Recent publications

DMNES staff members have some cool new publications either recently published or forthcoming, so we thought we’d do a quick round-up of them:

• Mariann Slíz. 2015. “Byzantine Influence on the Name-giving Practises of the Hungarian Árpád Dynasty”, in Egedi-Kovács Emese szerk., Byzance et l’Occident II. Tradition, transmission, traduction. Collège Eötvös József ELTE, Budapest. 171–181.
• Mariann Slíz. 2015. “Occupational names in the Hungarian family name system”, in Oliviu Felecan ed., Name and Naming, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Onomastics “Name and Naming”. Conventional / Unconventional in Onomastics. Baia Mare, September 1–3, 2015. Editura Mega – Editura Argonaut, Cluj-Napoca. 328–338.
• Mariann Slíz. 2016. Personal Names in Medieval Hungary, Beiträge zur Lexikographie und Namenforschung 9 (Baar-Verlag).
• Mariann Slíz. 2016. “Personal Names Originating from Literature or Motion Picture in the Hungarian Name Stock – A Historical Survey”, in Carole Hough – Daria Izdebska eds., Names and Their Environment, Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, Glasgow, 15-19 August 2014. 1–5, University of Glasgow, Glasgow. 3: 247–254.
• Sara L. Uckelman & Mariann Slı́z. 2015. “Többnyelvű névtani lexikográfia: a Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources elnevezésű nemzetközi szótári projekt (Cross-linguistic onomastic lexicography: The Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources)”, Névtani Értesı́tő, 37: 203–221.
• Sara L. Uckelman. 2016. “Review of Donna Thornton and Kevin Murray, Bibliography of Publications on Irish Placenames“, Peritia, 27: 306–307.
• Sara L. Uckelman, Sonia Murphy, & Joseph Percer. 2017. “What’s in a name? History and fantasy in Game of Thrones“, in Brian A. Pavlac, ed., The Game of Thrones versus History (Wiley-Blackwell).

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Publication of Edition 2016 no. 3

We’re pleased to announce the publication of edition 2016 no. 3 of the Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources, after a slight delay caused by needing to switch servers as we used all 1.2m inodes on our previous virtual machine. (If you notice any issues with the new website, please let us know.)

The new edition contains 1974 entries with 47392 citations (an average of 24 per entry, but of course this doesn’t reflect the actual distribution, which is closer to Zipf’s Law). This edition contains 55 new masculine names: Alfsy, Barnabas, Conbert, Erasmus, Eyvind, Finnian, Frederius, Frotmund, Giambono, Herrich, Hippolytus, Honest, Honor, Honorat, Humiliosus, Isbrand, Isnard, Lamond, Landbald, Langward, Lauger, Lautard, Leander, Lefchild, Lefsy, Lefward, Leif, Lelio, Lothar, Mirko, Osulf, Peter-Anthony, Procopius, Reinulf, Santiago, Sasso, Saulf, Savaric, Seaborn, Sforza, Siclebert, Siclebald, Tudor, Vigil, Volkward, Walerard, Walrich, Werwald, Willo, Winsy, Wulfbald, Wulfgis, Wulfrich, Wulfsy, and Zawissius; and 26 new feminine names: Amelia, Chloe, Guimar, Hesperia, Hildegilde, Hildelinde, Jocosa, Laria, Lautilde, Leah, Lella, Odine, Ottabona, Proxima, Samanilde, Sassa, Seconda, Sehild, Sica, Siclebalda, Siclehilde, Sicleramna, Sicletrude, Sidonia, Willberna, and Zbincza.

With this edition we have greatly expanded our coverage of Wales, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, adding many new sources and many new names for each of these countries. We have also added our first citations from Romania (an example of Charles) and Slovenia (examples of Berthold, Conrad, Reynard, Rudolf, and William).

Publication of Edition 2016, no. 2

We are pleased to announce the publication of Edition 2016, no. 2, which is now available at http://dmnes.org/.

This edition adds 77 new entries, many of them names found in the Old and New Testaments, researched and finalized as a result of our monthly topic on Protestant names. We have added 5,000 new citations since the previous edition, and in doing so deepened our coverage of Wales, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Italy, with many new sources from each of these places.

This edition marks one year since the publication of our first edition, and we’re very pleased to have come so far in such a short time.

Color names: Blue and Purple

We’re combining blue and purple into one post because of the difficulty there can be in knowing just how to classify one interim term that gave rise to a number of different names: violet!

Violet itself is of Old French origin, and thus its primary use is in places with connections to France. In the 16th C, it was quite popular in Scotland. The root word is Latin viola, itself used as a name. In connection with a research project on the roots of Shakespearean names, the editorial team specifically investigated this name before the publication of the current edition, finding out that it was unexpectedly popular in Hungary, Poland, and Ukraine.

It wasn’t only the Latin word for the flower that was used in names; the Greek compound of ιολη ‘violet’ and ανθος ‘flower’ was used, recognizable in the modern spellings Yolanda and Violante. These tended to be used more in western Europe than the Latinate counterpart mentioned above.

The next two names that fall under this post’s purview also have a connection with flowers. Greek ὑάκινθος was the name of both a flower and a precious gem of blue color, probably sapphire, and gave rise to both masculine and feminine names. Hyacinth was used intermittently in France, Italy, and Portugal; there was also a Polish saint by the name so while we haven’t found any Polish examples yet, this is due more likely to the fact that we have yet to start in on Polish names in any systematic fashion (the current edition has only 107 citations from Poland) than anything else. Hyacinthe was somewhat rarer; we have, to date, a single example from early Italy.

Finally, we have one surprise: Indigo. The word, referring to a blue dye imported from India, only entered the English language in the 16th C, so its occurrence as a given name at the very end of that century, in England, is extremely unusual. It’s also a name well worth considering for modern revival — unusual, but recognizable, and evocative of lovely things.

How about some stats?

Earlier this morning we passed another milestone, reaching 30,000 citations:

It’s been awhile since we did a stats post, so this seemed like as good a time as any to do one.

Entries & citations

Finalized entries: 1482
Unfinalized entries: 2636
Total: 4118

Finalized citations: 30023
Unfinalized citations: 7388
Total: 37411

Avg. no. of citations per entry (finalized): 20.25
Avg. no. of citations per entry (total): 9.08

Feminine names (finalized): 8101
Masculine names (finalized): 21901
Names of uncertain gender (finalized): 5

Languages (finalized citations only)

Latin: 14028.
English: Old English: 5; Middle English: 419; Early Modern English: 10426.
French: Old French: 684; Middle French: 946.
German: Low German: 1552; High German: 477.
Catalan: 217.
Swedish: 202.
Spanish: 159.
Scots: 148.
Hungarian: 28.
Norwegian: 9.

Dates (finalized citations only)

6th C: 4.
7th C: 73.
8th C: 33.
9th C: 844.
10th C: 370.
11th C: 1076.
12th C: 3857.
13th C: 3202.
14th C: 4490.
15th C: 3358.
16th C: 12536.

Taking stock, February edition

I was going to stop doing these monthly recaps with January, because after that you could see first hand what was new and improved. Alas, we haven’t quite made the Jan. 31 goal, so you get one more month’s worth of stats and graphs. We’re up to 16030 individual citations (up from 10288, an increase of nearly 56%!) distributed over 764 entries (up from 639 last month, a 19.5% increase), resulting in an average of 21 citations per name (up from 16 last month, no doubt due to the completion of the extremely popular names John and Joan, both of which have hundreds of citations.)

There are 463 men’s names and 278 women’s, and, excitingly, for the first time in months, our ‘earliest/latest in the alphabet’ names have changed! The alphabetically foremost masculine name is now Achard, of Germanic origin and with French citations, and the alphabetically hindmost name is now Zwentibold, of Slavic origin but influence, in its Latin form, by Germanic elements.

7174 of the citations are from Latin records, that is, around 44.7%, a significant decrease from last month, due no doubt to the large number of 16th C English parish registers that we’ve been working through. Here’s the breakdown for all the languages:

When it comes to citations per country, we’ve now reached the point where we’re constrained by the number of slices we can put into our pie chart (on the free online automatic pie-chart generator we’re using), which means neither Brabant nor Malta show up on the below, despite now having sizeable showings:

Lastly, this month the Dictionary welcomed a new assistant to the editorial team: Dr. Mariann Slíz is a member of the Institute of Hungarian Linguistics and Finno-Ugric Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, specializing in Onomastics, Cultural History, Historical Linguistics, Medieval History, Literature, Magical Realism, History of Hungary, Medieval Hungary, Hungarian linguistics, and Anthropology of Personal Names. We are very grateful to have an expert on Hungarian names joining us, in part because it means we can move Hungarian from the second phase to the first phase! So keep a look out for Hungarian citations and citations from Hungary in upcoming editions of the Dictionary.