A Small Slavonic Region called Nice? A reply to Walter Wenzel´s paper about “The provincia Nice”. – The present essay on the early-medieval settlement areas at the River Neiße/Nysa Łużycka in Lower Lusatia, deals with the issue of the provincia Nice, a name which appears among the toponyms of the region and has been the subject of a joined study together with Ernst Eichler. The only written evidence documenting Nice is the chronicle of Thietmar of Merseburg. Its localization is unknown, and all attempts to localize it remained as yet unconvincing. The proposition of the aforementioned study is, that this name may be referring to the only known settlement area at the lower Neiße river which went by the name Selpuli, thus assuming that Nice was effectively a quasi- synonym for Selpuli. Walter Wenzel contradicted this and localized Nice in a smaller area around the present-day town of Forst. For his reconstruction he used place names, archaeological findings and personal names. In this article all of his arguments are revisited (parts 2–4) and, as a result it is found, that not all of them can be accounted for as indicative of an early medieval settlement. Therefore Wenzel’s theory yields no evidence which would invalidate the proposition that Nice geographically coincides with Selpuli. Finally (parts 5 and 6) this assumption is discussed in the context of settlement geography, including a short analysis about the use of the terms pagus and provincia in Thietmars chronicle.

Mandarin Chinese numeral classifiers receive considerable at-tention in linguistic research. The status of the general classifier 个 gè re-mains unresolved. Many linguists suggest that the use of 个 gè as a noun classifier is arbitrary. This view is challenged in the current study. Relying on the CCL-Corpus of Peking University and data from Google, we investigated which nouns for living beings are most likely classified by the general clas-sifier 个 gè. The results suggest that the use of the classifier 个 gè is motivated by an anthropocentric continuum as described by Köpcke and Zubin in the 1990s. We tested Köpcke and Zubin’s approach with Chinese native speakers. We examined 76 animal expressions to explore the semantic interdepen-dence of numeral classifiers and the nouns. Our study shows that nouns with the semantic feature [+ animate] are more likely to be classified by 个 gè if their denotatum is either very close to or very far located from the anthropo-centric center. In contrast animate nouns whose denotata are located at some intermediate distance from the anthropocentric center are less likely to be classified by 个 gè.

Machine translation (MT) is experiencing a renaissance. On one hand, machine translation is becoming more common and used in ever larger scale, on the other hand many translators have an almost hostile attitude towards machine translation programs and those translators who use MT as a tool. Either it is assumed that the MT can never be as good as a human translation or machine translation is viewed as the ultimate enemy of the translator and as a job killer. The article discusses with various examples the limits and possibilities of machine translation. It demonstrates that machine translation can be better than human translations – even if they were made by experienced professional translators. The paper also reports the results of a test that showed that translation customers must expect that even well-known and expensive translation service providers deliver a quality that is on par with poor MT. Overall, it is argued that machine translation programs are no more and no less than an additional tool with which the translation industry can satisfy certain requirements. This abstract was also – as the entire article – automatically translated into English.

The Rosetta Stone is one of the most important stone fragments in history. It is the most popular single object in London’s British Museum, has been the object of scholarly research and has had much written about it. Indeed, any account of the history of translation will at least mention the Rosetta Stone. Today, the name “Rosetta” is used metaphorically in the context of translation, foreign-language learning, and even space exploration. In the light of this, one would assume that all sources are in agreement on the facts but, surprisingly, this is not the case. This article shows that sources disagree even in the most obvious aspects, such as the material, colour, condition of the stone and, in particular, with respect to its discovery. Based on an excursion to Alexandria, Rashíd and the – in all likelihood – real discovery site in the Nile delta, this article provides facts and casts some doubt on the reliability of internet sources.

In the legal systems of the Romanic legal family four major types of attribution of the child’s name may be distinguished: 1) obligatory transmission of father’s name; 2) choice between father’s or mother’s name; 3) obligatory transmission of father’s and mother’s name; 4) choice between father’s name, mother’s name or father’s and mother’s name. There is a strong tendency towards a more liberal approach. Therefore, the fourth type is gaining importance. In the Romanic legal systems marriage has no influence on the legal name of the spouses. They keep their own name during the marriage. But most legal systems accept that the spouses have the right to use each other’s name.

The article discusses the linguistic and pragmatic features of personal names in the Russian language that cause name-bearers to have problems with documents (name identity) and create conflict situation in the legal field. The main reason is the fact that a personal name in Russian has a large number of morphological and orthographic variants. Variant forms can occur with declension of Russian and foreign surnames, as well as through transliteration from Cyrillic to Latin. The article gives examples of unusual personal names that have emerged in the last decade and discusses their conformity / non-conformity with the norm. A conclusion is made regarding the expansion of boundaries of onomastic norm in the modern Russian language and the fruitfulness of interdisciplinary contacts between linguists and lawyers in dealing with conflict situations related to proper names.

The investigation of the Russian name law shows that it has a marked continental European approach. Acquisition and name changes of a natural person are governed by strict regulations, nevertheless, the legislation grants a limited freedom of choice. Names for natural persons in Russia continue to fullfill important identification and individualization functions. A name gives linguistic recognition to a person, through which they are distinguished from other people. It makes the name-bearer clearly responsible, and socially and legally tangible. The identification function serves both the interests of the state and the general public. The legal name is entered into the register of births, upon the birth certificate and subsequent personal papers. Furthermore, the name is personally legally valid, so that it serves the individualization function for the name-bearer, who has an interest in being able to be so distinguished by name from others.

Als einer der Verantwortlichen für die Organisation verabschiedete Christian Lohse die Teilnehmer mit einem herzlichen Dank an die Referenten und einer Deutung des im Tagungsthema enthaltenen Namens Europa. Er übernahm sie aus der antiken Literatur zum Europa-Mythos.

Starting from the analysis of numerous similar place names, on the one hand, and, on the other, of a large volume of documentation on archaeological sites and local traditions, this study explains the name of the most important megalithic monument on the Iberian Peninsula, [Cueva de] Menga (Antequera, province of Malaga). The name is based on an anthroponym which denoted a mythical female creature, to whom the Castilian settlers that had arrived in the late Middle Ages attributed the construction of dolmens. This constitutes an onomastic mechanism based on popular traditions spread over large parts of the Iberian Peninsula, and even over large parts of Europe.

The article aims to give an overview over the author’s work on the oldest layers of toponyms and hydronyms in Central Europe (including a short detour to Italy). In the course of almost one decade some three dozen names were treated. More often than not, the scientific standards of modern Indo-European linguistics were applied for the first time in etymologizing these names. In some cases arguments for new etymologies could be brought forward, in many cases more precise etymologies could be offered – but in some cases it also had to be stated that the formerly given ‘one and only’ etymological solution had to be discarded of in favour of an array of (sometimes four, five or even more) viable solutions. But in spite of such (to some readers maybe discouraging) results, it should become clear that only this modern way of Indo-European linguistics will lead to results so reliable that further research can be based on them. In the second part of the paper several tables will give a compact overview comparing old solutions and new findings concerning a number of river-names.