DRAFT: A (very brief) guide to some Livonian naming patterns.

[pearl]

This guide has now moved to: https://heraldry.sca.org/names/slavic/livpatterns.html

Comments

[stitchwhich]

I would find this useful. It sucks about feminine names although I am unsurprised, given the historical "importance" of women. I especially found the intro useful. I barely know a thing other than the word "Latvian" so having a context and a map is something I need. It'll help the next time someone tells me that they "don't want to be quite German but they are not sure what they are because their persona comes from..." I'll be able to have a suggestion for them.

[pearl]

Ah, if you wait a couple of weeks (hopefully) then there will be Latvian names.


I'll see if I can rustle up a map (I can find maps of where Livonian was spoken in the late 20th century/early 21st, but that isn't quite what we're after here.)

[pearl]

Now with a map!

[stitchwhich]

The map is great! And I swear to gawd, it seems like you have more references than you have names. Would that those folks were a little more literate or history-minded or something. What a lot of work this must have been.

[pearl]

Part of it is that the really good descriptions for how names (and the history of Latvia) worked were in one set of sources, and the dated examples of names were in another. So it looks like a lot because there wasn't much "crossing over" in terms of referring to a single source that covered names and history.

Fortunately, the National Library of Latvia has some excellent online resources that have been digitised and have had a very nice (but not 100% perfect) OCR job done on them. So if a source mentions a particular name, you can often search for that precise spelling to figure out if it's from the SCA's period or not.

[pearl]

May have found some feminine names! I'm sure there are more hidden in Blese.

Blese p. 235 has:
Aleyte Ristinsche, 1461 identified as coming from rištīng "person, human being"
p. 215 has:
Grethe Mustessche, 1524, and
Ilsebe Mustesche, 1453 from Livonian mustā or Estonian must, "black".

Valentin Kiparsky. 1938. "Ostseefinnische Personennamen aus lettländischen Sammlungen" Sitzungsberichte der gelehrten estnischen Gesellschaft 1936.: 245-259, has more!

(better URL http://hdl.handle.net/10062/20993)

p. 255

Margareta Subberin, Riga, 1520

Barbara Zubersche, Ri­ga 1474

Katrina Subersche, Riga, 1475

Glossed as Livonian sõbrā "friend".


p. 253
Magdalene Must, Riga, 1506
Anna Must, Riga 1507
From Livonian mustā "black" (like the Mustes(s)che examples above, but without the German -sche suffix.)

p. 256
Margareta Sussen, Riga, 1506
Else Zuthsen, Riga, 1506
From Livonian suž "wolf". I'm not sure if the -en is acting like the (modern) German feminine suffix -in, like in the example of Subberin avove, or if it's something else.

And some masculine unmarked patronymics:
p. 250 Lembitte Lembe, 1582—83 both elements from Proto-Finnic *lempi, Finnish lempi, "love."
p. 251 Willem Lemmitte, 1582—83, Kiparsky associates this with Finnish lemmitty "beloved", and the Estonian name Lembit.
p. 252 Lembite Mely, 1582—83 from Livonian mēļ, Estonian meel, "mind, memory"

[stitchwhich]

No way! Sounding it out in my head, it sounds feminine, but I know how misleading that is. I hope it does prove to be. Even just one name would rock - how many Livonian female personae are going to be in the SCA anyway? It's okay if they have the same personal name, they'd likely not even be in the same kingdom. Right?

(And then Istvan talks 20 women into going Livonian just to pull our chains.)

[pearl]

It's very German, and also very clearly (gramatically) gendered as being a woman's name. So we're pretty safe. :)

Aleyt is a Low German form of Alice/Adelaide, and the -sche on the end of her byname is a Low German suffix used to feminise bynames (and in modern times to create feminine nouns). So, like a lot of names from this part of the world, it's the byname that hints that the name belonged to someone who wasn't necessarily German.

(Essentially, Livonians, Estonians and Latvians could have entirely German names and unless the records specified their ethnicity, we would never know in 2021 if the person with a German name in Livonia was from the German-speaking elite. But the German elites didn't use bynames with non-German or -Latin elements, only the indigenous inhabitants of Livonia did. I should probably mention that in the document... thank-you for the prodding!)

[stitchwhich]

Yeah, that would be important to include in the document. You are very welcome to my nonexistent prodding. :D

[pearl]

It has been re-tweaked. Please let me know if I have gotten your SCA name completely wrong (my memory is a bit rusty when it comes to dreamwidth handles!)

[stitchwhich]

You got my name right. Or I could just be Hróðný Luddite Herald. (I saw that only because I get a kick out of my (heraldically naughty) title. I don't really mean it. Because then you'd have to use Ursula's title too.

You have created a very useful document.

[pearl]

If I start using titles, I'm pretty sure I'd have to re-name myself to ffride Morelle (you see, I'm a fungi...) so perhaps not. ;-)

I hope it's useful, if only for when people come across names in Estonian and Latvian sources and then go looking for more context.

[ursula]

This looks great!

Proofreading notes: I'd drop the comma in the last sentence of the first paragraph in Section 2, and you've got a typo ("patroynymics") in Section 4.

[pearl]

I am certain that I can cram more y's into patroynymics though!

Thank-you for looking, Ursula!

Comments, details ..

[(Anonymous)]

This is a fantastic work! As a non-linguist, though language lover, I find it very completely comprehensible. As a former proofreader, I’d caution about overuse of commas (I won’t detail unless you request). In the first paragraph, I believe that it should be ‘were the indigenous people.’ If you’re setting off Salaca Livonia, add a comma after Courland Livonia to set it off as well. Lastly, the last sentence of the first paragraph in Section 5 tis incomplete ‘indistinguishable from …’ from German?
-Markéta z Prahy
(SCA MK SH)

Re: Comments, details ..

[pearl]

Believe it or not, the comma situation used to be far more dire. This is the improved version.

I'd spotted the ‘indistinguishable from...' problem though! :-)

Thank-you for all your help Markéta!