The System of German Surnames in the Carpathian Basin of the 18th Century

Abstract

The paper aims to detect and describe the function of name patterns in the creation of the Transylvanian Saxon surname stock of German origin in the 18th century. The research is based on the theoretical approach of cognitive linguistics. Through the analyses of the semantical motivational types of the surnames and the frequency of their appearance in the name stock, certain characteristics and therefore patterns can surface. Names are strongly connected to extralingual culture and its changes, thus these patterns are impacted by time, space and sociocultural aspects. When the Saxons settled down in Transylvania, their linguistic and cultural connections with the coherent German speaking territory ended as early as the 12th century. Their surnames were created centuries later in strong connection with the Hungarian ethnicity. The paper presents the analyses of the Saxon surname stock and its comparison to the Hungarian and the German surnames stock. The results shed light on the differences about how much impact name pattern had in the creation of the Saxon surnames and what kind of reasons could influence the conventionality of the patterns.