Early 17th century bynames of bridegrooms, from a wedding register from Lankeliškiai parish, Lithuania.

by Rebecca Lucas (ffride wlffsdotter)

© 2013; all rights reserved
last updated 31st July 2013

Introduction

The following names come from: Vitalija Maciejauskienė. 2008. "Dėl asmenvardžių su priesaga -(i)ūnas paplitimo XVII amžiuje" Archivum Lithuanicum 10; 137 – 156.

Maciejauskienė (2008) looked at masculine bynames from a 17th century wedding register, written in Latin, from Lankeliškiai parish church, Vilkaviškis District, Marijampolė County, in south-western Lithuania. The church was founded in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, today in a Lithuanian district which borders Poland and Kaliningrad. The records date from 1612 to 1692, and due to the paucity of information available about Lithuanian names in English, I have included the bynames dated between 1612 and 1650.

The bynames do not all belong to residents of Lankeliškiai parish, but also include names from nearby parishes, although they all appear to be from the same district. The exceptions were two bridegrooms – one from Kaunas, the other from Valkininkai, although Maciejauskienė does not say which years these two men were recorded. It is also suspected that the register is incomplete, as there are gaps of many years where apparently nobody was married. The structure of these masculine names was usually in two parts, with a Christian personal name and a byname. The personal name was written in Latin, but the bynames (including those below) were written out in Lithuanian form. So, for instance, two individuals in 1630 were recorded as “Petrum Bludʒiunas” and “Stephanum Dauƶiunas.”
As in the two examples above, the names have not been normalised; Maciejauskienė (2009; 165-5) gives the following modern Lithuanian letters, and 17th century forms that occur in the Lankeliškiai parish register:

Of the 12,000 names in the register, only 2,800 masculine names, belonging to grooms were studied. Maciejauskienė focuses on the -(i)ūnas and -(i)onis byname endings, which she considers to be patronymics, with Lithuanian suffixes, even if the personal names they are derived from are not known. Of the 422 bynames in the article, only 170 names were dated between 1612 and 1650:

Bibliography

• Vitalija Maciejauskienė. 2008. "Dėl asmenvardžių su priesaga -(i)ūnas paplitimo XVII amžiuje" (On the Distribution of Personal Names with the Suffix -(i)ūnas in the Seventeenth Century) Archivum Lithuanicum 10; 137 – 156.
  Available to download as a PDF from: Lietuvių kalbos institutas/The Lithuanian Language Institute
  
• Vitalija Maciejauskienė. 2009. "Oikonimai Lankeliškių parapijos XVII amžiaus bažnytinėje knygoje" (Place names in the 17th century church-book of Lankeliškiai Parish) Archivum Lithuanicum 11: 159-188.
  Available to download as a PDF from: Lietuvių kalbos institutas/The Lithuanian Language Institute