The Muslim Colony of Luceria Sarracenorum (Lucera): life and dispersion as outlined by onomastic evidence
By Mario Cassar and Giuseppe Staccioli
Published Online (2010)
Abstract: The life and dispersion of Lucerine Muslims in Apulia (c.1220–1300) are examined from the onomastic point of view. Many Muslim names are recorded in Latin-scripted official documents. These do not differ greatly from those reported by Salvatore Cusa and those found in the Maltese Militia List of 1419/20. Some Lucerine names present several variants which can be used as ‘markers’ to locate the presence of Muslims after their dispersion.
The diffusion of modern surnames related to these markers confirms reports in Angevin documents, namely that the cities of Naples and Barletta were the main centres for the subsequent relocation of Muslims. However, large concentrations of these surnames are to be found also in the regions of Latium and the Marches.
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4 Jul 2010
Tags: Italy, Onomastics
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Dialect in medieval Irish? Evidence from placenames
By Kevin Murray
Studia Celtica Fennica, Vol.2 (2005)
Introduction: he question of dialect in medieval Irish (incorporating Old and Middle Irish; c. 600–1200 AD) has received much passing attention but very little direct study. It was only when T.F. O’Rahilly addressed the subject, with the publication of his Irish dialects past and present, that the first fullscale work on the topic incorporated evidence from medieval Irish. He concludes that we know very little about dialectal differences in medieval Irish and that it is ‘probably during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that the formative period of our modern dialects is to be placed’. These conclusions anticipate most of the other work on the subject, which usually has two central theses, namely that any dialectal differences in medieval Irish were minor and have left no trace in the written sources and that Old Irish was such a uniform literary language that it tended to iron out possible traces of dialect.
In comparing the Senchas már with other law tracts of different provenance, D.A. Binchy notes that ‘one will search in vain for differences in style, composition or technical terminology’. He believes this to be the case because of regular interaction between the literati (including jurists) from all parts of medieval Ireland which helped keep the literary language free from dialect. He does argue, however, that a study of the later legal commentaries ‘may shed some light on the rise of dialects of spoken Irish’. Binchy does not explicitly state at what period in the compilation of these commentaries he expects the question of dialect to intrude, though he seems to rule out early Middle as well as Old Irish. A very conservative interpretation of Binchy’s views would lead one to a date of post1000 as the earliest time in which he believes dialectal evidence may begin to be found in the law tracts. However, this puts the possibility of finding written examples of dialect in Irish sources back before that which O’Rahilly was willing to allow.
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17 Aug 2009
Tags: Ireland, Onomastics
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Philological Inquiries 1: Method and Merovingians
Drout, Michael D.C.,
The Heroic Age, Issue 12 (May 2009)
Abstract
This is the first of a series of columns on philology. Philology is the foundation of humane letters, and we demonstrate the utility of the approach by discussing Tom Shippey’s examination of the word “Merovingian” in Beowulf. The philological approach is shown to illuminate culture, history and politics and shed new light on an old problem.
“Philology is the foundation of humane letters” wrote J.R.R. Tolkien in his “Valedictory Address” of 1959 (Tolkien 1979). And indeed this is obviously, even trivially, true if we consider the Oxford English Dictionary definitions of the word or the history of our disciplines. But, like the foundation of many an edifice, neglected or ignored until something goes wrong and the basement floods, philology is no longer visibly central to literary study. We think this is a mistake for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the power of philology to shed light on very important questions of literary interpretation.
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12 Jun 2009
Tags: France, Onomastics
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Uses and Values of the Term Kurd in Arabic Medieval Literary Sources
By Boris James
Paper presented at the American University of Beirut, Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (2006)
Abstract: In the study of the Kurdish group in Arabic medieval sources one is easily confused in considering the use made of the word “Kurd” (Kurd, pl. Akrâd). Most of the time it doesn’t fit into our comtemporary social and “ethnical” categories. Both this and the incoherence of establishing a continuity between the medieval period and the 21st century regarding the use of the term “Kurd”, led some scholars to consider that this word had an “ethnographic value” (Aubin, Van Bruinessen) and that only the life-style of the populations considered (nomadism and pastoralism) determined the way in which the term was used. Is this approach useful when interpreting the value of the term Kurd in the Medieval literature ? Could the notion of “representation” be a more valid and dynamic tool ? Is this incongruity, percieved by the readers of medieval sources, a result of a modulated use of this term which has been conditioned by several types of representations widely used when talking about this group ?
During this presentation I am going to share with you my research questions vis à vis some occurences of the word “Kurd”. Why in my point of view are some of these uses confusing ? We will then discuss the solutions. I will ask for your input. We will try to take into account the representations of the Kurds that are established in opposition to the “ideal” norms of the urban and well-read muslim society and that reveal a prospective from the center towards the periphery. Finally we will discuss the question of kurdish “ ethnicity” during the Middle Ages, its criteria and the manifestation of the sense of belonging beyond the usual stereotyped representations of the Kurds.
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25 Apr 2009
Tags: Middle East, Onomastics
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The Identification of Persons in the Middle Ages: Results From the First “Freiburger Bürgerbuch” (1341-1416)
By Urs Portmann
Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung(HSR), Vol. 6:2 (1981)
Introduction: The identification of persons, property and events is a well known procedure in historical research. Every compilation and representation of data concerning persons, groups of persons, events or property purports to add together information concerning identical units. For a long time this identification process was based only on the historical experience of the inquirer, but the use of electronic data processing today obliges the historian to explain his methods and thus the whole process of identification becomes more accurate and easier to control.
In the following paper, we shall describe the method used to identify persons in the project “Freiburger Bürgerbuch 1341-1416″. The first “Bürgerbuch” of the town of Freiburg in Switzerland from the year 1341 to 1416, is the most important medieval source of this kind in Switzerland . This source contains 2200 inscriptions with 7000 names. Each inscription includes the name of the “Bürger” his occupation, social position, place of origin and kinship relations. It also includes a “security-object”, such as a house, which can be situated from its road name, its owner and from the owners of the two neighbouring houses . The same person can therefore appear frequently in the book: as a “Bürger”, as an owner, or as a relative of someone else.
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2 Jan 2009
Tags: Germany, Onomastics
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Obscene Onomastics in Medieval Trickster Tales
By Louise O. Vasvári
Destiempos: Revista de curiosidad cultural, no.15 (2008)
Introduction: Names or nicknames of tricksters, who often appear in both oral culture and in literature in the guise of servants or fools, are infused with what Bakhtin called the grotesque debasement of language to the bodily lower stratum. This grotesque carnivalesque language, characteristic of the speech of the marketplace, emphasizes excrescences of the human body, especially the phallus, but also the nose, which often stands for it, as well as all the apertures of the body and hence the often interchanged activities of eating, copulation and excretion. It blurs, as well, the frontiers between categories of the human, the animate, and the inanimate. In this paper I shall exemplify the use of carnivalesque debasement in naming conventions of trickster figures, both in literary and subliterary texts from antiquity to the present, with primary emphasis on the medieval and renaissance periods.
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30 Nov 2008
Tags: Literature, Onomastics
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