ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3145 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3145 ************************************ 26 Feb 2007 From: Femke de Roas Greetings from the Academy of St. Gabriel! You asked us whether or would be appropriate given names for a Czech woman after 900. The and represent the hacek on the letters, which resembles a little "v" over the letter. Our sources for Czech names are somewhat limited. In those transcriptions of historical Czech documents we know of, the spellings have commonly been normalized to reflect modern Czech spelling. Therefore, even when we find evidence that a Czech name was used in your period, it is hard for us to say what form these names would have taken in that period. In most respects, medieval Czech spelling was similar to medieval Polish. The two languages only diverged near the end of the 16th century [1], so we have drawn on information from a larger area than just Bohemia. We do have a modern Czech source that lists and as forms of , but cannot be certain when these spellings were first used. Fortunately, Poles and Czechs drew on very similar name pools, and the languages were very similar, so we can get a good idea of possible period Czech spellings by looking at Polish sources. There we find the following forms [2, 3]: Alski 1391 Alska 1391 Alszcza 1398 Elzka 1310 Elska 1369, 1416 Elscza 1389, 1393 Elszka 1407, 1444 We do find some forms of in Polish sources. Our data includes in 1136, and in 1616 [4, 5]. A form of is appropriate for a Czech woman from about 1300 on, though we found no data to support it before that. is probably closest to the spellings and pronunciations appropriate for medieval Czech. It was pronounced roughly \ELSH-kah\. and are also attested, though choice of spelling will depend on the time period you are most interested in. 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 Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Talan Gwynek, Kolosvari Arpadne Julia and Walraven van Nijmegen. For the Academy, Femke de Roas _____________________________________________________________________________ REFERENCES [1] Academy of S. Gabriel Report #2458 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2458 [2] Malec, Maria, _Imiona Chrzes/cijan/skie w S/redniowiecznej Polsce_ (Krako/w: Polska Akademia Nauk, Prace Instytut J{e,}zyka Polskiego No. 94, 1994), s.nn. , . [3] Svoboda, Jan, _Staro{c^}eska/ Osobni/ Jme/na a Na{s^}e P{r^}i/jmeni/_ (Praha, {C^}eskoslovenska/ Akademie Ve/d, 1964). [4] Bubak, Jo/zef, _S{l/}ownik Nazw Osobowych i Elemento/w Identyfikacyjnych S{a,}decczyzny, XV-XVII w._, 2 vols. (Krakow: "Universitas", 1992), s.n. . [5] Friedeman, Sara L., (Aryanhwy merch Catmael), "Polish Feminine Given Names, 1600-1650", (WWW: Self-published, 2003). http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/polish/polishfem.html