Mystery Monday: Wrana

Every Monday we will post an entry that hasn’t yet been published with a view towards harnessing the collective onomastic power of the internet. If you have any thoughts about the name’s origin, other variants it might be related to, other examples of its use, etc., please share them in the comments! If you wish to browse other Mystery Monday names, there is an index.

Today’s names is a 14th C Czech masculine name:

As with many names from this particular source (and from this period more generally), this specific instance is recorded in Latin, which may disguise the underlying Czech form to some degree. (“Wr-” is not a common combination in Latin, so it’s definitely representing something foreign!) No obvious candidates come up in our searching, so we’re hoping that someone out there has a guess as to what name this might be representing! If you have any thoughts, please share them in the comments!

Solution Saturday: Dywa

Every Saturday, we will revisit one of our Mystery Monday names that we have solved. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed their knowledge and expertise, whether commenting here or on twitter or via email. You’ve all helped solve a mystery!

Today’s name is one that we’d originally identified as feminine, but turns out to be masculine! The name is Dywa, and our thanks to Brian M. Scott who connected the dots from Dywa to Tiva to Protiva, a name which we also had an entry for, under the less-Latin/more-Czech spelling Protywa.

So there we have a part-solution, at least — we can combine the entries for Dywa and Protywa. In the comments on the post linked above, a suggestion is given for the origin of Protiva, which we will file away and follow up on and hopefully in the future an entry for Protiva will debut on the Dictionary.

Mystery Monday: Raczko

Every Monday we will post an entry that hasn’t yet been published with a view towards harnessing the collective onomastic power of the internet. If you have any thoughts about the name’s origin, other variants it might be related to, other examples of its use, etc., please share them in the comments! If you wish to browse other Mystery Monday names, there is an index.

Today’s name is a masculine diminutive found in the Czech Republic:

But what is it a diminutive of? One possibility is Radoslav, a moderately popular name throughout Eastern Europe. But perhaps something else that we haven’t thought of — do you have a suggestion? Please share in the comments!

Mystery Monday: Ztrzezna

Every Monday we will post an entry that hasn’t yet been published with a view towards harnessing the collective onomastic power of the internet. If you have any thoughts about the name’s origin, other variants it might be related to, other examples of its use, etc., please share them in the comments! If you wish to browse other Mystery Monday names, there is an index.

Today’s name is a feminine name found in the Czech Republic. We’ve got loads of questions about it before we even get to the question of origin. First: Are all three of these spellings variants of the same name, or do we have more than one name here? Second: Are any of these diminutives? If so, are they diminutives of each other, or of some fourth name that we haven’t yet found a record of?

(We won’t even go into the question of “how do you pronounce it?”!)

When it comes to the question of origin, here we actually do have some information. There is a (modern) Czech name Střezislava, the name of the wife of an important 10th C Bohemian nobleman who founded the Slavník dynasty and the mother of Saint Adalbert of Prague. It’s quite likely that the prototheme of her name is represented in this mystery name — modern ř was often written rz in medieval Latin renderings of Czech names. This is what leads us to think that the three forms above may be diminutives of something else, something like Střezislava.

But we’d love to have a firm basis for this speculation. If you have any evidence or information to share that would confirm or deny, please let us know in the comments!

Mystery Monday: Tlukza

Every Monday we will post an entry that hasn’t yet been published with a view towards harnessing the collective onomastic power of the internet. If you have any thoughts about the name’s origin, other variants it might be related to, other examples of its use, etc., please share them in the comments! If you wish to browse other Mystery Monday names, there is an index.

Today’s name is (a) definitely Czech, (b) probably a diminutive (given the suffix), and (c) likely masculine (given context; but not necessarily given grammar).

It may also, possibly, be a place name (sometimes it’s hard to tell!). We’d love to know what the root name is here — do you have any suggestions? Other examples of it? Proof that it’s actually a place name? Please share in the comments!

Mystery Monday: Mieszko / Mikso

Every Monday we will post an entry that hasn’t yet been published with a view towards harnessing the collective onomastic power of the internet. If you have any thoughts about the name’s origin, other variants it might be related to, other examples of its use, etc., please share them in the comments! If you wish to browse other Mystery Monday names, there is an index.

Today we’ve got two entries which we’re pretty sure are ultimately one entry. It’s a masculine name with examples found in Poland and the Czech Republic, in Latin and in Middle High German.

One reason that these haven’t yet been combined into a single entry is because it’s not clear what the canonical name form should be, if we did. And the reason why it’s not clear what the CNF would be is because this is pretty clearly a diminutive — so it shouldn’t be in an entry of its own, but instead these citations should all be folded into the entry for the full form of the name. The question is: What is that form? What is this name a nickname of? Michael? Nicholas? Something else? This mystery should be pretty straightforward to solve, and we’d love your assistance! Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Mystery Monday: Kolda

Every Monday we will post an entry that hasn’t yet been published with a view towards harnessing the collective onomastic power of the internet. If you have any thoughts about the name’s origin, other variants it might be related to, other examples of its use, etc., please share them in the comments! If you wish to browse other Mystery Monday names, there is an index.

Today’s name is a 14th C feminine name found in the Czech Republic. These names are always fun because the open up possible Slavic influences — either at the level of influencing the spelling of Germanic-based names, or in providing names native to the Slavic name stock. We’re not sure which is the case here:

Do you have any thoughts about its origin? Any other examples of the name? Please share in the comments!

Mystery Monday: Mabca

Every Monday we will post an entry that hasn’t yet been published with a view towards harnessing the collective onomastic power of the internet. If you have any thoughts about the name’s origin, other variants it might be related to, other examples of its use, etc., please share them in the comments! If you wish to browse other Mystery Monday names, there is an index.

Today’s name is so mysterious, we’re not even sure what gender it is. Grammatically, it looks to be feminine — it’s recorded in Latin and ends in -a in the nominative, which tips the evidence in favor of a feminine name — but the context provides no clear indication of the gender of the bearer, so we are still listing the gender as “unknown”.

It does appear to be a diminutive, with -ca or -ka being a moderately common feminine diminutive suffix in Slavic contexts, but what the root name might be, we haven’t a clue. Do you? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Mystery Monday: Dywa

Every Monday we will post an entry that hasn’t yet been published with a view towards harnessing the collective onomastic power of the internet. If you have any thoughts about the name’s origin, other variants it might be related to, other examples of its use, etc., please share them in the comments! If you wish to browse other Mystery Monday names, there is an index.

The Czech Republic is such a fount of beautiful and unusual feminine names, and today’s Mystery is one of them. We have a single example of it, from the middle of the 14th century. Have you ever seen any examples of it? Do you have any thoughts concerning its origin? Please share in the comments!

Mystery Monday: Thamico

Every Monday we will post an entry that hasn’t yet been published with a view towards harnessing the collective onomastic power of the internet. If you have any thoughts about the name’s origin, other variants it might be related to, other examples of its use, etc., please share them in the comments! If you wish to browse other Mystery Monday names, there is an index.

Today’s mystery name is one where we have a hunch as to its solution, but we would love confirming data one way or another. The name is recorded in Moravia in the 14th C, and if we take a surface reading of the name, it is Thami- + the diminutive suffix -co; and the most likely root of Thami- is Thomas, making Thamico a simple diminutive of Thomas, and no mystery at all. Czech experts, this one’s for you! Are we on the right track?