In Thuringia and Hesse, considerable documentary evidence of the field name Eisfeld can be found. Localities so designated mostly lie close to settlements and bodies of water; they are usually less appropriate for agriculture. Their location and use, as well as phonetic reasons, suggest a compound with OHG âʒ ‘food, cattle feed’. Probably the original appellative noun OHG âʒifeld mostly designated pasture ground in the vicinity of settlements. Because some of these localities lay within settlements as early as in the Middle Ages, names of the Eisfeld type seem to be quite ancient. Documentary evidence from Bavaria, Austria and Switzerland shows that these terms also occur in Upper German, and there are indications of the same in Dutch.

The Nienburg fragment, named after Nienburg Monastery from where it originated around 1180, starts with a problematic list of several place names as Lighinici, Zrale, Crocovva, Cotibus, that have been implicitly connected so far to Kraków (Poland), to Liegnitz / Legnica as well as to Strehlen / Strzelin in Silesia, and to Cott bus in Lower Lusatia. The authors follow the historian Rudolf Lehmann in his assumption that these places were former stops along the way thus linking Zrale to Strehla on the River Elbe, Crocovva to the desolate Krakau at Königsbrück on the River Pulsnitz. Lighinici, which hasn’t been located yet, can be placed with the help of linguistic research to the desolate place Leichen (Lichen) near Dürrenberg on the River Saale (Sachsen-Anhalt). The number of place-names that include ‚Kirche’ (church) and ‚Markt’ (market) seems like a kind of travel-guide leading from the monastery at Nienburg to its holdings in Lower Lusatia.

Handbooks often insist on the popularity of male and female names from the Old Testament after the Reformation. Studies on name-giving practice in Westfalia by Michael Simon, in the Upper Palatinate by Rudolf KleinÖder and in the small town of Maulbronn in the Southwest of Germany by Horst Naumann and Konstantin Huber do not confi rm this assumption, neither does our own analysis of the names contained in the inscriptions of three graveyards in Nuremberg dating from 1581 to 1608 sustain this opinion. It is worth mentioning that Nuremberg adopted the Reformation in 1525. Our material clearly shows that the Reformation did not bring immediately a new way of personal naming and that Old Testament names were neither numerous nor very frequent.

Im Heft 97 der Namenkundlichen Informationen hat Karlheinz Hengst 2010 einen Überblick über 100 Jahre Namenforschung am Institut für Slavistik an der Universität Leipzig gegeben. Dem seien einige Bemerkungen zum germanistischen Anteil hinzugefügt.

Alpine Berge sind in der Regel gewaltige Gebilde, die man nicht wie einen Acker, eine Wiese, ein Waldstück, eine Geländeform oder einen Bach einfach benennen kann, denn solche Kleinelemente sind ja in der Regel nur Teile des Gesamtgebildes Berg, das keine persönlichen Eigentümer hat und das sich nicht einer einzigen Art von Bewirtschaftung fügen wird.

Seit Jahren steige ich am Magdeburger Hauptbahnhof ein und aus. Wenn dann die Ansage kommt, man sei in Magdeburg, kann man immer wieder bei einigen Fahrgästen ein ironisches Grinsen erkennen. Warum? Nun, in dem bei der Deutschen Bahn offenbar zentral erstellten Ansagetext wird Magdeburg mit langem -a- gesprochen, so wie auch das Wort Magd im Allgemeinen im Hochdeutschen artikuliert wird. Dieses kleine Beispiel ist für die Frage nach der Herkunft und Bedeutung des Ortsnamens Magdeburg von einiger Bedeutung, zeigt es doch, dass der Ortsname natürlich mit dem Wort Magd in Verbindung gebracht wird. Man spricht in derartigen Fällen bekanntlich von volksetymologischen Umdeutungen oder – vor allem in der Leipziger Onomastik – von (scheinbarer) sekundärer semantischer Motivierung. Im Fall von Magdeburg ist die Annahme, es liege das Wort Magd zugrunde, in fast einmaliger Weise seit Jahrhunderten nachgewiesen.

Im Nachfolgenden werden einige Ausschnitt e aus den Untersuchungen der historischen Familiennamen in der Raabau angeführt. Die Raabau liegt in Nordwest-Transdanubien in Ungarn. Das Zentrum des Forschungsgebietes ist die Kleinstadt Kapuvár. Im 18. Jahrhundert befanden sich hier kleine Siedlungen mit ungefähr je Tausend Einwohnern. In diesem Gebiet wurde Personennamenforschung in 26 Siedlungen durchgeführt. Die Zusammensetz ung der Bevölkerung zeichnet sich durch ihre Homogenität aus. Die Bewohner der Raabau gehörten der katholischen Kirche an, und nach ihrer Herkunft waren sie Ungarn. Diese letz tere Feststellung muss im 18. Jahrhundert – wegen der historischen Lage von Ungarn in früheren Jahrhunderten – betont werden. Vor der Darstellung der Forschungsergebnisse wird ganz kurz die historische Lage von Ungarn erklärt.

The names of the months corresponding to December in the Gothic calendar – jiuleis, in the English calendar as described by Bede – Giuli, and in the Old Icelandic semester-reckoning (misseristal) calendar – Ýlir, are cognates. I suggest that this occurrence is not a coincidence. I propose that certain features found in those calendars raise the possibility they are descendants of the Jubilees calendar, as formulated in the pseudepigraphical books of 1 Enoch and Jubilees.

This paper deals with place names ending in -leben which contain a single stem personal name as modifier with strong declension. A typological analysis shows both the distribution of name elements and regional differences between the main distribution areas Bode- and Unstrutkreis. This subtye of -leben names dominates in the Bodekreis but is less representative in the Unstrutkreis. The analysis is completed with a map.

Rare personal names in the Early Middle Ages. – Numerous Germanic personal names can only be evidenced a few times, some of them no more than once. The historical and geographic frames of reference for their respective classification as ‘rare’ are mainly the known inventory of Germanic names from the 4th until approximately the end of the 8th century within the Frankish territories east of the Rhine river as well as Gallo- and Italoromania. Obviously, there are various reasons for classifying a personal name as rare. The form of its tradition – perhaps accidentally and with great regional differences – certainly plays a role; but there is also a variety of linguistic and onomastic phenomena that could have greatly influenced the frequency of Germanic anthroponyms. They are criteria of both selection and limitation as well as new creativity. This article focuses on important features and mechanisms of name-giving, particularly regarding their potential for enabling names to remain rare.