ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2233 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2233 ************************************ 13 Feb 2001 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is an appropriate name for a Slavic man who had moved to Byzantium in 1425. Here is what we have found. Constructing an authentic name for a person who moved from one country to another is especially difficult, since we have so few records of people like that. The first step in such cases has to be to examine the original name in the context of the person's home culture. As you found, and are Russian names. It's important to understand that there were many Slavic languages in our period, and while they shared some features, they were not identical. Similarly, while they shared some names and naming practices, one should not expect medieval Russian names to be exactly the same as Polish names, Czech names, Slovenian names, or Bulgarian names. Since you started with Russian name elements, we'll focus on that possibility. However, if you want a persona from a culture that had extensive contact with Byzantium, Russia isn't as good as choice as one of the southern Slavic cultures. We've found examples of the Russian name used in 1356 and around 934 [1]. is very likely a Russian adaptation of the Greek name [2]. is a very early name, and we think it probably wasn't still in use in that form in your period: All the examples we found of names using the element are all dated in the 13th century or earlier. It appears that the pronunciation of this element changed in the last centuries of our period to . is recorded as a given name in late 16th century Russia, and we found examples of other names in , like and , in the 15th and 16th centuries [3]. We believe that "Darii son of Rast" is a reasonable Russian name for your period. It would have been pronounced \DAHR-yee RAHS-tohv\. The next step is to figure out how Byzantines would have identified a Russian immigrant with this name. You asked us to suggest a Latin form of your Russian name. We can do that, but that isn't a form that would have been used in late medieval Byzantium. The language of Byzantium was Greek, not Latin. Latin was still used in neighboring countries, notably the Venetian domains along the Illyrian coast; but only as a language of record, not as a spoken language. If your name were recorded in Latin, it might have appeared as [4], but that form is unlikely to have been used in Byzantium. In Byzantium, a Russian immigrant would have been known by a Greek name. Figuring out what Greek name his new neighbors would have used to identify him requires a lot of guesswork. As we noted above, is probably derived from the ancient name , a Greek adaptation of the name of a Persian king. We haven't found evidence that was still used in 15th century Byzantium, but the name would certainly have been known to Greek Christians since it appears in the Old Testament [9]. We have found the name used in the same period in Crete. These examples appear in Latin records -- Crete was ruled by Venice at the time -- and appear to be the names of Italians rather than Greeks [5]. Combined with other evidence that Italians were using forms of in your period [6], we can tentatively conclude that the name would at least have been familiar to 15th century Greeks. Therefore, we think it is reasonable to believe that a foreigner named would have been known to Greeks as , pronounced \dah-REE-ohs\. \ay\ is pronounced as in , and \ohs\ like the end of the word . However, he would not have been known to Greeks by his original Russian byname. When a foreigner moved to a new country in the medieval world, his new neighbors identified him by a name that made sense to them. They might base it on his original name, but they would adapt it to their own language and naming system. When the English knight John Hawkwood took employment in Florence, he was known to Italians as , using the Italian given name equivalent to and an Italian surname that sounded like his English surname. Similarly, Greeks might have used some Greek adaptation of . Unfortunately, we don't have any basis for guessing what that might have been. They might also have identified their neighbor by a descriptive byname, like "Dareios the Russian". In the Greek of your period, that might have been . Epithets with similar meanings are "Slav" and "Albanian" [8]. 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 Walraven van Nijmegen, Talan Gwynek Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Maridonna Benvenuti, Antonio Miguel Santos de Borja, Julie Stampnitzky, and Walraven van Nijmegen. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 13 Feb 2001 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Paul Wickenden of Thanet, "A Dictionary of Period Russian Names", 3rd edition (Normal, Illinois: SCA, Free Trumpet Press West, 2000), s.nn. Darii, Rasht. [2] Unbegaun, B. O., _Russian Surnames_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp.106-8. He has the feminine given name and say it was a borrowing of the Greek . He doesn't mention the masculine form, but it seems likely that derived from in the same manner. [3] Wickenden, s.nn. Rash, Rashchka, Rashek, Rashsha, Rast, Rastislav, Rastis. [4] The Latin form is based on our research in records from Poland and Ragusa (Venetian Croatia). Our sources are: Taszycki, Witold (ed.), _S{l/}ownik Staropolskich Nazw Osobowych_, vols. I-VII (Wroc{l/}aw: Zak{l/}ad Narodowy Imienia Ossoli{n'}skich, Polska Akademia Nauk, 1965-1987). Rheubottom, David, _Age, marriage, and politics in fifteenth-century Ragusa_ (Oxford & New York : Oxford University Press, 2000). [5] McKee, Sally, _Wills from Late Medieval Venetian Crete 1312-1420_, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1998, ISBN 0884022455). We found three woman named and a man called . [6] De Felice, Emidio, _Dizionario dei nomi italiani_ (Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milan, 1992), s.n. Dario. He says that name was revived in the Renaissance, primarily in the north. [7] Cheynet, Jean-Claude, "L'Anthroponymie Aristocratique a\ Byzance" in Bourin, Monique, Jean-Marie-Martin, and Francois Menant, eds., _L'Anthroponymie: Document de l'Histoire Sociale des Mondes Me/diterrane/ens Me/die/vaux_, Collection de l'E/cole Franc,aise de Rome, 226 (Rome: E/cole Franc,aise de Rome, 1996), pp.267-294. [8] Laiou-Thomadakes, Angeliki E., _Peasant Society in the Late Byzantine Empire_ (Princeton University Press, 1977), page 113. [9] "The Septuagint (The Greek Old Testament)", ed. Henry Sikkema (WWW: privately published, 1999). This site contains the Greek text. appears in Ezra 3.1. http://spindleworks.com/septuagint/septuagint.htm