Custom Names As a Response of Distant Past
Posted on Apr 6, 2011 04:24:09 AM
We go on with our submitting of a research regarding the sources of European names globally used today. This part is devoted to names that arrived from distant past.
• Old Mainland Germanic: Several widely familiar forenames, that are William, Robert, Richard, Roger, Geoffrey, Guy, Hugh, and Matilda – every of those have settled ties in German, Dutch, French, and other languages – originated in Germanic pre-era. It is possible to utilize Polish translation to find more. Names approached English by a circuitous route. The official language of the court of the Merovingian and Carolingian Franks (5th – 9th centuries) was Latin, however their vernacular language was a Germanic dialect, and their given names were predominantly of Germanic etymology. These Frankish given names became set-up in ancient France and in due time were accepted by the Vikings who settled in Normandy in the 9th century. After the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066, these personal names were brought to England, where they largely replaced traditional Anglo-Saxon personal names such as Ethelred and Athelthryth. A very insignificant Anglo-Saxon given names survived, for example Edward, that was originated by King Edward the Confessor (c. 1002–1066; ruled 1042–1066), the ancestor of an Anglo-Saxon man and a Norman woman, who was revered by British and Vikings alike. A quite different situation is that of Alfred, an British patronymic that fell out from use under the Vikings, but was revived in the 19th century in commemoration of the famous 9th-century Royal of Wessex.
• Ancient Norse: Old Norse is, of course, a Germanic language, but its naming tradition is quite different from that of mainland Germanic, and many traditional Norse forenames are currently used in Scandinavia today, for example Olaf, Harald, Hakon. There has been much brought from German (e.g., Helga, Ingeborg). Some Nordic names such as Ingrid have been adopted much more broadly. Many looked for Polish translation services into Slavic. In the latter case, the film star Ingrid Bergman (1915–1982) was a strong attraction.
• Old Slavic linguas: Names that are Wojciech (Vojteˇch), BogusLaw (Bohuslav), and StanisLaw (Stanislav) are unlikely known in the English-speaking world except among Slavic immigrants, however demonstrate a strong and independent Slavic tradition, with traces in different Slavic linguas. Many such names are pre-Bible, whereas others have been accepted by recognition as a saint’s name. Except where a saint has been involved, these forenames are not much used in Russia, because there the Orthodox Church has long insisted on using names related to Christian patrons, such as Fyodor (Theodore) and Dmitri. These are predominately of Greek etymology. Among the Western Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks) and Southern Slavs (Serbs, Croatians, Slovenians, Bulgarians, etc.), every linguistic community of Slavic natives has its own characteristic list of custom personal names, most of which are of Slavic origin.