Namenkundliche Informationen (NI) (E-Journal)
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Eine deutsche ‚Schicksalsgemeinschaft‘ im Spiegel ihrer Namen: Studie zu Bernhard Schlinks Roman Der Vorleser
Full text linkSchool student Michael Berg (15) becomes involved in an erotic
relationship with Hanna Schmitz (36), to whom he reads from works of literature
during their lovers’ trysts. Hanna constantly calls Michael mein Jungchen
(‚my young laddie‘), while the latter addresses her not just as Hanna but also
using pet names such as Boukeffelchen (Alexander the Great’s tempestuous
war horse was called Boukephalos). Years later Michael recognizes Hanna
among the accused in a concentration camp trial. When she falsely assumes
responsibility for the authorship of a report on the death of a group of concentration
camp prisoners, Michael realizes that Hanna would rather accept a long
prison sentence than admit to her illiteracy.
The name Michael Berg reminds us of locations around Heidelberg (e.g. Michelsberg);
Berg also alludes to the hill as a location of insights and to Michael’s
complicated Schicksalsgemeinschaft with a concentration camp guard. While
the simplified name Hanna evokes childishness and motherliness, Schmitz recalls
the hissing of the horsewhip used by many concentration camp supervisors.
Hanna also readily evokes the name Hannah Arendt, while Schmitz is
a common, everyday surname whose occurrence is reminiscent of A Report
on the Banality of Evil, the subtitle of Hannah Arendt’s book Eichmann in
Jerusalem
Die Mark Schmelz in der Dübener Heide. Ein Exempel in Sachen Flurnamenforschung
Full text linkMinor names or microtoponyms are typically collected and analysed
in etymological dictionaries. However, this may not be the most productive
method in every case. More importantly, names should be analysed within the
context of the communication community whose members created and used
them. In rural settlements, these were primarily landowners. With the threefield
crop rotation system (Dreifelderwirtschaft), which dominated agriculture
in Central Europe from the Middle Ages until the 19th century, farmers had to
be in constant discourse about the areas under cultivation, and this was not
possible without using microtoponyms. For this reason, land users in each and
every village established a special system of nomination within their local subdistrict.
A detailed investigation of these names, taking account of this local
perspective and considering the geographical, linguistic, sociolinguistic, ecological
and historical context, identifies the specific reasons behind each individual
nomination, which is very helpful in determining the meaning of more
or less frequent name elements in general. Thus, only detailed studies of this
kind provide a sound basis for various analyses – etymological, cognitive and
others – of microtoponyms in general. This is demonstrated with the example
of one local subdistrict, namely, a deserted village in a hilly and forested part of
the countryside between Berlin and Leipzig. The minor names there have to be
extracted from artificial nominations for land parcels, created for the purposes
of land reallocation in the 19th century. The names were analysed and subsequently
set in relation to the context suggested by different archival sources
Sprachliche Integration: mittelalterliche Ortsnamen im Kontaktgebiet des Kantons St. Gallen
Full text linkThe article deals with toponyms in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland
with regard to language contact. Since the emergence of the Romance
language in late antiquity (3rd-6th century AD) and until the Germanisation
in the early Middle Ages (ca. from the 9th century until ca. the 14th century)
St. Gallen has functioned in an interaction of two languages: Old Romansh
and Old High German. This sequence can still be identified in a considerable
number of toponyms. Here we want, first, to show how Romansh toponyms
were transferred to Swiss German and, second, to discuss the methodological
challenges facing toponymists when dealing with names in contact areas.
Based on the categorization of Nicolaisen (1996) various types of adaptational
processes such as translations, analogical re-formation and re-interpretation
are illustrated and discussed using names and historical name data from the
database «Flurnamen des Kantons St. Gallen». Two important categories in
this regard are phonological adaptation and morphological translation. Finally,
the study offers an insight into how toponomastics in an ancient contact area
can help to reconstruct an extinct language, i.e. Old Romansh.
Alternativen namentlicher Anrede als Ressourcen sozialen Handelns: ein Fall für die Interaktionale Onomastik
Full text linkThe sociolinguistic literature suggests that the choice of terms of
address (e.g. nickname, term of endearment, kin term, first name, or prefix
+ last name) depends on the identities of the participants and the settings in
which they are used. However, the names which participants use to address
their co-participants may also vary within single episodes of social interaction,
whereby terms of address with specific names are not only bound to specific
participants but to the social activities in which the participants are engaged
as well. This paper investigates from an interactional-onomastic perspective
how participants rely on specific terms of address in sequences of turns-attalk
as a resource to get things done. Detailed analyses of sequences in which
family members address their co-participants with first names as opposed to
nicknames and kin terms demonstrate that specific names serve as means for
the locally situated recalibration of identities that participants methodically
use to contextualize social actions. The results are discussed along with their
implications for both the study of social action and the study of names. Data
are from family interactions in Germa
Dissonante Namen. Die Namen in E.T.A. Hoffmanns Märchen Die Königsbraut
Full text linkEven after having achieved international fame with his fantastic
stories, the Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann considered himself more as a
musician and composer than as a writer. In his theoretical writings about music,
he extolled the value of dissonances, though he produced them rather more
in his poetic works than in his musical compositions. These dissonances can be
distinctly perceived in the proper names found in his fairy tale The King’s Bride
which, with the exception of the river Main and the personal name Anna/
Ännchen, are all invented by Hoffmann
ab dem Hooff vnnd gůt das Käller gůt: Namenglieder und Appellative in ihrem Kontext
Full text linkThe article focuses on place names in the canton of Lucerne in Central
Switzerland. It deals with the place-name elements -guet and -hof, the Swiss
German appellatives Guet (‚piece of land, farm‘) and Hof (‚court, farm‘), and
the phrase Hof und Guet. Based on the corpus compiled by the research project
Luzerner Namenbuch it presents an analysis of their distribution. It is shown
that both the names, the appellatives and its phrase are rare in the sources from
the eastern area (the Rigi mountain region) compared to the western region
of Entlebuch. The last part of the article focuses on the example of Källerhof,
where it is shown how the context interacts with the name and how there may
be different names for the same object through time
Zeigen slawische Namen mit altsorbisch grod wirklich eine Burg an? Was verbirgt sich hinter den Ortsnamen mit dem altsorbischen Element grod?
Full text linkThis article discusses whether Old Sorbian toponyms including the
element grod really do indicate a fortification. The paper arises out of a disagreement
between the archaeological point of view and the linguistic interpretation
of names formerly containing grod. The recommendation offered here is to
explain such toponyms as names that refer to a settlement that provides shelter
Facetten einer Interaktionalen Onomastik: ‚Die Maus liebt dich!‘ – Onymische Selbstreferenzen in der Interaktion
Full text linkThis paper, which seeks to contribute to the field of Interactional
Onomastics (De Stefani 2016), addresses onymic forms of self-reference in
computer-mediated interactions. Applying theoretical and methodological
concepts developed in Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics, the
study looks at onymic forms as communicative practices. In SMS and Whats-
App exchanges, participants systematically deviate from the default use of the
deictic pronoun and shifter ich (I) and mobilize a range of different onymic
forms (e.g. personal names, kinship terms, pet names, ad hoc titles, categorizations
etc.) as communicative
practices when referring to themselves. I argue
that these onymic forms, which go against the „preference for using a minimal
form“ (Sacks/Schegloff 1979), do more than simply refer to the speaker/
writer: Participants use address inversions and third person reference forms
(instead of the deictic pronoun ich) as „social indices“ (Silverstein 1976: 37) to
contextualize various social meanings – which would be hidden in cases of „referring
simpliciter“ (Schegloff 1996) – by means of the deictic pronoun ich
Strukturen von Humanistennamen mit den Suffixen ‑us und ‑ius in Deutschland
Full text linkMany family names in Germany were Latinised under the influence
of Renaissance Humanism by adding the suffixes ‑us or ‑ius (so-called Humanist
names). These suffixes differ regarding their number of syllables and their
impact on the prosody of the family name. The suffix ‑ius, when added to a
family name consisting of at least two syllables, always leads to a shift of the
accent (Cremér-ius), whereas this is not necessarily the case with ‑us (Móllerus
/ Mollérus). It appears that structures consisting of a disyllabic German
family name and the suffix ‑ius are particularly frequent and that this suffix is
often preceded by a nasal or a liquid. Clearly this pattern could also be applied
if the underlying family name was monosyllabic. In this case a supplementary
syllable was added such as ‑en or ‑el (Franck – Franck-én-ius). The suffix ‑us
– apart from its use in patronymics (Arnold‑us) – was of little significance in
the forming of Humanist names, however