ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2816 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2816 ************************************ 28 Mar 2004 From: Aryanhwy merch Catmael Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel! You wanted to know when and where the feminine name was used in Europe before 1600. Here is the information we have found. Before we start, we'd like to apologize for the amount of time it has taken to complete this report. We hope that this information is still useful to you. The name that you found is better transliterated as , where is the Greek letter and is the Greek letter . [1,2] This is a fine choice for a Greek woman from the first few centuries A.D., but we wouldn't recommend it for any other time or place. When the name was in use, it would have been pronounced \dhah-MYAH-nee\, where \dh\ is the voiced \th\ sound in , and \Y\ is pronounced as in . [3] The masculine name appears in many cultures; we find it as in Venice in the 14th century and Florence in 1427, and as in England in 1205. [5,6,7] In other spellings it shows up in French, Spanish, Greek, Polish, Hungarian, and Russian. [8] Saint Damiano was widely revered in Italy. [10] We find a few reference to a Coptic saint Damiana; she is listed in some sources as the patron saint of surgeons. [9] We do not believe that one instance of this name used by a saint is good evidence for the name used by the general populace, especially since we have no evidence that this Coptic saint was known to Italian people. However, we have found one instance of the name in Arezzo in 1427. [11] We have also found in Spain in 1560. [4] Based on this, is a rare name that would be appropriate for the 15th century in Italy. For information on surname structures from Arezzo during this time, we recommend the following article: "Names from Arezzo, Italy, 1386-1528" http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/arezzo.html The men in this article were financial officials recorded in an official document, and the name patterns that they exhibit are rather complex; we would expect that in informal circumstances only one, or maybe two, bynames would be used. Thus, picking a family name and a patronymic, and using one or the other as you desire, would be a good choice, e.g. or . We hope that this letter has been useful to you and that you won't hesitate to contact us again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. Research and commentary on this letter was provided by Maridonna Benvenuti, Arval Benicoeur, Talan Gwynek, Mari neyn Brian, and Juliana de Luna. For the Academy, -Aryanhwy merch Catmael, 28Mar2004 -- References: [1] Bardas Xiphias, "Common Names of the Aristocracy in the Roman Empire During the 6th and 7th Centuries" (WWW: SCA, Inc., 1997). http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/byzantine/early_byz_names.htm l [2] Fraser, P.M., and E. Matthews, "The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names" (WWW: Oxford University, 1998) http://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/ [3] In Kirschenbaum ASCII IPA this is [Da'mjani]. [12] [4] Elsbeth Anne Roth, "16th Century Spanish Names" (WWW: Self- published 2002). http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~kvs/heraldry/spanish16/ [5] Arval Benicoeur and Talan Gwynek, "Fourteenth Century Venetian Personal Names" (WWW: Academy of Saint Gabriel, 1999). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/arval/venice14/ [6] Ferrante laVolpe, _Men's names from Florence, 1427_ (WWW: Self- published, 1996; Academy of Saint Gabriel, 1999). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/ferrante/catasto/ [7] Withycombe, E.G., _The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names_, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). s.n. Damian [8] Academy of S. Gabriel Report #1471 footnote [2] http://www.s-gabriel.org/1471 [9] Balden, Mari Lynn, "DA-DE Names" (WWW: Self-published, 1997) http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hills/1739/da-de_names.html [10] De Felice, Emidio, _Dizionario dei nomi italiani_ (Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milan, 1992). s.n. Damiano [11] Herlihy, David and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Census and property survey of Florentine domains and the city of Verona in the fifteenth century ltaly [machine- readable data file]. Cambridge, Mass.: David Herlihy, Harvard University, Department of History and Paris, France: Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes [producers], 1977. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin, Data and Program Library Service [distributor], 1988 and 1996. http://dpls.dacc.wisc.edu/Catasto/index.html;(12 September 1999) [12] Blaheta, Don, "Representation of IPA with ASCII" (WWW: Blahedo.org) http://www.blahedo.org/ascii-ipa.html