ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2854 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2854 ************************************ 21 Sep 2004 From: Kolosvari Arpadne Julia Greetings from the Academy of St. Gabriel! You asked us about a feminine name appropriate for either Poland or Hungary in the tenth or eleventh centuries. You were specifically interested in the name and its pet form . Please accept our apologies for the length of time it has taken us to write this letter. We hope this information is still useful to you. By the 14th century, forms of were very popular in both Poland and Hungary [1, 2]. However, the earliest evidence we have found for any form of this name in northern or eastern Europe dates from circa 1265 [1]. Therefore, we cannot recommend this name for your period. If you prefer to change your period in order to use this name, then you can find more information about Polish forms of at: http://www.s-gabriel.org/2633 Names from the tenth and eleventh centuries are poorly documented in both Poland and Hungary, and feminine names are particularly difficult to find. Neither language was written in your period: the earliest surviving connected text written in Hungarian dates from c. 1190, and the earliest extant complete sentence in Polish dates from c. 1270. Records of names exist from earlier, but these are all encountered in a foreign-language (usually Latin) context. In Hungary, name scholars generally group medieval names into two broad categories: "old" and "Christian" [3]. The use of names from the two categories overlaps in the period between the adoption of Christianity (1000) and the Synod of Buda (1279), which decreed among other things that only the priest could name a child at baptism [4]. This law accelerated the general trend toward the use of saints' names that began among the nobility in the 11th century and spread to commoners by the 1200s [5]. We haven't found any specific evidence about feminine names in use in Hungary before the 12th century. However, based on masculine name evidence [6] and the prevailing sentiment in Hungarian onomastic literature [7], we believe that an "old" name in use in the 12th or early 13th centuries is likely to have considerably older roots, and hence should be a reasonable choice for your period. In 12th and 13th century documents from Hungary, we found several dozen names which we can identify as feminine based on context [8, 9]. Names marked with an asterisk (*) also occur as masculine names, or in a context where the gender is not clear. Names marked with a C are Christian or Latin names, which were probably rarer in the 11th century, especially among the lower classes [5]. Names marked with an S are of Slavic origin, or are based on words borrowed from Slavic languages [10]. All of the names are from documents written in Latin, and we don't know how closely the written forms correspond to the spoken names [11]. C Agnna 1235 servant C Ancilla 1235 servant C Anna 1229 sister C Benedicta 1213, 1234-5 2 wives, 1 daughter Bibura 1181 weaver C Boncia, Bontia 1216 sister S Bud* 1229 wife of servant Bybur 1264 Caroldu c. 1200 (Turkic origin) [12] C Cecilia 1235 servant Cheperka 1228 mother of Giluad Choucad 1215 wife of servant Chynchola 1235 servant Cincea 1220 wife Cuce 1181 weaver S Cusid* 1216 wife of porter S Daraga, Derega 1208, 1213 2 servants S Deduha 1215 villager S Draga 1228 Edlelmes 1177 C Elena 1138 queen Emelev 1198 Emse 1211 C Eufemia 1214, 1217 lady (twice) C Foelicitas 1213, 1229 wife (twice) Genuruch 1213 lady Giluad 1228 daughter of Cheperka Gyung 1276 Houodi 1152 Huga 1229 daughter of servant Hugdi 1152 Hugus 1171 Huldhol 1213 servant Ilega, Ilegu 1213, 1229 daughter (twice) C Iustina 1229 lady Jolyan 1282 Kesa* 1213 woman Leanch 1273 widow Lence 1181 weaver C Macya* 1219 lady C Magdalena 1211, 1229 1 lady, 1 servant Magnet, Maged 1213, 1229 daughter (twice) Manga (Mauga) 1211 servant C Margueta 1213 servant C Maria 1208, 1229 2 servants C Martina 1220 sister of villagers S Mizla 1235 woman Moglou* 1211 Moxa 1234 wife of serf Nesta 1212 C Paulia 1213 lady Pena 1215 daughter of villager C Rosa 1234, 1235 1 daughter, 1 lady C Rusa 1255 Saroltu c. 1200 (Turkic origin) [12] Scegenye 1282 S Scenca* 1214 servant Scepa 1217, 1229 laundress, servant Scereteu 1234 servant Sebe* 1217 sister C Susanna 1211 servant Tykur 1291 S Vederey* 1217 laundress Vnee 1293 Vrumes 1171 Vtalou 1235 woman Vtuend 1199 servant Vyragus 1237 In your period, almost everyone in Hungary used only one name. In the 13th century legal record that is our source for many of the names above, however, this single name is sometimes amended with a Latin phrase describing a relationship, occupation, or location, like 1220 ("Jacob of village Giontoy, son of Forcos"), 1219 ("bailiff Pentek of village Ratolt"), or 1213 ("Lady Paulia wife of Perrus") [13]. If you are interested in finding an appropriate descriptive phrase to use as a byname, please write to us again and we'll be happy to list some suggestions. A Polish-Hungarian combination (someone from Poland living in Hungary, or vice versa) is actually not unlikely in your period. One of the sisters of St. Stephen of Hungary (reigned 1000-1038) was for a time the wife of the Polish king Boleslaus the Brave (reigned 992-1025), and Bela I of Hungary (c. 1015- 1063) married a daughter of Mieszko II of Poland (990-1034) while he was in exile in the Polish court [14, 15]. (The fact that the name of neither princess was recorded is typical of this period, and illustrates the difficulty of finding feminine names appropriate to the turn of the first millennium.) The "traffic" of younger royal brothers escaping dynastic struggles was mutual: the Hungarian court sheltered several Piast princes. The entourage of such a prince would have included attendants of various social positions. We believe that a name marked C from the list above could be appropriate for such an attendant from a higher social class in either Poland or Hungary. Poland adopted Christianity about a generation earlier than Hungary, in 966 [16], but older Slavic names remained in use alongside newer Christian names throughout the Middle Ages [17]. We have not found any specific information about which names in either category (Slavic or Christian) were in use in your period in Poland. A dictionary of modern Polish names offers the following feminine names as descendants of old Slavic two-part names: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and [18]. (In this list, indicates an s with an acute accent, and indicates Polish slashed-L.) If one of these names interests you, please write to us again, and we'd be happy to research when and in what form the name was used in Poland. We hope this letter answered your question. Please feel free to write to us again if anything is unclear or if you have further questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Walraven van Nijmegen, Talan Gwynek, Arval Benicoeur, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Ursula Georges, Gunnvor Silfraharr, and Juliana de Luna. For the Academy, Kolosvari Arpadne Julia 21 September 2004 ------------------------- Throughout the following, the slash (/) indicates either an acute accent mark on the preceding letter, or a slash through the preceding letter ; the colon (:) indicates an umlaut (two dots) over the preceding vowel, and the double quote mark (") indicates Hungarian long-umlaut (two lines) over the preceding vowel. [1] Taszycki, Witold (ed.), _Sl/ownik Staropolskich Nazw Osobowych_, vols. I-VII (Wrocl/aw: Zakl/ad Narodowy Imienia Ossolin'skich, Polska Akademia Nauk, 1965-1987). s.n. Katarzyna: c. 1265, and s.n. Kasza: c. 1265. [2] Hajdu/ Miha/ly: _A/ltala/nos e/s magyar ne/vtan_ (Budapest: 2003) p. 361; in a frequency table covering all feminine name occurences up to 1400, is number 3 (11.3%). [3] Terminology varies; Ka/zme/r [i] uses (secular) and (ecclesiastic), while Ka/lma/n [ii] uses (original names) and (loan- names) to indicate roughly the same groupings. Hajdu/ uses smaller categories, but his analysis can be divided into pre- and post-Christianity names. [i] Ka/zme/r Miklo/s: _Re/gi magyar csala/dnevek szo/ta/ra_ (Budapest, 1993). [ii] Ka/lma/n Be/la: _A nevek vila/ga_ (Budapest, no date; after 1988). This is a Hungarian-language version of [5]. [4] Hajdu/ p. 359. [5] Ka/lma/n, Be/la: _The World of Names, a Study in Hungarian Onomatology_ (Budapest: 1978) pp. 41-42. [6] Compare 952 (in Greek) to 1138/1329 [A] or contrast 1080 [B] with 1138/1329 and 1237-40 [C]. [A] Hajdu/ p. 349. (Also Fehe/rto/i s.n. Lewedi.) [B] Berte/nyi Iva/n, szerk. (ed.): _Magyar To:rte/neti szo:veggyu"jteme/ny 1000-1526_ (Budapest: 2000), p. 380. [C] Fehe/rto/i Katalin: _A/rpa/d-kori kis szeme/lyne/vta/r_ (Budapest: 1983), s.nn. Guden, Geuden. [7] Hajdu/ p. 347: "It is not worth speaking separately of the few earlier names available to us (Leve/d, Elo"d, A/lmos), since they fit into the Conquest-era name pool [...]" (my translation). Also p. 324, he divides Hungarian onomastic history into ten periods; the first of these is "the period before the appearance of family names, from the Conquest to the end of the A/rpa/d dynasty", which is to say 896-1301. [8] Fehe/rto/i, s.nn. Agnna, Ancilla, Anna, Benedicta, Boncia, Bud, Cecilia, Choucad, Chynchola, Cincea, Kusdi, Daraga, Deduha, Elena, Eufemia, Foelicitas, Genuruch, Huga, Huldhol, Ilega, Iustina, Kesa, Macya, Magdalena, Magnet, Manga, Margueta, Maria, Martina, Mizla, Moxa, Paulia, Pena, Rosa, Scenca, Scepa, Scereteu, Sebe, Susanna, Vederey, Vtalou. [9] Hajdu/ pp. 348-352. [10] Bosanac, Milan, _Prosvjetin Imenoslov_ (Zagreb: Prosvjeta, 1984). [11] The difference between written and spoken forms is likely to be greater for Christian names, which generally had a standard Latin spelling; this written form may or may not have matched the spoken name. Non-Christian names were probably recorded more-or-less phonetically, within the limits of the Latin alphabet. [12] Hajdu/ p. 357. is (traditionally) the name of St. Stephen's mother; it appears as in a 14th century chronicle: Dercse/nyi, Dezso", ed.: _The Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle_ (Budapest: 1969), p. 38 of the facsimile. [13] Fehertoi s.nn. Farkas, Pentek, Paulia. [14] Csorba Csaba: _A/rpa/d o:ro:ke/ben_ (Budapest: 1996), pp. 23, 40. [15] "Mieszko II", The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition (WWW: Columbia University Press, 2003). http://www.bartleby.com/65/mi/Mieszko2.html [16] Hajdu/ p. 297. [17] Hajdu/ p. 297: "The Christian religion accepted the use of ancient Slavic-origin names over a long period of time" (my translation). [18] Knab, Sophie Hodorowicz: _Polish First Names_ (New York: 2000).