Being a European world capital with an extraordinary wide range of historical documents, 16th century Lisbon is a (not at all exotic) paramount example for the naming practice at the time. The presence of numerous foreigners from many different origins and motivation makes their names research topics of high interest for a variety of disciplines. The present contribution compiles numerous examples of core demographic sources (church registers, tax lists); an index facilitates the access.

Am 12. März 2013 verstarb in Moskau im 84. Lebensjahr die international bekannte russische Sprachforscherin Aleksandra Vasiljevna Superanskaja. Über Jahrzehnte war sie die zentrale Persönlichkeit der russischen Onomastik.

Since the 1990s, scholars from the fields of history and language participating in the interdisciplinary project "Nomen et Gens" have studied early medieval personal names in Europe. Core of the Project is a database concerning the onomastics and prosopography of the continental European barbarian kingdoms during long late Antiquity ca. 300–800 AD. The data was collected in the context of a project funded by the DFG and is currently being evaluated and offered to the public. Currently, about 10.000 name records are available online at www.neg.uni-tuebingen.de. This paper introduces the project, the current state of work and the data base; it also discusses problems of interdisciplinary cooperation especially concerning the lemmatisation of personal names.]

Dieser Artikel beschreibt einen neuen angewandten epistemologischen Aspekt der sogenannten Konvergenztheorie, die eine Homogenisierung der unterschiedlichen Ansätze auf dem Gebiet der indoeuropäischen Linguistik anstrebt. Es wird versucht, anhand von Ortsnamen in Verbindung mit der Wurzel *alb- und den semantischen Bedeutungsverschiebungen über Jahrhunderte ein europäisches und italienisches "Makro-Gebiet" (bzw. "Mikro- Gebiet") zu rekonstruieren. Es scheint, dass Paleo-Ligurische Ortsnamen wie Alba, alteuropäische Flussnamen wie Albis und ihre ablautenden Formen Olb- (> Orb- im Romanisch-Ligurischen) nicht direkt auf das Proto-Indoeuropäische Adjektiv *albho-, ‘weiß’ zurückgehen, sondern auf die weitere Prä-proto-Indoeuropäische Wurzel *Hal-bh-, ‘Wasser’, verwandt mit dem Sumerischen ḫalbia (> Akkadisch ḫalpium, ‘Quelle’, ‘Brunnen’, ‘Wassermassen’, ‘Wasserloch’). Eine weitere Analyse von *Hal-bh- führt zum Vergleich mit der Proto-Indoeuropäischen Wurzel *Hal-, ‘ernähren’. Das Proto-Indoeuropäische Suffix *HwaH-r-, ‘Wasser’, weist eine ähnliche Verbreitung auf.

In 2012, Namn och bygd, which is considered to be the world’s oldest specialised journal for place-name research, is publishing its one-hundredth issue. In this essay, the author attempts a survey of key aspects of the journal, and changes affecting it, since 1913. This includes comments on its aims, its editors and associate editors, contributing authors from different academic disciplines, contacts with other countries within and beyond the Nordic region, different sections of the journal and, of course, the scholarly content of Namn och bygd over the hundred years of its history.

Work is in progress to create an Atlas of Lower Sorbian Surnames with approximately 70 colered name cards on the basis of circa 63.000 records of names taken from sources of the 14. to 18. century. The cards will include the surnames which developed from Slavic composita as well as from their contracted and/or affectionate forms, and in addition surnames derived from occupational names and official titles, and from nicknames and ethnonyms. A few cards will be dedicated to anthroponymic suffixes as well as to combined areals. Every card will have a commentary to verbally describe the geographical distribution of the names. Statistical data concerning the number of diverse names as well as bearers of the names provide information about the productivity of each anthroponymic basis, and in addition, their occurrence in deanthroponymic place names in Lower Lusatia will be included. The submitted paper presents an introduction to the subject, goal, method and initial results of our research to date. As an example, four colered cards illustrate the territorial distribution of 68 diverse surnames and two suffixes.

Heretofore unknown and misinterpreted Sorbian surnames. In the first part of the article 38 previously unknown surnames found in archival sources in Upper Lusatia which were not taken into consideration earlier are explained. These include 1586 Tradell, Old Upper Sorbian *Tradula < *Stradula, to Proto-Slavic *stradati ‘to starve, suffer a shortage’, 1598 Twur, Old Upper Sorbian *Twoŕ < twoŕ , to Upper Sorbian tchor, Proto-Slavic *dъchorь ‘fitchew’, among others. They are also of special significance for the history of the Sorbian language. In the second part, upon critical perusal of the “Historical- etymological Dictionary” of “Studies of Sorbian Personal Names”, 104 names (1,3%) among the various 8.171 names listed, are rendered a new interpretation. These include for example 1568 Schorad, an old apotropaic name, 1422 Lemisch, an occupational nickname for the maker of plowshares. Several surnames are derived from place names, among them 1575 Zschygeran. In occasional instances a new interpretation resulted for the respective place name.

This text contains a comparative evaluation of street names of the urban periphery. Starting with Erfurt, street names of other Thuringian and German cities of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period are examined. In doing so, different groups of people are contemplated, such as prostitutes, barber surgeons and knackers, whose appellatives finally found their way into street names. The focus is on accumulations of such names in certain areas of a city; differences between large and small cities are illustrated as well. In the end, the conclusion highlights the hitherto underutilised significance of these street names.

Wir wollen an dieser Stelle in Thesenform Prinzipien des toponymischen Vergleichs zwischen Böhmen und Sachsen darlegen, um Anregungen für künftige komparative Forschungen zu geben.

The article continues to discuss the origins and the history of the Saxon place name Leipzig. Several questions are under scrutiny. Starting out from recent research which gives the oldest historical evidence of the place name Leipzig as Lib-, it deals with certain new doubts regarding explanations that try to date the origins of the place name in pre-monolingual times. The question whether one can assume an original Slavonic form to the Slavonic root *lib- is dealt with in detail. The results of this discourse are: Today’s research cannot give a satisfactory explanation that the primary place name is derived from Slavonic. Furthermore, the hypothesis of an existing pre-monolingual form is newly evaluated. In this regard also the formerly existing geographical setting of the area around Leipzig is considered as the deciding motive in naming the place.