Traditional Patronymics Being a Reply of Distant Past
We go on with our publication of a research regarding the sources of European patronymics widely used at present. This part is related to names that arrived from far-away past.
• Ancient Continental Germanic: Several widely familiar forenames, that are Arnold, Baldwin, Millicent, Alice, Gertrude, Jocelyn, Hilda, and Matilda – every of those have settled cognates in German, Dutch, French, and other languages – originated in Germanic pre-history. It is possible to utilize Polish translation to find more. They reached English by a shaded way. The official language of the judges of the Merovingian and Carolingian France (5th – 9th centuries) was Latin, but their vernacular language was a Germanic dialect, and their personal names were mostly of Germanic origin. These Frankish personal names became set-up in medieval France and in due course were picked up by the Vikings who lived in Normandy in the 9th century. After the Norman occupation of Britain in 1066, these given names were brought to England, where they largely replaced usual Anglo-Saxon personal names like Ethelred and Athelthryth. A very insignificant Anglo-Saxon given names survived, for example Edward, which was borne by King Edward the Confessor (c. 1002–1066; ruled 1042–1066), the offspring of an Anglo-Saxon man and a Norman woman, who was revered by Anglo-Saxons and Vikings alike. A quite different case is that of Alfred, an Anglo-Saxon patronymic that fell out from use under the Vikings, but was restored in the 19th century in commemoration of the famous 9th-century Royal of Wessex.
• Old Norse: Old Norse is, certainly, a Germanic language, but its naming custom is rather original from that of mainland Germanic, and many usual Norse forenames are still used in Scandinavia nowadays, for example Olaf, Harald, Hakon. There has been much borrowing from German (e.g., Helga, Ingeborg). Several Nordic names such as Ingrid have been adopted much more widely. Many looked for service of Polish translation into Slavic. In the latter situation, the film celebrity Ingrid Bergman (1915–1982) was a powerful attraction.
• Ancient Slavic linguas: Names that are Wojciech (Vojteˇch), BogusLaw (Bohuslav), and StanisLaw (Stanislav) are unlikely used in the English-speaking environment except among Slavic immigrants, but represent a vital and flowing Slavic tradition, with cognates in various Slavic linguas. Many such names are pre-Christian, whereas others have been sanctified by recognition as a saint’s name. Except where a saint has been involved, these forenames are not widely used in Russia, because there the Orthodox Church has strongly stood for using names associated with Christian patrons, such as Fyodor (Theodore) and Dmitri. These are predominately of Greek etymology. Within the Western Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks) and Southern Slavs (Serbs, Croatians, Slovenians, Bulgarians, etc.), every linguistic county of Slavic natives has its own contrast list of traditional given names, majority of which are of Slavic etymology.