The article deals with some selected compound surnames, the roots of which consist of -eis(en) ‘iron’. It provides a revealing insight into their morphology and etymology. The names in question are characteristically distributed in certain regions of Saxony and Bavaria. By metaphorically designating blacksmiths (occasionally even miners or peasants) they turn out to be obsolete dialect words or technical terms for various wrought-iron objects.

Mit beeindruckender Regelmäßigkeit – bei Vorhaben dieser Art heute durchaus nicht der Normalfall – sorgen die Herausgeber des „Deutschen Familiennamenatlas“ (DFA) für die konsequente Realisierung ihres onomastischen Großprojekts und – nicht weniger bedeutsam – die Erweiterung ihres Mitarbeiterstabs durch systematische Förderung, Qualifizierung und Einbeziehung junger Wissenschaftler. Der im Abstand von einem Jahr nach den beiden Grammatik-Bänden (Graphematik und Phonologie der Familiennamen: Vokalismus, Konsonantismus) erschienene dritte Band des DFA ist der Morphologie der Familiennamen gewidmet, mithin einer Thematik, wie sie in dieser Gründlichkeit, Differenziertheit und Vielschichtigkeit bisher noch nie behandelt worden ist.

In this article the Nienburg fragment from about 1180 is under linguistic scrutiny. The three eastern provinciae of the Nienburg Monastery situated in the historical eastern Lusatia are differentiated with help of linguistic methods according to particular paragraphs of the document. Special attention is given to some toponyms which could not have been attributed to definite places yet. It is presented a proposal to associate the place names to still existing geographical objects. Furthermore some geographical names are discussed and interpreted in a new way in contrast to former explanations. Thus characteristic feature of the Nienburg fragment becomes obvious: The Latin written document has preserved the Slavonic proper names in a graphic variant very closely to their original forms without reduction or any other influence of the German language on it.

The article gives a review about perceptional processes of proper names and its results after decades of exploration in the field of Sorbian-German contacts in everyday speech in the Middle ages. The toponymic material belongs to the region between the rivers Saale and Elbe in the West and the rivers Queis, Bober, Oder in the East of the considered regions. Phenomena recognized of systematical evidence are described in detail, i. e. phonematical, graphematical, morphematical, lexical, and semantical facts are performed. Phases of onymic integration, transsumption and transposition are exemplified. The process of integration is illustrated by variants of onyms as well as by processes of adaptation. Special attention is mentioned to the borrowing events of German place names in Sorbian language since the Middle ages.

In comparison with personal names toponyms have been rather neglected in studies on literary onomastics. Place names may seem less promising for onomastic research because authors tend to anchor their narratives in the actual world much more than characters. However, place names in literature fulfil important tasks: they mainly contribute to the fictional constitution of space. The question whether the actual counterparts of fictional place names are of any importance for the reader has been discussed very controversially. But place names may also help to create a certain mood or local colour. They even may indicate the passing of time. As all these phenomena are based on mental processes which take place in the reader’s brain this paper tries to study them with the help of actual cognitive science.

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.