ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3083 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3083 ************************************ 31 Jan 2006 From: Femke de Roas Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked us if would be an appropriate given name for a German woman living in Northern Germany around 1100. You have also asked us to suggest a byname related to a town in that region that was involved in trade. Unfortunately, our sources for northern Germany in your period are very skimpy. We did find an instance of at Lie\ge, Belgium, in 1025, and a bit further west in Flanders we found 1034-1058 and 1042-1063. [1, 2] (The backward slash represents a grave accent mark on the preceding vowel.) Of all the areas for which we have fairly good sources in or near your period, these are by far the closest to northern Germany both geographically and linguistically. Our examples from other places don't really say anything about northern German usage; at most they show that the name was quite widely distributed. (For instance, the name seems to have been moderately common around Basel, Switzerland, in the 13th century and is found there as early as the mid-12th century. [3]) All in all it seems likely that the name was in at least occasional use in northern Germany in your period; likely spellings include and . (In both the Low Countries and northern Germany the hard \g\ sound was often written when it occurred before the letters , , and .) Bynames of any kind are still quite rare in Germany around 1100, but there are some examples of locative bynames at this time. We can suggest a locative based on one of several cities in this area. The town of Schleswig, on the Danish border, was known in this period as or . Hamburg appears in the Latin form and in Middle Low German as [4]. We aren't certain whether the place-name was , , or both in your period: much of the early evidence points towards the shorter form. [5] Fortunately, it probably doesn't matter, because it is likely that in either case would have been an appropriate locative byname for someone from Bremen. [8] To sum up, in your period , , and appear to be possible names for a woman from Schleswig, Hamburg, or Bremen, respectively. The use of a byname is unusual at that early date but not unheard of: we found a few 11th century examples from Westphalia in northern Germany, albeit all masculine. [11] Finally, is probably an acceptable alternative to . We hope that this letter has been useful to you and that you won't hesitate to write us again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. Research and commentary on this letter was provided by Kolozsvari Arpadne Julia, Walraven van Nijmegen, Talan Gwynek, FLorens van Flardingh, Eleyne de Comnocke, and Arval Benicoeur. For the Academy, Femke de Roas ________________________________________________________________________ REFERENCES [1] Morlet, Marie-Therese, _Les Noms de Personne sur le Territoire de l'Ancienne Gaule du VIe au XIIe Siecle_, three volumes (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1972), I:111a,b. [2] Nieuwenhuijsen, Kees, "Names in the Low Lands before 1150" (WWW: privately published). http://www.keesn.nl/names/ [3] Socin, Adolf, _Mittelhochdeutsches Namenbuch. Nach oberrheinischen Quellen des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts_ (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1903; Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1966) p. 54. [4] Magistri Adam Bremensis Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, B. Schmeidler (ed.), MGH SRG III, XLII, Hannover, 1917. http://hbar.phys.msu.su/gorm/chrons/bremen.htm [5] Adam of Bremen uses the Latin adjective 'of Bremen' and gives the Latinized name of the city as (e.g., Bk. 1, Ch. 29 and Bk. 2, Ch. 31). In most modern European language the name is , but in Italian, Polish, and Spanish it's , and several other languages preserve forms without the final [6]. Finally, the name appears in the Latin prepositional phrase 1269, where can only be the ablative case of a plural place-name (classical) or (medieval) [7]. [6] "List of European Cities With Alternative Names." http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-european-cities-with-alternative-names [7] Brechenmacher, Josef Karlmann, _Etymologisches Woerterbuch der deutschen Familiennamen_ (Limburg a. d. Lahn, C. A. Starke-Verlag, 1957-1960). s.n. . [8] The name appears to be from one of the derivatives of the reconstructed Germanic root *brem- 'a point, an edge', which include words meaning 'briar, thornbush', 'broom plant', and 'edge, border'; any of these could reasonably be the basis for a place-name [9]. Any such derivative would have had a Middle Low German dative plural ending in <-en>. Many extant place-names are derived from old dative case forms, because they were so often used after locative prepositions like 'of, from' that required the dative case. Thus, if the place-name was originally plural, perhaps meaning something like 'brambles' or 'broom plants' (cf. Middle Low German 'broom plant' [10]), is the expected form. There is also a large class of nouns that form the dative singular with <-en> and would therefore make even if the place-name by itself was actually . Given the widespread modern , then, it seems very likely that is correct for your period, though we can't be sure whether here is dative singular or dative plural. [9] Watkins, Calvert, The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European roots, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), s.r. *bhrem-(2). [10] De Vries, Jan, _Altnordisches Etymologisches Wo"rterbuch_, 2nd edn. (Boston: Brill, 2000), s.n. . [11] Socin, Adolf. Mittelhochdeutsches Namenbuch nach Oberrheinischen Quellen des Zwo"lften und Dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1966), pp. 250-51: , , , , , , , , ( is 'and'), all but the first two from the Freckenhorster Heberolle. Socin dates the Freckenhorste Heberolle to the 10th century, but other sources give dates ranging from ca. 1000 to ca. 1100: ca. 1000: users.bart.nl/~delsman/delsman/oorspron.html 1050: http://www.st-hubertus-harsewinkel.de/hubertus2005/html/ueberuns/hubertus/geschichte/historie_hsw.html 11th century: www.bezreg-muenster.nrw.de/region/Regionen_Kreise_Staedte_Gemeinden/_Kurzinformation_/Stadt_Warendorf/ 1090: www.ostbevern-online.de/chronik/ortsname.htm ca. 1100: www.saerbeck.de/fakten-zahlen/geschichte/geschichte.htm It seems safe to date the document generally to the 11th century.