Der niedersorbische Zunamenatlas

mit vier Karten

Abstract

Work is in progress to create an Atlas of Lower Sorbian Surnames with approximately 70 colered name cards on the basis of circa 63.000 records of names taken from sources of the 14. to 18. century. The cards will include the surnames which developed from Slavic composita as well as from their contracted and/or affectionate forms, and in addition surnames derived from occupational names and official titles, and from nicknames and ethnonyms. A few cards will be dedicated to anthroponymic suffixes as well as to combined areals. Every card will have a commentary to verbally describe the geographical distribution of the names. Statistical data concerning the number of diverse names as well as bearers of the names provide information about the productivity of each anthroponymic basis, and in addition, their occurrence in deanthroponymic place names in Lower Lusatia will be included. The submitted paper presents an introduction to the subject, goal, method and initial results of our research to date. As an example, four colered cards illustrate the territorial distribution of 68 diverse surnames and two suffixes.