ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2848 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2848 ************************************ 26 May 2004 From: Kolosvari Arpadne Julia Greetings from the Academy of St. Gabriel! You asked us whether is an appropriate name for a 13th-14th century German man living in Constantinople. Here is what we have found. Your given name is an excellent choice for your period, though a slight change in spelling is probably needed. Exactly what spelling is appropriate depends on geography. There was no unified German language in the 13th and 14th centuries; there was instead a patchwork of sometimes very different dialects. These can be divided into three main groups: the Low German dialects in the north, the Upper German dialects in the south (roughly Switzerland, southwestern Germany, Bavaria, and Austria), and between them the Middle German dialects. The picture is further complicated by the fact that in your period, many records were kept in Latin instead of the local dialect of German. As a result, we see at least three types of spellings: - German spellings, like ; - basically German spellings that have Latin grammatical endings added, like , sometimes with other minor modifications (like ); and - traditional Latin forms that do not reflect contemporary German usage, like . For each of the major dialect groups, we'll present a sample of written forms, and do what we can to indicate what forms best represent the spoken language. The following names are from the Low German dialect area in the north [1]. The spellings marked with an asterisk (*) appear in the original source with a grammatical ending, such as a possessive, which we have replaced with the standard form used for the subject of a sentence. A date like "1355x1383" means that the citation is from some unknown date between 1355 and 1383. The first four forms are German; the rest, ending in <-us>, are Latinized to one degree or another. Thideric 1267 Thiderik* 1319 Dyderik* 1355x1383 Dyderyk 1390 Theodericus 1243x1246, 1250x1300, 1341 Thidericus 1250x1300, 1267, 1282, 1289, 1304, 1314, 1319, 1320, 1328, 1329, 1330, 1331, 1355, 1373 Tidericus 1250x1300, 1295 Didericus 1272 Thydericus* 1355 The Low German pronunciation of this name was changing during your period [2]. The first two spellings above represent the older pronunciation, approximately \THEE-d@-rik\, where \TH\ stands for the sound in , not in , and \@\ stands for the sound of in and . The second two spellings represent the later pronunciation, roughly \DEE-d@-rik\. The change was gradual, and the two pronunciations doubtless existed together for some time, but as a very rough guide, we recommend the earlier type for the 13th century and the later type for the 14th century. The following names are from the Middle German dialect area. The first two are from the western end, and the rest are from Silesia, at the eastern end [3, 4]. Didericus 1200x1250 (8 times), 1250x1300 (3x) Dyderich 1300x1350 (4x), 1350x1400 (9x) Diterich 1226, 1251, 1281, 1347, 1354, 1382, 1383 (2x), 1388 Dieterich 1291, 1347 Dietrich 1318 Ditrich 1321 Ditherich 1384 As you can see, by far the most typical form is ; it represents a pronunciation something like \DEE-t@-rikh\, where \kh\ stands for the raspy in Scottish and German . The western variant was probably closer to \DEE-d@-rikh\. (In both cases, it's possible that the final was instead pronounced like the soft of German .) In some parts of the Middle German region, the \ee\ sound found, for example, in the first syllable of , developed into a sound closer to \ay\, and was variously written , , and [2]. We have no examples of this name with this variation of vowel sounds, but this may be simply because our Middle German sources are based primarily on data from other parts of the region. We therefore cannot rule out the possibility of a Middle German , pronounced roughly \DAY-t@-rikh\, or even , roughly \DAY-trikh\, though it would of course be better historical re-creation to use an attested form. Finally, here are some Upper German (southern) examples [5]. Dietrich 13th c., 1284, 1328, 1373 Dieterich 1288, 1298 Dietherich 13th c., 1298, 1296 Dietterich ca.1300 Dietric 1275 Dytrich ca.1300 Diether 13th c. (a pet form) Theodericus 1288 Theodricus 1247 Thietricus 1255 Thiedericus 1269 Diethericus 1264, 1270, 1291 Dietericus 1295, 1298 Dietricus 1223, 1291 Detricus 1289 The two main types here are represented by , pronounced roughly \DEE@-trikh\, and or , pronounced roughly \DEE@-t@-rikh\. (The first in is meaningless.) The spelling is unexpected here; it may represent the pronunciation of someone from the region where the first syllable was pronounced roughly \ay\, or it may simply be a scribal error. To sum up briefly, we recommend the following forms of your given name: Low German: (13th c.), (14th c.) Middle German: (west), (east) Upper German: , The forms or MAY be appropriate for parts of the Middle German dialect region. Note that your choice of a byname may restrict your choice of dialect; we'll point out such restrictions when we discuss the byname. You constructed to mean "eagle from the sea". In German, the first element of a compound modifies the second, so this actually means "eagle-sea". We didn't find any period names that combined these two words, but we did find one example from the Upper German dialect region of a man with the byname "seabird" in 1361 [6]. It was pronounced roughly \SHAY-foh-gel\ in the first half of the 13th century and \SAY-foh-gel\ during the remainder of your period. We found the common noun , meaning "sea-eagle", in an early-18th century dictionary [14]. We do not know how early this word came into use in German, and although similar compounds of + were used as bynames in the 14th-15th centuries, we found no evidence of as a name [15]. If the word does go back that far, it would probably have been written in your period. The modern German word also means "sea-eagle". Again, we don't know how far back this word goes; if it existed in your period, it would hypothetically have been written . Since we found no evidence of their use as names in your period, neither nor are the best re-creation. We have previously discussed the use of plain "eagle" as a byname in Academy reports 2668, 2626, and 2228 [7]. We did not find any German examples of "sea, ocean" or "sea, ocean" as a byname [8]. Middle Dutch , which can mean "sea" or "pool", is found in the first half of the 13th century in some Flemish bynames, but in Flemish usage the term generally referred to damp, low-lying land. Thus, the Flemish bynames (or ) and probably meant "at the wetland" and "from the wetland", respectively, rather than "at the sea" and "from the sea". The same word was also used in Low German, however, meaning both "sea" and "pool", and a Low German byname survives as a modern Low German surname . While it is likely that in most cases this byname referred to a small body of water, it is at least possible that in some cases it might have been applied to someone from the coast of the Baltic or North Sea [11, 12, 13]. We don't have any information on how Germans were known in Constantinople in your period. There were undoubtedly some there, especially in the first half of the 13th century: the city was sacked in 1204 by the army of the Fourth Crusade and ruled by Westerners until their expulsion in 1261. In such a cosmopolitan city many different languages must have been in use, but the primary language was Greek. Since the traditional Latinization of was , it's possible that a man named would have been known by the more familiar Greek name [16]. Substitutions of this kind are not uncommon in such circumstances, but we don't know whether this one actually occurred. We hope this information is helpful to you. Please feel free to write again if anything is unclear, or if you have further questions. Research and commentary for this letter came from Talan Gwynek, Arval Benicoeur, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Walraven van Nijmegen, Mari neyn Brian, Gunnvor Silfraharr, Ursula Georges, and Juliana de Luna. For the Academy, Kolosvari Arpadne Julia 26 May 2004 --------------- [1] Zoder, R. Familiennamen in Ostfalen. 2 vols. (Hildesheim: 1968); pp. 26 (8x), 34, 35, 41, 46 (2x), 49, 52, 60 (3x), 62 (2x), 63, 67, 68 (2x), 73 (2x), 75 (2x), 77 (2x). [2] Priebsch, R., & W.E. Collinson. The German Language, 3rd edn. (London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1948); p. 121. [3] Mulch, Roland. Arnsburger Personennamen: Untersuchungen zum Namenmaterial aus Arnsburger Urkunden vom 13. - 16. Jahrhundert. Quellen und Forschungen zur Hessischen Geschichte, 29 (Darmstadt und Marburg: Hessische Historische Kommission Darmstadt und Historische Kommission fu"r Hessen, 1974); pp. 31-2, 34-5. [4] Talan Gwynek. "Medieval German Given Names from Silesia", revised edition (WWW: Academy of Saint Gabriel, 1999). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/talan/bahlow/ [5] Socin, Adolf. Mittelhochdeutsches Namenbuch nach Oberrheinischen Quellen des Zwoelften und Dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1966); pp. 11-12, 108, 138, 566, 608. [6] Brechenmacher, Josef Karlmann. Etymologisches Woerterbuch der deutschen Familiennamen (Limburg a. d. Lahn: C.A. Starke-Verlag, 1957-1960); s.n. . [7] http://www.s-gabriel.org/2668, http://www.s-gabriel.org/2626, http://www.s-gabriel.org/2228. [8] We did find a couple of bynames containing the masculine noun "lake": 1336 "from the lake" and 1381, literally "in the lake"; however, this is a different word from the feminine noun "sea, ocean". [9, 10] [9] Bahlow, Hans. Deutsches Namenlexikon (Baden-Baden: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985); s.n. . [10] Brechenmacher s.n. . [11] OED s.v. (sb. 1). [12] Tavernier-Vereecken, C. Gentse Naamkunde van ca. 1000 tot 1253: een bijdrage tot de kennis van het oudste middelnederlands (Belgium: 1968); p. 459. [13] Bahlow s.n. . [14] Pexenfelder, Michael. Apparatus eruditionis tam rerum quam verborum per omnes artes et scientias (1704). WWW: www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/camenaref/pexenfelder.html, accessed May 2004. The specific page is www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/camenaref/pexen/pexen2/s051.html. [15] Bahlow s.n. has 1348 (Liegnitz), Brechenmacher s.nn. , has 1406 (Speyer), Low German 1491 (Hameln), and 1343 (Strassburg). These names are literally "sea-ox", "sea-cat", and "sea-swine" and show that compounding with MHG "sea-" wasn't particularly unusual. At least two of these aren't to be understood literally, however: the Middle High German is actually "dolphin", and Brechenmacher says that in popular usage, any tailed ape was a . These bynames are probably most often from house-signs. [16] Bardas Xiphias, "Personal Names of the Aristocracy in the Roman Empire During the Later Byzantine Era" (WWW: SCA, Inc., 1997). http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/byzantine/introduction.html