ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1456 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1456 ************************************ From: "S Friedemann" 22 Feb 1999 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You wanted to know if the German city name was used as a given name before 1450. You also asked if its origins were similar to that of the name . Here is the information we have found. The town of was originally a Roman fort; in the 14th century it became a free imperial city. [1] The spelling is modern; we were unable to find any medieval spellings of this name. We did not find any evidence that was used as a given name in period. This is not surprising: Place names were very rarely re-used as given names in our period. You could use it as a surname, of course; a name like "Johannes of Aalen" would be entirely appropriate for your period. We have no evidence of any connection between and . is a modern English spelling of , a name of Breton origin, and as far as we can tell, it was never adopted into German as a given name. We hope that this letter has been useful to you, and that you will not hesitate to write again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. Research and commentary on this letter was provided by Talan Gwynek and Arval Benicoeur. For the Academy, --Aryanhwy merch Catmael Caermyrdin February 22, 1999 --------------------------------------- References: [1] Getty Information Institute Thesaurus of Geographic Names http://www.gii.getty.edu/tgn_browser/ accessed 14Dec98