ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3048 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3048 ************************************ 16 May 2005 From: Gunnvor Silfraharr (no address) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for our opinion of as a German name from 1400-1600. Here is what we found. In our period, there wasn't a uniform German language, but rather a collection of dialects that varied from one region to the next. These dialects fall into two major groups: Low German in the north and High German in the south, including Bavaria and Austria. Some names were used only in one region (and therefore only in one dialect) or another; other names were used in all dialects but spelled or pronounced differently in each dialect. Therefore, your choice of name may depend on exactly what part of Germany you want to re-create. The pet form and its spelling variants were quite common everywhere except in the north, where other pet forms (e.g., Low German and ) predominated [1]. Our most extensive non-northern data for your period come from the Sudetenland, approximately the region now known as the Czech Republic, and the state of Baden-Wu"rttemberg, which occupies the south-western corner of Germany. and its variants are common in both sets of data, so we have concentrated on these regions in our research. The above represents a u-umlaut. The name is a native German name. During the 14th century, saints' names (e.g., , , ) increased in popularity throughout Germany at the expense of native German names like , , , and . Of the native names, only and remained relatively popular in most parts of Germany [2]. In particular, forms of continued to appear with some frequency in the Sudetenland between 1400 and 1560; here are some of the forms that we've found: [4] The full name: Conradus 1425, 1492 (a Latinized form) Cunad 1406 Cunrat 1417 Cvnrat 1424 Konrad 1422, 1426 Kunrat 1423 Pet forms: Chuncz 1481 Cuncz 1396, 1453, 1483, 1494, 1498, 1523 Cuntz 1560 Kuncz 1443, 1483, 1491, 1525, 1535x48 [5] Kunz 1438, 1486 Contzel 1539 Looking at tax data from Rottweil (in Baden-Wu"rttemberg) in 1441, forms of make up the second most popular name (with 126 instances; forms of are first at 272, and forms of are third at 121). The number after each name reflects the number of instances in this data [6]: The full name: Conrat 106 Cu[o]nrat 7 Conrad 2 Conrade 1 Cunrat 1 Pet forms: Conlin 6 Cu[o]ntz 1 Cu[o]n 1 The [o] notation indicates that an was written above the previous letter. In tax rolls from southern Germany in 1495, forms of the name make it the second most popular men's name. We found the following forms, with the number after each name reflecting the number of times it appeared in this data [7]: The full name: Conrat 13 Cunradt 13 Cunrat 8 Conradt 3 Cunradus 1 (a Latinized form) Pet forms: Contz 84 Cuntz 14 Conntz 9 Cuntze 2 Cu"ntz 1 Contzlin 7 Conlin 1 Cunlin 1 Cuntzlin 1 The surname is not correct. The word "of" was combined with the names of towns and villages to form locative bynames, i.e. surnames that identified where someone lived or owned land. During our period, was not combined with given names like [8]. However, surnames were commonly based on given names, originally to identify someone as his father's child. These patronymic bynames were formed in several ways in Germany [9]; in the south, where the name was used, it was most common for a patronymic byname to consist simply of the father's given name. For example, 1399 and 1403, both in the Sudetenland, were probably the sons of men named [2, 3]. Therefore, is an excellent southern German name for your period. It was pronounced \KOHN-raht KOONTS\, with \OH\ representing the vowel in and \OO\ being the vowel in . In summary, is a fine name for a German man in 1400-1600. In a Latin document, various forms of the name are possible. In general, our sources of 15th c. citations either don't indicate linguistic context or are in the vernacular. For the most part, therefore, we can be sure that we're looking at a Latin-context rendering only when the name is obviously Latinized (e.g., ). Written forms in Latin might include constructions such as or . I 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 Walraven van Nijmegen, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Talan Gwynek, Arval Benicoeur, Adelaide de Beaumont, and Barak Raz. For the Academy, Gunnvor Silfraharr 16 May 2005 ----------------------------------------------------- References [1] Bahlow, Hans. _Deutsches Namenlexikon : Familien- und Vornamen nach Ursprung und Sinn erklaert_. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag. 1985, 1990). S.n. . Priebsch, R., and W.E. Collinson. _The German Language_. 3rd edn. (London: Faber & Faber Limited. 1948). p. 236. [2] Schwarz, Ernst, _Sudetendeutsche Familiennamen aus vorhussitischer Zeit_ (Koeln: Blehlau Verlag, 1957). p. 6. [3] Ibid., S.n. . [4] Schwarz, Ernst. _Sudetendeutsche Familiennamen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts_ (Mu"nchen: Robert Lerche, 1973). S.n. . [5] The notation 1535x48 indicates that the name occurred in one example between 1535 and 1548. [6] Uckelman, Sara L. (aka Aryanhwy merch Catmael), "German Names from Rottweil, Baden-Wu"rttemberg, 1441" (WWW: privately published, 2005). http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/german/rottweil1441.html [7] Friedemann, Sara L. (aka Aryanhwy merch Catmael), "German Given Names from 1495." (WWW: privately published, 1998-2003). http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/german1495.html [8] After the SCA period, came to be seen by many as a mark of nobility and was sometimes added to names where it had not been used historically and where its use was contrary to period practice. [9] There are three types of patronymic bynames: asyndetic (the father's uninflected forename), genitival (the father's forename in the genitive case), and the <-sohn> type (the father's forename in the genitive case followed by the 'son' noun). However, the last two types are rare in the south and were probably becoming so by your period [10], so we recommend you use your father's given name as your surname, as discussed above. [10] Schwarz, Ernst, _Deutsche Namenforschung. I: Ruf- und Familiennamen_ (Goettingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1949). Volume I, p. 82.