ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2929 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2929 ************************************ 23 Dec 2004 From: Josh Mittleman Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is an appropriate name for a 15th century German woman. Here is what we have found. Each of the elements of your name is fine for your period, but the combination is not. and were both in use in 15th century Germany [1]. They were pronounced \mar-gah-RAY-tuh\ and \EHL-zuh-bet\, respectively, where \uh\ stands for the sound of the in and . Note that the second syllable of seems very often to have been elided in the pronunciation, so that name might more often have been \mar-GRAY-tuh\. However, middle names (double given names) were very rare in your period. There are scattered examples, but they didn't not begin to come into general use until after 1500 [2]. We therefore recommend that you use one given name or the other, but not both. The name of the ancient city of Trier, on the Mosel River, was probably spelled by your period [3]. The surname you've chosen, , is fine for your period; it would most likely have been used in the 15th century by member of the nobility. Surnames with did not imply nobility, per se, but they were beginning to become less common among the lower classes. In the 14th century surnames with were used at all levels of society as one of three kinds of surname that identified a person by the place where she lived [4]. For example, the man whose name appears in the records of Frankfurt am Main as 1390, 1389, and 1388 was presumably from the nearby town of Butzbach [5]. Note that he was known interchangably by three different grammatical forms with essentially the same significance: 'of Butzbach', the plain place-name, and 'man from Butzbach'. By analogy, you could just as easily call yourself or (using the feminine adjective form of the place name). As time went by, commoners tended to drop the preposition. This process took place at different rates in different parts of Germany, but overall it was very slow. In many places the preposition remained in common use at least until about 1400, and in some remote areas it didn't really start to disappear until the middle of the 17th century [5]. The nobility, on the other hand, were more conservative and retained the preposition. They had always been the class most likely to use bynames with , probably because in their case such names had two possible sources: not only could they indicate origin, they could (and probably more often did) refer to land held in fief. Thus, as the use of by commoners slowly but steadily declined, the preposition became in practice more and more a sign of noble status [6]. 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 Aelfwynn Leoflaede dohtor, Talan Gwynek, Gunnvor Silfraharr, Walraven van Nijmegen, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, and Maridonna Benvenuti. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 23 Dec 2004 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Talan Gwynek, "15th-Century German Women's Names" (WWW: Academy of Saint Gabriel, 1997). http://www.s-gabriel.org/docs/german15f.html [2] Academy of S. Gabriel Report 2874 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2874 [3] Brechenmacher, Josef Karlmann, _Etymologisches Woerterbuch der deutschen Familiennamen_ (Limburg a. d. Lahn, C. A. Starke-Verlag, 1957-1960), s.n. Trier(er). 1344. [4] Socin, Adolf. Mittelhochdeutsches Namenbuch nach Oberrheinischen Quellen des Zwoelften und Dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1966), Ch. XV, XVI, especially pp. 303, 310. [5] Schwarz, Ernst. Deutsche Namenforschung I: Ruf- und Familiennamen (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1949); pp. 101ff. [6] Schwarz, p. 164.