Namenentwicklung und Namengebung in Ober- und Unterschichten des frühen 9. Jahrhunderts in der Île-de France

Abstract

Development of Names and Name-Giving in Upper and Lower Classes in Early Ninth-Century Île-de-France. – This onomastic article about names and name giving intends to demonstrate possible cooperations between philologists and historians. The rich material of personal names in the polyptych of Saint-Germain-des-Prés near Paris from the early ninth century, on the one hand, allows an interesting philological analysis of the morphology, phonetics and lexicology of names in a region of previously intensive ‘Germanic’ and Gallo-Roman acculturation. On the other hand, it permits an analysis of different motives of name giving, particularly the familial transmission of names or of their elements to the children as well as the use of Christian names. It is further interesting to compare these peasant names with those of the upper classes. As a kind of test drilling, this article is based on an analysis of four fisci of the polyptych (Palaiseau, Villemeux, Villeneuve, Béconcelle), compared with the names of monks, donors and witnesses of the same period and region. Considering the processes that a language runs through in a situation of continuous bilinguism, the names reveal a broad spectrum of Romanization (phonetic and morphological assimilation) as well as of hybrid names with Germanic and Romance elements or suffixes, as far as forming new name elements by an etymologically ‘false’ segmentation. Although this development is generally observed in all social classes, certain phenomena, such as spirantization of stops, coupling Romance suffixes with Germanic elements, or the formation of names by constructing new elements, are much more common among the peasants. Concerning name giving, the whole spectrum of traditional forms of ‘inheriting’ the whole name of one parent or one element of both the paternal or maternal name (‘variation’), in various combinations, seems to be complemented by further forms, such as alliteration or ‘rhyme’, but also by using different, and new, kinds of variation, namely either slight phonetical variations of the same name or by using different, but phonetically similar lemmata. The ‘Romanized’ forms as a linguistic development are frequently integrated into this ‘system’ of name giving in order to differentiate between the namebearers. While a ‘Romanization’ of non- Romance names is well under way, the ‘Christianization’ of names is still in its initial stages. In the Paris area, ‘Christian’, particularly biblical names are more common among monks and clerics than among peasants, who, however, use the whole spectrum (biblical, ‘talking names’, names composed with Crist-, names of saints), frequently prefer variations of biblical names and combine them with other elements. From a functional and pragmatic perspective, Romance and Christian names are used like and adapted to names of etymologically Germanic origin, while the linguistic principles of name-formation are maintained and the Romance and Germanic onomastic morphology still coexist.