[HS] Lesson 10: More German names from Baden-Wuerttemberg

[Sara L Uckelman <liana@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I recently found another tax roll from 15th century Baden-Wuerttemberg;
this one is from just one city, Rottweil, and it's from 1441.  While
there's only roughly 1350 men and women mentioned in this tax roll,
it's interesting because geographically and temporally it's very close
to the data from the taxation records from 1495 that I discussed in
lesson 8.

The popularity of various men's names, especially towards the top of
the list, mirrors the two regions to an extent.  The top 10 men's names
are (listed by most popular spelling only):

   1441         1495
   Hanns        Hanns
   Conrat       Contz
   Hainrich     Peter
   Clos         Jorg
   Berchtold    Michel
   Auberlin     Claus
   Uolrich      Heintz
   Peter        Linhart
   Burkart      Mertin
   Jacob        Wendel

<Auberlin> from the 1441 data doesn't appear in the 1495 data at all,
and the reverse is true of <Wendel>.

In terms of linguistics, because these data is more focused temporally
than the 1495 data, it's easier to pinpoint the type of dialect that was
spoken in Rottweil at this time.  The diminutive endings are almost
always just <-lin>, though there are one or two examples of <-li>.  These
spellings are particularly characteristic of Swabian and Alemannic.  
This data also shows the preponderance to double the consonant <n>, 
especially in forms of <Hanns>, that we saw in the 1495 data.

One thing that is distinctive about this data is the type of abbreviations
that are used; in many names that would normally have two vowels written
next to each other (such as <Cloeslin>, a pet form of <Niclaus> via <Cloes>,
a dialectal variant of <Claus>, + <-lin>, the diminutive suffix) have the
second one superscripted above the first.  Because I cannot represent this
in HTML or in plain text, I use the notation of brackets around a letter to
indicate that it was superscripted above the previous letter.

Two other transcription practices are noteworthy: Quite often <u>'s have an
acute accent and <y>'s have umlauts.  I have not yet been able to determine
what these actually represented in the original register, but the first is 
likely *not* a <u> with an acute accent because German doesn't use acute accents.

In terms of feminine names, there is even less overlap in the most popular
top 10 women's names:

   1441         1495
   Aennlin      Margret
   Aellin       Els
   Greth        Anna
   Kaetherlin   Barbara
   Els          Katherina
   Nes          Engel
   Brid         Enndlin
   Ursel        Dorothea
   Adelhaid     Applonia
   Irm          Magdalen

In the 1441 data, <Enndlin> and <Applonia> don't show up at all, and both
<Engel>, <Barbara>, and <Magdalen> have only a handful of occurences.

In terms of names construction, everyone had only one given names.  However,
two surnames was not uncommon; the second was usually a locative, e.g. 
<Clos Villing von Dietingen>, but it didn't have to be.  Women usually used
an altered form of their husband's or father's surname; it was either
feminized (usually by adding <-in>) or put into the genitive case (usually by
adding <-s>, sometimes by adding <-en>).  Occasionally sons would have their
father's surname in the genitive case.

While in the 1495 data we saw quite a few examples of pre-posed bynames, this
construction is vanishingly rare; I found two: <Kleinhanns> 'small Hanns' and
<Swartzhanns> 'black Hanns'.

The given name data can be found at "German Names from Rottweil, Baden-
Wu"rttemberg, 1441" (http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/german/
rottweil1441.html).  I'll be processing the surname data as I have time.
(Anyone want to help?  Email me and I'll let you know what would be 
involved).

-Aryanhwy




-- 
vita sine literis mors est
http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/
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