserve the anonymity of those bearing the names, frequency information is only given for >10.

Das Toponym Macau als Politikum: Etymologie und sino-portugiesische Kolonialgeschichte

Raphael Dohardt — 2023-06-27

The toponym Macau (a former Portuguese colony in the Chinese Pearl River delta, approx. 60 km west of Hong Kong) has become a frequent topic of etymological debate in the 20th century. Two factors may account for this interest: first, as a multiethnic city, Macau is linguistically diverse, which gives rise to complex scenarios of linguistic contact. Second, the 20th century constitutes a watershed in both Portugal’s and China’s history, the most important change being the end of the colonial era. This change prompted the need to reassess the legal, historical, cultural and linguistic status of Macau’s inhabitants with their diverse ethnic backgrounds. In the 1990s, when Macau’s sovereignty was transferred from Portugal to the People’s Republic of China, many debates about the name of the city occurred in the philological, belletristic and political literature. This article illustrates how debates concerning the Macanese toponym address (latent) longstanding political conflicts between ethnic groups. In addition, an etymology for the Macanese toponym is sugge sted that takes account of the fact that Macau has been a multilingual society for many centuries.

Entwicklungstendenzen der zeitgenössischen inoffiziellen Anthroponymie und ihre Erforschung in Tschechien und in der Slowakei

Milan Harvalík — 2023-06-27

In the Czech Republic and Slovakia the official naming system consists of a first name and a hereditary surname. The connection between the first name and the surname is, in the sense of the relevant laws, the stabilized official (standardized, basic) designation of every citizen in the Czech and Slovak Republic. However, as in all other languages, there are a number of unofficial anthroponyms in Czech and Slovak in addition.
This paper examines a number of characteristic features and trends in the development of unofficial anthroponymy in both countries, especially during the period from the year 1989 to the present day.
Particular attention is paid to the status and function of unofficial anthroponyms in communication, in particular with regard to their variability. Two categories of variant names are identified. The first is proprial communication variants, meaning those forms of proper names that are derived from the same base (the same etymon) as the (official) basic form of the name, but which are modified in their sounds, word formation, paradigm, grammatical number or gender. The second is proprial naming variants in which the variability applies to the proprial naming act, in the course of which a new proper name for the anthroponymic object in question arises; thus, the result of this process is polyonymy.

Petter Wenger der Müller – Petter Müller genant Wenger. Personennamen und Benennungsformen in Urbaren der Frühen Neuzeit aus dem Kanton Bern

Martina Heer — 2023-06-27

This paper deals with the use of personal names and the tradition of their written form in historical administrative documents of the 16th century from the area of today’s Canton of Bern. This study examines variation in the use of different naming forms, which were used to designate people who have to pay interest in official property registers (referred to as Urbare), and presents results from the investigation (cf. Heer 2022). In these books, people’s names are listed in quite different ways: With the overall name (Gesamtname) consisting of first name and surname (e. g. Hanns Bannwart; Üli Abbül), with various individual apposition that refer, for example, to kinship or family relationships (e. g. Peter Knörj der eltter; Cristina Cristann Griessenn seligen ewirttj) or give an indication as to the craft activity of the name bearer(s) (e. g. Michel Leman der wäber; Hans Schneewlj der gerber). These name elements can also appear in varying forms (e. g. Ita ëgel vs. Itÿ die wittwen Ülÿ ëgels). The examples show that although a two namedness (Zweinamigkeit) with a fixed surname had become established by this point, a myriad of different naming forms is uncovered, reflecting social naming practices within a society. This article discusses variation in personal names and naming forms, exploring the questions as the which extralinguistic factors influenced these forms and variants and how name use marked social and economic affiliations.

Ein Altweg nach Böhmen mit früher Zolleinnahmestelle. Zöblitz als eine von Slawen verwaltete Zollstation im 12. Jahrhundert

Karlheinz Hengst — 2023-06-27

From the 8th/9th century onwards Slavic people crossed the mountains between their settlements in the regions of Plisni and Rochelinzi in the North and Bohemia in the South. The routes taken were documented in the Middle Ages, one of them, for example, being the semita antiqua Boemorum. In this article one old route is described in connection with an early customs post in the (nowadays) small town of Zöblitz in Saxony near the border with Bohemia. By reference to 1323 Zcobelin the following new conclusion is proposed and discussed: By order of a German sovereign a Slavic (Old Sorbian) person called Sobela (their full name may have been Sobesłav) may have been installed as the first customs officer on this old route used mainly by Slavic travellers. Even today there is a group of Old Sorbian names for little short runs around Zöblitz. These names are analysed and can only be given by the first Old Sorbian families with duty-orders in the middle of the 12th century, that is, in the period prior to German settlement.

Der Gebrauch von Personennamen bei neuentstandenen Toponymen in Oberösterreich

Karl Hohensinner — 2023-06-27

The older basic words -kolonie and -lager are rarely formed with personal names. They are completely absent in the 20th century. The basic word most frequently found and currently most stable is -siedlung. The first part of the name is often the name of a farm or family and rarely a first name of the owners of land converted to building land. Designations according to land buyers are verifiable. Some of them are to be regarded as provisional names. They are used in the phase of basic development and the erection of shell structures. The deliberate use of names that are intended to recall a person is very rare. Here there is a striking difference to street names, where naming in memory of someone is much more common. This may be due to the fact that new development areas often have an amorphous structure as a reference object. They can grow and merge into each other or merge with old centres of settlement. Thus, there is no longer any autonomy. Street names are often introduced in new development areas, making the settlement name redundant as a postal address. Occasionally, names added to -siedlung remain popular beyond administration and cartography. An example of this is the Guttenbrunn-Siedlung. Although this is named after a writer whose work is problematic from a contemporary historical point of view, the name is able to live on in the vernacular (and thus also in the media), apart from official usage. In the 21st century, there is a major trend towards new basic words for place names, such as -hang, -blick and -city. These are not combined with personal names, most likely because it is hoped that such namings will increase the value of property. The most common determinant is Sonne (sun), while the most common newly coined place name in Upper Austria is Sonnenhang.

Problematische (und vermeintlich problematische) Deutungen slawischer Ortsnamen in Osttirol: Etyma mit dem Suffix -ica

Emanuel Klotz — 2023-06-27

This article discusses a number of place names of Slavic origin in East Tyrol containing the suffix -ica. Many of the previous etyma for these names have been proposed without any morphological analysis, which gives them the appearance of being ad hoc reconstructions. By summarizing the different functions of the suffix -ica, the author seeks to validate the etymologies in question and to provide alternative explanations where necessary. It turns out that in the Slavic substrate in Eastern Tyrol, the suffix -ica could form diminutives from o-stem nouns. Otherwise, this is an exclusive feature of a-stem nouns.

„… ab morgen nennen wir uns Ultras …“ Die Benennungen von Ultrafangruppen in deutschen Fußballligen

Tim Köring — 2023-06-27

This article deals with the as yet unexplored class of fan group names and shows that they form a separate subclass of ergonyms. Fan group names from the so-called ultra scene are characterized by unique formation patterns, naming motifs and naming fashions, which can be observed from their distribution and development. For this purpose, we analysed 305 names of fan groups active in Germany in the period from 2016 to 2021.
The analytic strategies included analysing the individual fan group names themselves, information about these names presented in fan magazines, on internet sites, interviews in fan media, and individual statements from fan groups that were requested for this study.
The results indicate that fan group names are typically formed from the combination of certain components: nickname, place name, founding year, and fan cult name. Most of the fan group names consist of two to four of these components. Similarities to and differences from the formation patterns of company names and club names were discussed.
Additionally, eleven naming motifs were highlighted, of which the motifs fan culture, origin and community were most prominent. The motifs club, masculinity, military, youth, anarchy, violence, passion and (sub)culture were also found.
An analysis of the explanations given for the names showed clearly that a person’s own fan group name is generally extremely important and that the process of naming is complex. These names thus have an identity-forming effect for the fan groups and often refer to fan culture and practice.

Interonymität. Wilhelm Raabes Erzählung Gutmanns Reisen

Volker Kohlheim — 2023-06-27

In 1860, the young novelist Wilhelm Raabe travelled to Coburg to attend the first meeting of the Deutscher Nationalverein (German National Assembly), whose aim was the unification by peaceful means of the countless German states and principalities. Thirty years later he re-worked his memories into the novel Gutmanns Reisen (Gutmann’s Travels). Instead of narrating his experiences directly, he chooses a very indirect form of narration, in which intertextuality – and especially interonymity – plays a dominant role. The novel displays three levels of interonymic reference: The reference to a didactic 18th-century travel book featuring the Gutmann family, the reference to Goethe’s idyllic epos Hermann and Dorothea, and the reference to names from novels written by the German poet Jean Paul and to places where he lived. All these interonymic devices serve to distance Raabe’s novel from the actual events he experienced, and they embroil the reader in an interonymic game in which the artificiality of literature becomes obvious.

Antike Fernverkehrsachsen in Luxemburg. Rekonstruktionsmöglichkeiten anhand der Etymologie und Arealität von Mikrotoponymen

Sam Mersch — 2023-06-27

This article seeks to extend and enhance knowledge about road networks in late antiquity (and later) within the borders of the modern Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Using microtoponyms and onomastic cartography, the article seeks to reconstruct the actual course of ancient Roman road networks. The interlinking nodes of these networks, that is, the cities passed through along the way, have been known for some time; less well-documented, however, are the actual routes themselves. By focusing on etymology and name typology, a network of roads can be reconstructed from onomastic data that was present at least in late antique Luxembourg, with possible Gaulish origins. as According to the toponomastic evidence, this network was further maintained or even enhanced during post-Gallo-Roman settlement.

Deutsche Ansiedler bezeichnende Siedlungsnamen im Ungarn des Mittelalters

Anita Rácz — 2023-06-27

We have no written Hungarian sources from the time preceding the conquest of Hungary. Written Latin culture in Hungary emerged with the establishment of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Carpathian Basin in 1000 (with the coronation of St. Stephen) and the conversion of its inhabitants to Christianity. The early Latin (less frequently Greek) written sources created at this time (charters, chronicles, etc.) contain Hungarian words and expressions only sporadically; these were usually proper names designating places. Due to their early appearance and low number, however, they have proven to be truly valuable in historical linguistics studies. Historical studies also rely greatly on the conclusions drawn from these sources when exploring the early history of Hungarians. Such studies attempt to describe the ethnic and population history of the contemporary Carpathian Basin by taking account of the results of historical linguistics concerning the semantic and etymological features of names and their origin. In this respect, the settlement names rooted in ethnonyms play a key role, as they also shed light on relations between Hungarians and other peoples. In this paper, I examine those settlement names that may refer to settlers designated by the ethnonym német in medieval Hungarian.

Wein(produkt)namen im pannonischen Raum

Anikó Szilágyi-Kósa — 2023-06-27

Names of goods or products are “used names” par excellence. This article is dedicated to wine commodity names in the Pannonian region, in eastern Austria (in Burgenland and Styria) as well as in western Hungary. In oenology, various types of names are significant. This includes geographical names (place names) – e. g. proper names of wine-growing areas and vineyards – as well as company names of wine-growing enterprises , which may become very well known. In our study we look at names of individual wines: e. g. Optimiszt, Góré. Wine (commodity) names are proper names that are invented anew from time to time, usually in each vintage year, adapted to the current characteristics of the product. Some of them are used productively, year on year, and thus become a “brand name”. In the two neighbouring regions in the Pannonian area, the wine names reflect the meeting of two neighbouring languages and naming conventions. Hungarian names and words appear on Austrian wine labels and vice versa: Esterházy (AT), Puttkammer, Eszterbauer (HU), Puszta libre, Piroska (AT), Schmutzig, Fuxli (HU). The playful variation of primary proper names (family and first names, in some instances place names) is striking, while dialects, the relevant technical vocabulary as well as language games also often contribute to the invention of a name. In the case of wine names, the interplay of language and image (graphic or photo on the label) is particularly effective.

Die deutsche Besiedlung des Oberwallis – Das Zeugnis der Ortsnamen

Iwar Werlen — 2023-06-27

The German colonization of the Upper Valais, part of a bilingual canton (French-German), has been a subject of lively debate over the last two centuries. Previous explanations of this colonization are briefly discussed and dialectological studies of the Upper Valais are presented and analysed. No studies exist, however, on the matter of the place names of the six districts in the Upper Valais. It seems that most of the place names in the valley of the Rhone (such as Leuk, Raron, Visp, Brig, Mörel and Münster) are Gallo-Roman ones while the Alemannic ones are found in areas higher up (e. g. Zeneggen, Bürchen or Unterbäch). The conclusion is clear, then: the German colonisers (if they came from the North of Switzerland) settled in the higher places while the traditional population of the Gallo-Roman places in the valley was Germanized later on.