ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2507 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2507 ************************************ 14 May 2002 From: Marianne Perdomo Machin Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is an appropriate name for a Hungarian woman living in the 16th century. In particular you were interested in the appropriateness of a byname like , meaning 'green eyes'. (Here stands for o-umlaut.) is an excellent given name for a Hungarian woman of this period. This spelling is documented to the 16th century, but is probably Latinized [1]. That would of course be fine for someone travelling abroad but in Hungarian the standard spelling was [5]. There is a modern Hungarian phrase 'green eyes', but we have not seen it used as a period byname. In fact, we haven't found any bynames describing eye color. The only bynames that we have found containing either of these words are 'sharp-eyed', from 1397, 1498, and 1579, and 'green, pallid of skin', from 1452 and 1506 [2]. Physically descriptive bynames account for only a minority of the examples we've seen in period Hungarian names. Most of the bynames we've seen are patronymic (identifying a person as her father's child), locative (from the place where she lives), or occupational. Examples of these are Dionysius Peter (Dionysius, son of Peter); Cseri Janos (John, from Cser); and Szabo (tailor) [3]. Additionally, most of the physically descriptive bynames refer to overall qualities, like being 'big' or 'small' , or infirmities (e.g. 'blind', 'hunchback', 'club-foot'). Others are uncomplimentary (e.g. 'scrawny', 'pot-bellied', 'wide-hipped', 'big-nosed', 'filthy'). The exceptions refer to skin color ('fair', 'swarthy') or to hair characteristics (e.g. 'fair', 'curly', 'gray-haired') [4]. We think these bynames are equally appropriate for a woman; Hungarian makes no grammatical distinction between masculine and feminine. In short, we can't recommend the byname as a good recreation of a Hungarian byname. Please let us know if you would like to investigate other possibilities for bynames. We also recommend you consider other kinds of surnames, i.e. one based on your father's given name or the place where you live. We hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Walraven van Nijmegen, Talan Gwynek, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Arval Benicoeur, Julie Stampnitzky, and Ursula Georges. For the Academy, Leonor Martin 14 May 2002 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References: [1] The spelling is dated to 1584 (s.n. & ) and to 1598 (s.n. ). Walraven van Nijmegen, "Hungarian Feminine Names" (WWW: Brian R. Speer, Privately published, 1998) http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1336/magfem.html. [2] Ka/zme/r Miklo/s, "Re/gi Magyar Csala/dnevek Szo/ta/ra: XIV-XVII Sza/zad" (Budapest, 1993), s.n. , [3] Walraven van Nijmegen, "Hungarian Names 101" (WWW: Brian R. Speer, Privately published, 1998) http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1336/magyarnames101.html. [4] Ka/zme/r, passim. A member of the Academy is in the middle of a survey of medieval Hungarian bynames in this source. [5] The letters and represent different sounds in Hungarian and in the examples we have seen the spelling is associated with Latinized bynames. The C- is used in Latin texts because of the associated standard Latin spellings.