ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1763 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1763 ************************************ From: "Brian M. Scott" 25 Jun 1999 Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel! You wrote on behalf of your granddaughter, who would like to use in the SCA, asking if the Academy could provide any support for this as a period German name. You noted that although she doesn't care about the precise spelling, she particularly wants as one name, not two. Finally, you mentioned that you had been told by SCA heralds that in the SCA period no Germans used two given names. The earliest known examples of double given names in German records are from the 13th century. [1] They remained rare throughout the 14th and 15th centuries: one extensive study of Eastphalian records turned up only two dozen examples. [2] In the 16th century they ceased to be a rarity, at least amongst the nobility and town-dwellers, though the single given name was still the more common style. [3] is a French spelling; in German the name is . [4] This form can already be seen in 1348 in the name , whose byname means '(man from) Marburg', so the locative byname is authentic for at least the last 250 years of the SCA period. [5] We found a few scattered German-language instances of in the 10th through 13th centuries and an instance of in 1346. [6, 7] Our sources for the 15th and 16th centuries aren't as good as those for earlier periods, but one standard reference notes that it was only in the 15th century that the name began to come into general use; from this we infer that it was probably quite unremarkable by the 16th century. The form was favored by Roman Catholics; Protestants generally used . [8] The problem with the proposed name is the given name , or, as it is usually spelled, . It was popular a hundred years ago as a contraction of and , but we can find no evidence that it was used as early as 1600. ( is in origin a pet form of .) [9] We did find both in the 14th century and and in the 14th and 15th centuries. [7, 10] Since double given names were in use by then, would be reasonable enough, but the available evidence doesn't support combining them as or adding a third given name to make . (We have no evidence for triple given names in Germany until well after 1600.) I realize that this isn't quite what your granddaughter would have like to hear, but I hope that it answers your questions. If anything isn't clear, please write us again. For the Academy, Talan Gwynek 25 June 1999 ===== References: [1] Socin, Adolf. Mittelhochdeutsches Namenbuch nach Oberrheinischen Quellen des Zwoelften und Dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1966); Chapter IV. [2] Zoder, R. Familiennamen in Ostfalen. 2 vols. (Hildesheim: 1968); pp.46-7. [3] Schwarz, Ernst. Deutsche Namenforschung I: Ruf- und Familiennamen (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1949); p.54. [4] Grand Larousse Encyclope/dique en dix volumes (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1960-1964); s.n. . [5] Brechenmacher, Josef Karlmann. Etymologisches Woerterbuch der Deutschen Familiennamen (Limburg a. d. Lahn: C. A. Starke-Verlag, 1957-60); s.n. . [6] Socin, op. cit., p.92. [7] Talan Gwynek. 'Medieval German Given Names from Silesia' (WWW: SCA, Inc., 1998). http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/bahlow_v.htm [8] Bahlow, Hans. Unsere Vornamen im Wandel der Jahrhunderte. Grundriss der Genealogie, vol. 4 (Limburg a. d. Lahn: C. A. Starke Verlag, 1965); s.n. . [9] Ibid. s.n. . [10] Mulch, Roland. Arnsburger Personennamen: Untersuchungen zum Namenmaterial aus Arnsburger Urkunden vom 13. - 16. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt & Marburg: Hessischen Historischen Kommission Darmstadt and the Historischen Kommission fuer Hessen, 1974); pp.38-40.