[HS] Lesson 12: documentary forms of names

[Sara L Uckelman <liana@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

In most time periods and cultures that the SCA studies, the main
documentery language (language used for written documents, especially
formal ones) was Latin - of course, especially later in period, you find 
plenty of documents written in English, Italian, French, German, Spanish,
etc., but up through at least the 14th century or so, if not later in
many countries, if you knew how to write your name, you knew how to
write it in Latin.

So, how do you go about figuring out what a correct Latin form of your
name is?

There are two parts to worry about: The given name, and the byname.

If your given name was Biblical, then you need look no further than
your nearest medieval Bible to find a Latin form of your given name.
Other names generally (but not always) follow a pattern of adding
<-us> to the end of men's names and <-a> to the end of women's names.
Of course, there are excepts to these rules, but it's a pretty good
rule of thumb.

If your byname was a patronymic or matronymic (based on your father or
mother's given name), then the Latin form of your byname would be
<filius> (if you're a guy) or <filia> (if your a girl), and then the
Latinized form of your father/mother's name, put into the genitive
(possessive) case.  (In some cultures, especially later in period
when scribes tended to be more sloppy, sometimes the father's name
was not in fact put into the genitive case).

If your byname was a descriptive or occupational, you'd pick the
corresponding Latin term.  If you don't have a good classical Latin
dictionary on hand, I highly recommend Latham's _Revised Medieval
Latin Word List_ to get you the actual medieval Latin forms of
words.

If your bynames was a locative (based on the name of a place), the
Latin form would be <de> 'of' + the Latin form of the place name.

If your byname isn't any of these, probably the scribe recording
your name would've found out your father's name or your place of
residence, and given you a locative or a patronymic byname. :)

A good place to find Latinized forms of English names is in the
Medieval Names Archive: English Names 1300 to 1450
http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/eng1300to1450.shtml

At this time, most official records in England were written in 
Latin, and so most name forms are recorded in Latin.  The nifty
thing about Latin was that it was virtually uniform throughout
Europe.  If you find a Latinized form of some name in a document
from England, that spelling will probably be appropriate for 
the rest of Europe!

I'm also working right now on compiling data for an article that
will give Latin forms of many French place names - it's still in
process, but you can see what I've got so far here:

http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/drafts/beaurepaire.html

So, what do some Latinized names look like?  I did what I could
for people subscribed here in heraldry-school:

Name                      Latin
-----                     -----
Aryanhwy merch Catmael    Arianuia filia Catmaili
Andronikos Tzangares ho   Andronicus philosophus
  Philosophos
Caius                     Caius
Deykin ap Gwion           Davidus filius Wioni
Einarr Grimsson           filius Grim
John                      Johannes
Katrein Adler             Katerina Aquila
Leona Talbot              Leona
Margit Withycombe         Margareta
Modar Neznanich
Nicholaa O'Kelton         Nicolaa
Rawnie de Douglas
Reva of Ravenswater
Rose Marian of Edgewater  Rosa Mariana

As you can see, for some of you I either don't know all your SCA
name or don't know how all the elements would be written in Latin.
Your homework for this lesson, should you be interested, is to 
research further what possible Latinizations of your name might be.
If you find out anything, send it to me!  And I'll put it up on an
answers page.

If you're interested in using the Latin title that corresponds with
your rank in the SCA, you can find a list of Latin forms at:

http://www.sca.org/heraldry/titles.html

I also recommend this article for further reading:

"The Latinization of Names in the Middle Ages" by Magistra Nicolaa
de Bracton
http://members.tripod.com/nicolaa5/articles/latin.html

-Domina Arianuia



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