I present the essentials of my thinking about names over the last 20 years, stimulated mainly from a historical linguistic point of view to think about the question of how expressions which are not names etymologically come to be used as names. The resultant theoretical approach, The Pragmatic Theory of Properhood (TPTP), is intended to be valid for names in all categories: place-names, personal names, business names, and so on. As regards the law, personal names and business names form the most interesting categories, but I draw most of my examples from the categories of names applying to persons. I set out what seem from the perspective of TPTP to be the most important linguistic questions about the nature of names that may have legal implications, and the answers to which may vary in different jurisdictions. These questions are framed with personal names in mind, but some may apply also in the case of businesses.

Using examples taken from historical name inventories, focusing on Portugal and France, this paper delineates mechanisms of name-giving (or better naming) as a result of administrative practice without any legal basis. An analysis by social classes (middle and under classes, aristocracy, foundlings, among others) demonstrate significant differences.

This article deals with problems related to the tradition of name evidences in written documents. Those written sources functioning as mediating medium for the variant types of the names, have a specific context of origin and tradition, which makes its use for the etymological derivation problematic. Taking the example of the written evidences cited in the German Book of Water Names edited by Albrecht Greule for the rivers Milde, Biese and Aland, the importance of a source-critical analysis for every single document used there shall be shown. The aim of the study is not only to provide new insights into the etymological derivation of the river names in the Altmark, but also to illustrate the importance of an interdisciplinary approach in onomatology.

The Slavonic district Quezici in the light of place names. ‒ The Slavonic district Quezici is mentioned for the first time in a document by Otto I, dated 961, as regio Quezici, in qua inest civitas Ilburg. Past linguistic research localized this district as a narrow strip of land beginning on the left bank of the Mulde river in the vicinity of Eilenburg which extended ca. 15 km to the north. The analysis and mapping of the Slavonic place names in the Eilenburg district revealed a clearly definable settlement area farther south. It extended from Taucha in the west to Müglenz, east of the Mulde. In the west it bordered on the pagus Chutici, in the north on the tribal area of the Siusili, in the south on the district Neletici. In the east a wide primeval forest belt separated the Quezici, Old Sorbian *Kvasici ‘Kvas people’, from the Slavonic tribes in the Elbe valley.

In the last years two millennia were celebrated in Merseburg: In 1013 the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Henry II, met there with the King of Poland, Bolesław Chrobry, and in 1015 the Merseburg cathedral was consecrated. Thus it is not surprising that linguists, too, took again some interest in the town and the still unclear etymology of its name. The first was Christian Zschieschang, showing in two papers the potential relevance of the medieval etymology ‘city/castle of (the war-god) Mars’, the second was Karlheinz Hengst, proposing the name might mean ‘city / castle with a good overview (over the surroundings)’ and the last one to join was Harald Bichlmeier arguing (based on an idea by Albrecht Greule) for a ‘castle/town at the area with rocks / stones / pebbles’.

The name of the small town Merseburg, some 15 km south of the city of Halle (Saale) has puzzled researchers for decades. Several solutions have been proposed, but all of them were flawed with respect to phonology and / or morphology and / or semantics. Here a new solution, first proposed by Albrecht Greule in 2014 can be corroborated taking also the geological formations of the surroundings of Merseburg into account. Greule connected the first part of the compound name Merse- with names of lakes and islands in Scandinavia. Together with a Swedish dialectal term for ‘heap of stones’ these names point to several terms with the structure Proto-Germ. *mVrs/zV- ‘(having) stone(s)/pebble(s)/rock(s)’ (originally ‘the crushed one’ vel sim.). North of the city of Merseburg we find on the left bank of the river Saale – below thick layers of mud, which might not be older then the Middle-Ages – an area of about 500 × 3000 m characterized exactly by rock and pebbles. Thus Merseburg might have been the ‘castle / town at the area with rocks / stones / pebbles’ – or, more pointedly: the ‘castle on the rocks’.

The toponym Merseburg and its mystery. ‒ The article is focused on the history of the local name Merseburg, the name of a town at the river Saale in Eastern Germany. Because this river was a borderline between Germanic and Slavonic tribes the possibilities of Slavic origin are discussed and finally negated. The historical forms documented since more than thousand years allow the reconstruction of an already Germanic or Old Low German name *Marsiburg and later Mersiburg with the meaning ‘high and secure place’. This new proposal is founded on facts from the history of the German language and dialectology.

Professor Dr. Hans Walther, Historiker und Germanist, ist im Alter von 94 Jahren am 9. Juli 2015 verstorben. Er war über sechs Jahrzehnte Steuermann und zugleich auch Lotse vor Ort bei sprachhistorischen Tiefgängen und Erkundungen zur Siedlungs- sowie Kulturgeschichte in frühen Zeiten in unserem östlichen Mitteldeutschland.

Am 28. November 2015 verstarb Horst Naumann, kurz nach seinem 90. Geburtstag, dem 20. November. Dieser hohe Ehrentag, zu dem ich eine Laudatio verfasst hatte, konnte krankheitsbedingt nur in stark reduzierter Form gefeiert werden. Das war ein Jahr zuvor noch ganz anders. „Der 89.“, so schrieb Horst Naumann Weihnachten 2014, „hat alles bisher Erlebte in den Schatten gestellt.“ Familie, Freunde und Kollegen feierten ausgiebig den bis dahin und auch noch danach in vielen Bereichen rastlos Tätigen. In meiner Laudatio zu seinem 80. Geburtstag, in der ich sein Leben und Wirken zu würdigen versuchte (NI 87/88 [2005], 433-445; vgl. auch meine Würdigung in Horst Naumann, Flurnamen. Struktur – Funktion – Entwicklung, hg. von Andrea Brendler und Silvio Brendler, Hamburg 2011, 7-11), habe ich eben dies vorausblickend betont: „wer ihn kennt, weiß, es wird weitergehen mit dem Forschen und Vermitteln“ (ebd. 442).

Das erste Mal gesehen und zugehört habe ich Wilhelm F.H. Nicolaisen am 13. August 1984. Es war der Eröffnungstag des XV. Internationalen Kongresses für Namenforschung in Leipzig mit dem Generalthema „Der Name in Sprache und Gesellschaft“. Sehr beeindruckt war ich damals davon, was er alles über Leipziger Namenforschung sagte. In den „Namenkundlichen Informationen“ erscheint sein Name erstmals 1974. Rosemarie Gläser rezensierte sein Buch „The Names of Towns and Cities in Britain” (Gläser 1974). Später rezensiert er auch für unsere Zeitschrift, so zum Beispiel ausführlich die Studie von Ines Sobanski: „Die Eigennamen in den Detektivgeschichten Gilbert Keith Chestertons. Ein Beitrag zur Theorie und Praxis der literarischen Onomastik“ (Nicolaisen 2000). Vier Aufsätze hat Wilhelm F.H. Nicolaisen in unserer Zeitschrift veröffentlicht: „Über Namen in der Literatur“ (Nicolaisen 1980a), „Zur Namenforschung in den USA“ (Nicolaisen 1980b), „Die Welt der Namen“ (Nicolaisen 1998) und „Ortsnamen als Zeugnisse der Siedlungsgeschichte Nord-Ost-Schottlands“ (Nicolaisen 2002). Wilhelm F.H. Nicolaisen war einer der allerersten, der Mitglied der 1991 gegründeten Gesellschaft für Namenforschung wurde und sich immer für sie interessiert und engagiert hat. Der Arbeitsstelle an der Universität Leipzig schenkte er alle seine Veröffentlichungen. Wir haben viele Gründe, Bill Nicolaisen in dankbarer Erinnerung zu behalten!