ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2898 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2898 ************************************ 10 Oct 2004 From: Femke de Roas Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked us for information on the given names , , and . You also asked if means 'horse trainer/trader', and if this would be an appropriate byname for a Hungarian woman between 1400-1450. The given names you asked about were found in 16th century records, more than a century after your period [1]. Records from your period were kept in Latin, and the spellings used in Latin documents are often quite different from the vernacular, or spoken, form. and are forms of the same name, which we find written in your period as [1]. A 15th century Hungarian woman could have used the pet form in everyday speech, but this would not have been recorded in writing. We do have written evidence for as an unmarked metronymic in your period [2]. An unmarked metronymic uses a person's mother's name, unchanged, as a byname. For example, if Anne is Kate's daughter, then the name uses an unmarked metronymic. Likewise, is a pet form of . In Latin, this name is invariably written , and although we've only found it a little later than your period (starting in 1458) [1], we believe it to be a good choice somewhat earlier as well. It's quite likely that pet forms of were in spoken use in your period, but we simply don't have the data to know which ones. The byname translates as 'groom' or 'stable-boy'. (The slash represents an acute accent over the preceding vowel.) The most common spelling in your period is [3]. For a byname that translates as 'horse-teacher, trainer of horses' we found [4]: 1476 1477 1480 We believe that both and are appropriate 1400-1450 written (Latinized) names for a Hungarian woman who works with horses. or are dated somewhat later, but are closer to your desired meaning of 'horse trainer'. As you may be aware, spoken and written Hungarian uses names with the byname first, so these written forms correspond to spoken , , etc. (We've written the spoken forms using modern spelling conventions. [5]) As a rough guide, is pronounced \AWN-naw\, is \KAW-taw\, is \LOH-vowss\, is \LOH-taw-nee-toh\, and the dialectal variant represented by the spelling is pronounced \LOH-taw-nay-toh\. Here, \aw\ is like the 'a' in 'saw', \ow\ is somewhat like in 'now', \oh\ is like the 'o' in 'more', \s\ is as in 'Sam', \ee\ is like in 'see', and \ay\ is like in 'say' [6]. We hope that this letter has been useful to you and that you won't hesitate to write us again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. Research and commentary on this letter was provided by Kolosvari Arpadne Julia, Walraven van Nijmegen, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Arval Benicoeur, Adelaide de Beaumont, and Talan Gwynek. For the Academy, Femke de Roas ______________________________________________________________________ REFERENCE [1] Walraven van Nijmegen, "Hungarian Feminine Names" 2.0 (WWW: Brian R. Speer, Privately published, 2002). 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), p. 561 under Kata, the spelling is dated to 1402, 1415, 1416, 1428, 1447, 1463, 1469, 1493, etc. [3] Ibid. s.n. . [4] Ibid. s.n. . [5] Our evidence about non-mondern Hungarian spelling comes after this period of time. Since we are providing spoken forms and modern spelling is much closer to phonetic, we have provided the modern spellings rather than speculation about likely period spellings. [6] If you're familiar with IPA phonetic symbols, we can represent these pronunciations more accurately. (This is especially helpful in the case of the sounds spelled and in modern Hungarian.) Some of the usual IPA symbols aren't available in e-mail, so we've used the Kirshenbaum version of ASCII IPA; you can find it at In this system the pronunciations given in the letter are: Anna: ['A.n:A.] Kata: ['kA.tA.] Lowaz: ['lova:s] Lothanytho: ['lo:tA.ni:to:] Lothaneytho: ['lo:tA.nejto:]