One thing we haven’t explored much here — either on the blog or on the “about the Dictionary” page — is why the DMNES? What causes someone to sit down and think, “You know what the world needs? An encyclopedic dictionary of medieval personal names”?
This is something that I and my staff thought about quite a bit at the beginning of the year when the basic foundation for the Dictionary was laid. We put together a 6 page outline of why we thought such a project was a good one, whom we thought could benefit from it, and what we ultimately envisioned for it. This document has continued to grow and develop over the last year, and serves as a repository for the technical specifications that we require for the finished product, the technical developments that have already been created to meet these specifications, as well as for arguments and data that we can crib from for grant proposals.
In a series of posts, we’re going to present some of this material here in an informal context, so as to have a public-facing argument for the project. This post will be updated with links to posts in the series as they are posted.
Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources 
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