ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2535 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2535 ************************************ 24 May 2002 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is an appropriate name for a 13th or 14th century man from the Low Countries, specifically from Limburg; and you asked us to suggest appropriate surnames. You also asked whether a man from this region would have been Flemish or Germanic. Here is what we have found. We aren't sure what you intended by "Germanic", so we want to offer a little background. There is no language called "Germanic". The word is used by modern scholars to refer to a family of languages that includes English, Dutch and Flemish, German, Swedish, etc. The language and culture of Limburg is Dutch, as it was in the Middle Ages; but the Limburgs dialect of Dutch was significantly influenced by the Low German dialects spoken to the east. We believe that Limburgs was quite a bit different from Flemish. The term "Flemish" is often used today as a synonym for "Belgian" and to refer to the Germanic language spoken in northern Belgium. These uses of "Flemish" are not appropriate for your period. The medieval County of Flanders is only one of several provinces that were incorporated into modern Belgium. Brabant, Antwerp, and other medieval states also were incorporated into Belgium, and people from these other states are not Flemish. In period, only those unfamiliar with the Low Countries would have called people "Flemish" who were not from Flanders itself; doing so is rather like calling Welsh people "English". The Flemish language, in our period, simply meant the dialect of Dutch spoken in Flanders. Today it means the dialect spoken in Belgium. If you particularly want a Flemish persona, then you should move it to Flanders, which is roughly the northwest quarter of modern Belgium, including the cities of Ghent, Bruges, Kortrijk, and Ostend [1]. You found in our library, in a list of early 14th century Dutch names [2]. This is a very unusual spelling of , which appears to have been a rare name in medieval Dutch. We're not sure how was pronounced in your period; our best guess is \YU"-st@s\, where \@\ stands for the sound of the in and \U"\ represents the sound of the German u-umlaut. More precisely, \U"\ is the vowel you get by pronouncing the in with your lips positioned as if you were saying as in . If represents a variant pronunciation of that name, then it might have been \YU"-stahs\. The name is appropriate for your culture, but we recommend that you not try to use the rare spelling exclusively: Although spelling wasn't absolutely standardized, many names had accepted, standard spellings that were used most of the time. In an earlier letter to us, you also asked about the names , , and . The first two are variant spellings of the same name. Both and were very common names in medieval Dutch [3]. was pronounced between \HAYN-rik\ and \HAYN-reek\, with the \ee\ short in duration. was pronounced \PEE-t@r\, just like the modern English . Until the end of our period, the Dutch used literally descriptive surnames rather than inherited family names like ours. For example, Justus the son of Pieter Lambertssoen was called , not . This example illustrates one of the most common types of surname in medieval Dutch, a patronymic byname that identifies a man as his father's son. Other common types were: * Locative bynames, which identified a man by the place where he lived, like "Klaes [who lives] at the Ditch" or "Marten of Oesterwijck". Since you want your persona to be from Limburg, you might consider the byname . * Occupational bynames, based on a man's profession, like "Jan Smith" * Descriptive bynames, based on physical appearance, behavior, etc., like "Willem the bastard" or "Tielman the White" You can read more about the general types of surname used in medieval cultures in this article: A Brief Introduction to Medieval Bynames http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/arval/bynames/ It is illustrated with English examples, but the general ideas are equally applicable to medieval Dutch. The examples of Dutch bynames, above, are taken from the article: 15th Century Dutch Names http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/dutch15.html This data is later than your period and from a region of the Low Countries that spoke a different dialect than the one in Limburg, but we believe that the same bynames would have been available in your time and place, though perhaps in different spellings. If you choose two or three bynames from these lists, we can try to give you appropriate spellings and pronunciations. 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 Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Walraven van Nijmegen, Talan Gwynek, and Adelaide de Beaumont. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 24 May 2002 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] The names of these cities are listed here as they appear in an atlas we checked; we believe these are the standard English forms. In Belgium, most places are commonly known by two names: French and Dutch. in the English equivalent of French or Dutch . in French is in Dutch. Dutch is French . English is Dutch and French . [2] Aryanhwy merch Catmael, "Dutch Names 1358-1361" (WWW: privately published, 2000). http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/earlydutch14.html [3] Beele, Wilfried, _Studie van de Ieperse Persoonsnamen uit de Stads- en Baljuwsrekeningen 1250-1400_ (Handzame, 1975), grafiek 1.