Although the handbooks unanimously maintain that -gasse was the second element in compound medieval streetnames in the High German area of Southern and Central Germany, whereas -strate was the predominant second element in streetnames in the Low German area of Northern Germany, a closer look at Regensburg and Vienna documents surprisingly reveals that at least in these important South German cities -straße and not -gasse was the generic in the earliest German streetnames. It was only from the late 15th century onwards that -gasse began to replace -straße in Regensburg and Vienna. Later, in the 19th century, the word Gasse was connected with the idea of a narrow, unimportant street and therefore -gasse again made way for -straße, at least in Regensburg. An overview over the German-speaking area shows that in medieval documents -straße predominated along the river Danube, whereas in South-Western Germany and Switzerland as well as in Central Germany -gasse was favoured. The early appearance of -straße in Cologne and Leipzig is seen as the result of an influence of the more prestigious Low German -strate area.

The present scientific research examines the names of festal events (festivals, exhibitions, shows, contests, campaigns and etc) and their linguistic characteristics. Our purpose is to define the status of such names as proper names and to investigate the structural-semantic features of German and Russian names of festal events. In the course of this investigation we have come to the conclusion that the names are pinned down as a cause of the secondary artificial nomination. In general, the results of our analysis indicate that the identifying method of nomination proves to be the leading one. This fact can be explained by the specificity of the object of nomination, which is understood as an idea or concept underlying any festal event but not a definite object. To summarize the ideas, the choice of the nomination means (semantic, syntactical, word-forming and complex) is dependent not only upon the specific features of the object of nomination but upon the inbuilt potential of the language.

The paper presents a collection of proper names (first names and surnames), that was edited as a reprint from the Saxon Academy of Sciences (Leipzig). The now available names of the so called “Nienborger Atlas” contain more than 750 first names and surnames from homeowners of the city of Leipzig in the year 1712 and was not yet evaluated onomastically.

Danish family names seem to be easy to understand and interpret. The 50 most frequent Danish family names are carried by 70% of the Danish population, all of which end with the typical suffix –sen. Thus, other means than the family name are used to distinguish people carrying the same name, namely the first name and the middle name (e. g. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the name of the Danish Prime Minister). The history of laws concerning Danish family names is long, starting as early as 1526. Since then, six different laws were passed in 1828, 1857, 1898, 1904, 1961, and most recently, in 2005. All of these aimed at a diversification of the Danish name landscape. Today, every name that is carried by more than 2000 people, can be chosen by those who wish to change their family name. In the first year after the new law has been in force, 40000 Danes changed their family names and the authorities are expecting equally high numbers of applications for name changes in the coming years.

Es ist allgemein bekannt, dass Personennamen im Russischen eine immense Zahl von Verkleinerungsformen bzw. Diminutiva besitzen; solch eine Vielfalt von Ableitungsvarianten kennt keine andere Sprache. Die Fortschritte der Onomastik unterstreichen und beweisen dennoch die Notwendigkeit einer noch gründlicheren Forschung im Bereich der PN - nicht nur synchronisch, sondern vor allem auch diachronisch, weil sich die Geschichte der russischen Anthroponymie weit bis in längst vergangene Zeiten zurückverfolgen lässt und mit der Geschichte des russischen Volkes und seiner Sprache aufs Engste verbunden ist

Ziel der Dissertation war die Analyse der modernen tschechischen offiziellen Personennamenvarianten slawischen Ursprungs sowie der slawischen autochthonen Namen (Komposita und einstämmigen Namen), die in modernen tschechischen Familiennamen auftreten.

William CAMDEN launched the study of English Christian names 400 years ago. In the chapter 'Christian Names.' of his book Remaines of a Greater Worke(1605) he gives an account of the most important aspects of Christian names and presents two lists of those Christian names common at the time. CAMDEN not only exploits English scholarship but above all draws considerably upon Continental scholarship. It is his 'comparative' and source-based approach to Christian names that makes the aforementioned chapter a worthy pioneering work on English Christian names.

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This is the eighth in a series of interviews with Italian writers on literary names. The purpose of this series is to complement the indirect approach of investigating strategies of literary naming in literary texts by directly questioning those who give names to literary characters or places. The interviews are to provide evidence of tendencies in literary naming in contemporary Italian writers. General conclusions will in due course be drawn from the material to be presented in the series. The present interview with Luigi Malerba was conducted in Rome on 30 April 2005.

No description available.