Christian Names Research Articles

Variants of Christian names in the eastern (oldsaxon) speech area till 1650

Short names and terms of endearment have been part of communication long before the beginning of the written tradition. In order to return the names to their original form, name equations of the type Zacharia = Zechel are essential. At present, an extensive corpus of given names for the area of the eastern (formerly) oldsaxon language area is being compiled. This contribution offers first observations and findings to the short names and terms of endearment.

From the Middle Ages to modern times: the Karelian female name system

This paper offers an analysis of the system of female names used among the Karelian population. In addition to the analysis of the forms of Christian names used in the past and present in the territory populated by ethnic Karelians in the Republic of Karelia, as well as in Finland and the Tver and Leningrad Regions, an attempt is made to reconstruct the pre-Christian female name system of Medieval Korela. An important observation is that, as opposed to pre-Christian male names, which can be uncovered not only in documents but also in Karelian surnames and toponymy, there are no documented traces of female pre-Christian names from the Karelian population. At present, the main source of knowledge about Finnic pagan female names is, admittedly, oral folk poetry. The author, however, believes that there is another important source of information in addition to folklore, i.e. cow names, which can potentially offer quite a bit of data about the pre-Christian female name system of the Medieval Karelians. The pre-Christian system of female names began to gradually vanish from the Karelian land as Orthodoxy took over. After the baptizing event in 1227, the introduction of the Russian Orthodox onomasticon into the Karelian milieu led to the emergence of multiple vernacular variants. To account for these, the author analyzes the main patterns in the phonetic adaptation of Russian-language forms of female names in the Karelian language.

The Adoption of Christian Names and Surnames in the Moravian Communities of Nunatsiavut, Labrador

ABSTRACT The process of assigning personal names throughout Nunatsiavut, Labrador, in response to ecclesiastical and public desiderata is discussed in this article. Naming among the Inuit of Labrador's north coast changed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries because of the Moravian mission. The adoption of German Christian names for children and adults was to indicate a religious identity change. The system that existed throughout the nineteenth century paired Christian names. Among married couples, the husband was named together with his wife and the wife with her husband in the possessive case, while the son's name was paired with that of his father and the daughter's name with that of her mother. Atitsiak-based naming among Labrador Inuit extended the kinship group as it had in other Inuit societies. It remained relevant and was accepted also by missionaries since Christian Inuit, unlike European Moravians, had no baptismal witnesses or sponsors who would have felt formal responsibility for the child beyond the primary caregivers. Traditional Christian double names for Moravian Inuit lasted in Labrador until the early 1890s when Christian first names began to be supplemented by surnames in response to governmental needs for bureaucratic identification.

David Wulstan (1937–2017)

David Wulstan, scholar and musician, died on 6 May 2017 at the age of 80. Best known outside academic circles as the founder-director of the vocal ensemble the Clerkes of Oxenford, his legacy can be seen and heard in the establishment of a style of performing polyphonic music that broke new ground in the 1970s, and has now become mainstream. Born into a clergy family on 18 January 1937, he began his education at the hands of his father, who introduced him to classical languages at an early age. Né Jones, he adopted one of his more distinctive Christian names as surname (his father was vicar of the church of St Wulstan in Birmingham). His varied early career included scientific studies, teaching and professional horn playing, and he went up to Magdalen College, Oxford, aged 23, first as an alto singer then as organ scholar, under Dr Bernard Rose; he was elected Fellow by Examination in 1964.

Naming practices in contemporary Machame-Chagga culture

Naming practices were cherished in African communities and personal names bestowed to children used to carry some semantic content usually determined by circumstances at birth. An examination of formal names of school children from the Machame-Chagga families exhibits an increasingly diminishing trend of naming practices. Most names of pupils are of English and/or Christian origin and just a fraction of names from a sample of 421 full names appear to be the typical Machame-Chagga names. In addition, Islamic names are numerous, which is another testimony that religion has dismantled the traditional naming system of the Machame-Chagga community. During the integration of foreign religious names, two patterns emanate. On the one hand, many Christian names are expressed in words with semantic content, e.g. Aikaeli „thank you God‟, Aminaeli „thank you God‟ and Ndumiakunde „the Lord tends to love‟. On the other hand, Islamic names in Hai District have been Swahilized, for example Azizi and Mustafa. All in all, the imposition of foreign religion in Machame-Chagga community has eroded the indigene naming system. Keywords : Personal-names, Cultural-change, Machame-Chagga, Onomastic-approach, Tanzania

Kauno bajorų įvardijimas 1528 metų LDK kariuomenės surašyme

The article analyses the name record of Kaunas male and female noblemen compiled in 1528 in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The article also describes the constituent parts of the record of Kaunas noblemen, indicates the methods of presenting the designation of brothers and analyses male, female names and names of previous generation. The male names of previous generation are reconstructed from patronyms. The male names are grouped into Christian and non-Christian names. The data on the distribution of Christian male names and old two-root names among two generations is provided. The research data on the names of Kaunas noblemen as well as the noblemen and citizen of other GDL territories of the same period are compared. Female names are analysed. Male designations are differentiated by the ratio of names and potential surnames into the types of onomastics, which are differentiated by the ratio of different anthroponyms into methods of onomastics. Female designations are differentiated into the types of onomastics based on the ratio of names and family anthroponyms and into the methods of onomastics based on the ratio of different types of anthroponyms. The description of the methods of onomastics takes into consideration the prefixes used with male and female designations. The structure of male and female designations is analysed: the types of anthroponyms and prefixes are indicated, the prefixes grouped into specific types are presented. The onomastics are differentiated by the number of anthroponyms, the average length of onomastics is determined. Lithuanian affixes of anthroponyms are listed.

Tikriniai velniavardžiai lietuvių tarmėse ir tautosakoje

Lietuvių tatmėse ir tautosakoje užfiksuoti 22 skirtingi tikriniai velnio vardai. Drauge su įvairiose Lietuvos vietose vartojamais tarminiais variantais jų esama netoli penkiasdešimties. Dažniausiai tai populiarūs krikšto vardai, nekrikštavardinių velniavardžių pasitaiko palyginti retai. Šiame straipsnyje jie aptariami kilmės, darybos ir funkcijos aspektu. krikštavardiniai velniavardžiai gali būti įvairios kilmės: hebrajų, graikų, lotynų, rečiau germanų arba slavų. Etninėje kultūroje velnias dažnai suvokiamas kaip antropomorfinis personažas, todėl ir jam taikomi antroponimai palyginti neblogai atspindi lietuviams nuo seno įprastą krikštavardžių įvairovę. Didžiausiu variantiškumu (fonetikos, morfologijos, žodžių darybos skirtumais) pasižymi pragaro valdovo tikriniai vardai. Antroponimai linkę virsti velnio eufemizmais arba mįslių žodžiais todėl, kad neturi leksinės reikšmės. Tikriniai velnio vardai tautosakos tekstuose gali atlikti penkias skirtingas funkcijas: apeliatyvinę, maginę, eufemistinę, pragmatinę, apotropinę.

Zastosowanie ilościowo-jakościowej metody statystyki lingwistycznej w badaniach siedemnastowiecznego zasobu męskich chrześcijańskich imion osobowych północnej Rosji. Na 90. rocznicę urodzin Profesora Wasilija Daniłowicza Bondaletowa

Using the Quantitative and Qualitative Method of Statistical Analysis in Linguistics with Reference to the Male Christian Names of Northern Russia. To Mark the 90th Anniversary of the Birth of Professor Vasiliy Danilovich BondaletovIn 2018, the 90th anniversary of Professor Vasiliy Danilovich Bondaletov`s birth will be celebrated. The aim of the article is to remind readers of the quantitative and qualitative method of statistical analysis in anthroponomastic research developed by Professor Bondaletov, as well as to show its advantages over simplified descriptions of the frequency of personal names. In this article, the detailed analysis of male Christian names found in customs books from Northern Russia (1633–1636 and 1678–1680) was conducted. The comparison of statistical data, according to the suggestion of Professor V. D. Bondaletov, enabled us to observe subtle differences between the abovementioned resources, namely to estimate the level of their (dis)similarity and describe the dynamics of the evolution of the resources of male Christian names throughout the 17th century, as well as changes in the popularity of various names.

Serbian feminine names in the early 16th century (based on the 1516 census of the Smederevo Sanjak)

A large number of feminine names can be found in Ottoman census books (defters). These anthroponymic materials provide important sociological, ethnographic, linguistic and historical evidence of the population of Serbian areas included in the census. As for the Serbian sources, feminine names start to appear largely in the commemoration books (pomenici) of a later date (16th-17th centuries), whereas the earlier monastery charters almost exclusively list masculine names. The 1516 Ottoman Census contains the names of 942 women - widows who were taxpayers, because, for one reason or another, there were no males in their households. Their names undeniably show that the population in the Smederevo Sanjak - and the same phenomenon may also be observed in other areas populated by the Serbs - relied on the ancient Slavic (Serbian) onomasticon, which significantly prevailed over Christian names.

Imenska osnova bog u hrvatskoj antroponimiji s osobitimosvrtom na osobna imena

In the modern corpus of Croatian anthroponyms there are 30 personal names with the root bog (‘god’). An abundance of both published and unpublished historical sources used in this research allowed the authors to create a corpus of personal names suitable for the comparative analysis of fre¬quency and incidence in historical sources. The continuity of the use of the root bog among Croats is presented through the analysis of historical anthroponymic records (from the oldest originating in the 11th century, to contemporary sources). The oldest available sources attest to the onset of interference and the blending of Slavic and Romanic ethnicities, foremost in coastal Dalmatian city communes. A limited frequency of these personal names was detected in the 16th century. The fac¬tors that led to this situation are not only connected to the decisions of the Council of Trent, which recommended general usage of Christian names, but can also be attributed to historical circumstan¬ces (incursion of Ottomans, subsequent migrations). Most of the 16th century attestations pertain to areas with a mixed Christian and Muslim population. In border areas, where Western states shared Eastern borders with the Ottoman Empire, the analysed attestations were quite rare. Due to constant migrations from the contact zones and the Ottoman Empire towards the interior of the Hungarian-Croatian Kingdom, these personal names were able to ”survive” the early modern period. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, usage of folk names was more frequent, most probably as a consequence of the process of Croatian national revival.

Adaptation of Russian Christian Names into the Mari Language

Adaptation of Russian Christian Names into the Mari Language

Studentų vardai Šiaulių universitete

Nors lietuvių asmenvardžiai yra gana intensyviai tyrinėjami jau daug metų, tačiau Šiaulių universiteto studentų vardai yra mažai nagrinėti. Šiame straipsnyje siekiama ištirti Šiaulių universiteto studentų vardus sociolingvistiniu aspektu, atlikti kalbinę ir statistinę vardų analizę, apžvelgti studentų vardų įvairovę, jų populiarumą, vardų kilmę ir semantinę motyvaciją. Ištirti 7 166 studentų, studijavusių Šiaulių universitete 2000–2015 metais, vardai, iš kurių 5 776 yra merginų vardai, 1 390 – vaikinų vardai. Per analizuojamą laikotarpį suskaičiuoti 735 skirtingi vardai, iš kurių 491 yra moterų vardas, 244 – vyrų vardai. Nustatyta, kad populiariausias moters vardas yra sulotynintas graikiškos kilmės vardas Kristina (180 studenčių), antras pagal dažnumą – lietuviškas vardas Lina (177 studentės), trečias – graikiškos kilmės Jurgita (154 studentės). Dominuojantis vaikinų vardas yra hebrajiškos kilmės vardas Tomas (72 studentai), antroje vietoje – lietuviškas vardas Mindaugas (54 studentai), trečioje – graikiškas vardas Andrius (41 studentas). Išanalizavus vardų etimologiją pastebėta, kad tarp labiausiai paplitusių moterų vardų daugiausia yra lietuviškos kilmės vardų, pavyzdžiui, Aušra, Daiva, Jūratė, Rasa, Vaida, o populiariausių vyrų vardų dalyje vyrauja kalendoriniai krikštavardžiai – hebrajų, graikų, lotynų, germanų ir keltų.Tyrimo metu surinkti duomenys lyginami su Lietuvoje registruotais vaikų vardais (remtasi Valstybinės lietuvių kalbos komisijos parengto Lietuvos Respublikos piliečių sąvado ir Gyventojų registro tarnybos duomenimis).Išanalizavus studentų vardus paaiškėjo, kad kai kurie lietuviški vardai turi aiškią motyvuotą semantiką: vardai, reiškiantys charakterio, asmenybės požymius; vardai, susiję su tam tikrais gamtos reiškinių ir augalų pavadinimais. Daug nelietuviškos kilmės vardų atspindi teigiamas socialines ir kultūrines visuomenės ypatybes.Atliktas tyrimas parodė, kad Šiaulių universiteto studentų vardai atspindi socialinę ir kultūrinę visuomenės atmosferą, išryškina visuomenėje dominuojančias vertybes. Tai parodė senųjų lietuviškų vardų ir kalendorinių krikštavardžių didelis populiarumas bei mažesnis apeliatyvinių ir neįprastų, vengtinų deminutyvinių vardų paplitimas.

Congo Gods by Christian Names: Hurston's Prayer-Speech as Cultural Inheritance

Abstract Zora Neale Hurston's admiration for Black vernacular language is evident in her focus on prayer-speech, framed as part of a cultural and spiritual inheritance that Hurston consciously draws between the characters in her debut novel—the semiautobiographical Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934)—her nonfiction essays, and her folklore collections. As represented by Hurston, prayer-speech reflects the process of conscious syncretism whereby West African spiritual ideals were deliberately selected, retained, and applied to Western-framed Judeo-Christian beliefs and practices. Hurston's emphasis on prayer-speech, and the cultural consciousness that permeates the diasporic oral tradition, further positions her as a valuable resource for scholars of Africana religions.

Literatures of Inculturation: Achebe, Jumbam and Adichie

Most African writers have been brought up as Christians. But some of them publicly rebelled against Christianity bydropping their Christian names: Chinua Achebe (formerly Albert C. Achebe), Kofi Awoonor of Ghana (formerlyGeorge Awoonor-Williams), Ama Ata Aidoo of Ghana (formerly Christiana Aidoo), Ngugi Wa Thiong'o of Kenya(formerly James Ngugi), and Okogbule Wonodi of Nigeria (formerly Glory Wonodi). The dropping of Christiannames does not mean that their literatures discredit Christianity in favour of African traditional religions. This papershows that against all expectations, most African writers who read Western Christian-oriented literature (Okere, 2009,p. 303) during their education, especially Chinua Achebe with Things fall apart, Kenjo Jumbam with The white manof God and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie with Purple hibiscus tried to coin their own styles, mixing orality andliteracy when they started their literary career, presenting in this way inculturation as an innovation in literary styleand a solution to religious conflict. This paper focuses on the three novels by the three African writers in acomparative approach around suggested aspects of inculturation and shows the evolution of inculturation ofChristianity as a novelty throughout these literatures.

OSOBNA IMENA U MATIČNOJ KNJIZI KRŠTENIH JUŽNOBARANJSKE ŽUPE ZMAJEVAC ZA HRVATSKO NASELJE PODOLJE U DRUGOJ POLOVICI 18. STOLJEĆA

An analysis of records in parish baptismal registers of the parish of Zmajevac for the settlement Popovac in the northern part of southern Baranya for the period from 1755 until the end of the 18 th century has shown that there were no significant differ ences among male and female names, except for somewhat stronger nominal entropy among female names. In this period, the parish baptismal register recorded 47 different male and 23 different female names. All the names in the parish baptismal registers were recorded in the contemporary official language, Latin; all of them were Christian names.

Христианские имена карелов

Христианские имена карелов

Основи прізвищ Уманщини як джерело вивчення власних імен досліджуваної території

Основи прізвищ Уманщини як джерело вивчення власних імен досліджуваної території

Sensing Religion in Alfonso Cuarón’s “Children of Men”

This essay attends closely to the affective excess of Children of Men, arguing that this excess generates two modalities of religion—nostalgic and emergent—primarily through a sensitive use of color and music. These affective religious modalities are justly termed “religion” not only because they are sutured to overtly Christian names, images, and thematics, but also because they signal the sacred and transcendence, respectively. The essay reads the protagonist, Theo Faron (Clive Owen), as navigating these two modalities of religion, not as a hero but as what Giorgio Agamben terms “whatever-being.” Noting Theo’s religious function draws attention to transformations of political being and human hope.

Sin and Redemption: Woman’s Body, Necrophilia, and Spanish Islam

Sin and Redemption:Woman’s Body, Necrophilia, and Spanish Islam Miguel Ángel Vázquez It could have happened at some point during the late 15th century or the first part of the 16th century. It could have been anywhere in the region of Aragon. It was probably under the cover of night, illuminated only by the faint light of a candle. He could have belonged to the Mohamed Escribano family (López-Morillas, “Copistas” and “Trilingual”). The details are not very clear, but one thing is certain: the enterprise he was engaged in was at the same time pious and extremely dangerous. He was a Morisco (a Christian converso from Islam) and he was breaking the law by writing using the Arabic alphabet. But he felt it was worth the danger since the spiritual salvation of his community was at stake. He may have paused to wonder how did it all come to this? His ancestors had ruled the Peninsula (which they called Al-Andalus) for hundreds of years, and had advanced the arts and sciences. Where did they go wrong?1 The beginning of the end started soon after the fall of the Cordoban caliphate (1031) when the Christians started the series of wars called the Reconquista.2 This process culminated in 1492 with the Fall of Granada and, and in 1501, with the subsequent ultimatum given to the mudéjares of Castile and Leon: forced conversion to Christianity or expulsion.3 Those who decided to stay and convert came to be known as “Moriscos.” The conversions, however, were, for the most part, not sincere but just a way to remain on Spanish soil as the newly converted minority engaged in the practice of Islam in secrecy. As part of the clandestine activities of the Moriscos to preserve their culture, they engaged in the production of a corpus of manuscripts containing everything a person would need to know about Islam and the Morisco situation in 16th-century Spain. Since the possession of such a manuscript was grounds for an inquisitorial process, the Moriscos hid them in false floors, walls or columns, where they remained after their expulsion in 1609 and the reason why the manuscripts were able to survive until their discovery in the 19th century. To understand the impact the Moriscos had not only on the culture that surrounded them but also on our understanding of the complex culture of 16th century Spain, we must remember that the official discourse of the Christian authorities was one of homogeneity where purportedly all Spaniards spoke one language (Spanish), professed one religion (Catholicism), and were part of one culture. But the mere presence of the Moriscos in the Iberian Peninsula attempted against the actuality of that discourse.4 The Moriscos may [End Page 147] have had Christian names, but they also had Muslim names that they used in secrecy; their literature was in Spanish, but it was filled with Arabic words, phrases and calques; and they practiced Islam even though they claimed to be Christians. This notion of the “other Spain” that were the Moriscos can also be seen from a literary standpoint. Consider for instance the Moorish novels that were published during the Early Modern period of which the Abencerraje is one of its finest examples. In it, the first appearance of the Muslim protagonist, Abindarráez, seems to come right out of the Arabian nights: he is dressed with a luxurious red tunic embroidered with gold and silver threads, speaks with wonderful Spanish rhetoric, is the model of nobility—Christian nobility that is—and becomes the best friend of the Christian protagonist. But the literature that the Moriscos themselves wrote has little to do with this type of idealistic scenarios. A text like the Tafsira of the Mancebo de Arévalo (edited by María Teresa Narváez) presents the reader with a different kind of Morisco, not idealized, and very much aware of the precarious state of his community in Spain. Morisco poetry is also of note. Writers like Mohamad5 Rabadán (edited by Lasarte López) and Ibrahim Taybili, known in public as Juan Pérez (edited by Bernabé Pons), used traditional Spanish poetic forms to...

Rojstna imena, hišna imena, vzdevki, psevdonimi v Sloveniji

V prispevku so po splošnem uvodu o imenih obravnavana rojstna imena, hišna imena, vzdevki in psevdonimi. Pri rojstnih imenih so tako npr. obravnavana slovanska, krščanska in muslimanska imena, tuja in nova imena, ženska in moška imena. V zvezi s strukturo imen so obravnavana zložena imena, dalje načini krajšanja imen in tvorbe novih imenskih oblik - tvorjenk s številnimi sufiksi, ki so v slovenskem jeziku. Pregledno so predstavljeni vzdevki, hišna imena in psevdonimi, ki s svojimi posebnimi funkcijami dopolnjujejo običajno imensko formulo ime + priimek.