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!)
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Date: 2021-12-22 10:05 am (UTC)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!)