The first part of the paper is a presentation of a doctoral thesis Hispano-romanisches Namenbuch submitted at the University of Trier (to be published in 2009 in the series 'Patronymica Romanica' by Niemeyer, Tübingen). The thesis is dedicated to the personal names of pre-Roman, Greek and Latin-Romance etymology in the Christian North of the Iberian Peninsula in the medieval period (6th-12th centuries). Comments on primary sources and structure are followed by a sample article (*Aurundo) from the thesaurus. In the second part of the paper a particular aspect of the Ibero-Romance onomasticon, which is its multicultural etymolo- gical composition, is discussed. Examples of medieval and modern personal names typical for each etymological layer (pre-Roman, Latin, Hebrew, Visigothic, Arabic, Franconian, Gallo-Romance) conclude the survey.

The first stratum of Spanish surnames in Germany goes back to Spanish soldiers fighting on German soil during the wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, the second one to Jewish immigrants of Spanish (and Portuguese) origin, who settled down in Northern Germany around 1600, and the third one to workers' immigration and exile in the second half of the 20th century. Special attention is given to the last stratum (problems connected with the use of telephone directories as a source, frequent Spanish surnames in present Germany, tendencies of linguistic integration).

The article illustrates 'nomination” as a special form of reference, containing an evaluative perspective of the language user on extra-linguistic entities (cf. REISIGL 2003. In the media discourse nomination referring to people appears as classification or as anthroponyms and can be instrumentalized. The corpus consists of the nominations of the candidates to the presidential election in France 2007, the nominations contained in the daily press of the 3 months preceding the election. In the field of nomination as anthroponyms it could be shown that in the media discourse the use of the family name alone and the use of both first name and family name can be considered as neutral, while the use of a nickname or the first name alone establishes a relation of inferiority, a phenomenon that could be observed only in the case of the female candidate Ségolène Royal. Nomination as classification of the other hand established the following representations: The hyper real figure of Nicolas Sarkozy was represented as an authoritarian, strong, experienced politician with a problematic character and a migration-background. Ségolène Royal was constructed as an emotional woman who is hardly known in the political landscape and has little political experience. François Bayrou was represented as a solid, Christian down-to-earth personality, at the third place behind the other two and Jean Marie Le Pen as extreme right wing and the oldest candidate behind the other three. It could be shown that nominations (as classifications or anthroponyms) construct representations of the candidates which correspond even before the elections to their result.

The article gives a survey about a new manual to the Celtic languages in Western Europe. Its author is the German linguist Herbert PILCH (university of Freiburg). As a book of reference the title is especially recommended to students of Onomastics as well as to readers with interests in Celtic names or names of Celtic origin in other languages. It stands in sharp contrast to a pseudo-scientific tendency of explaining anthroponyms and toponyms in Eastern Germany with the help of “Celtic roots' based on an old obsolete publication with a large following in recent times. The main argument there is the statement German people spoke Celtic based dialects up to the Middle Ages and thus all names have only been horribly bent by adapting to the modern German language. The book Die keltischen Sprachen und Literaturen is therefore of especial importance to refute unscientific opinions and intentions.

The article aims at demonstrating problems in connection with the process of reconstructing Old-Sorbian place names in the area of Upper and Lower Lusatia. On the basis of two books published in 2006 and 2008 by the well known onomast Walter WENZEL (Leipzig) and a critical contribution by the Sorbian linguist and specialist in etymologies Heinz Schuster- Šewc(Bautzen/Budysin) several important and necessary points of view regarding the past of more than thousand years in the tradition of place names are described and discussed.

In this article the dialect form and its history of a German place-name is discussed. Although this dialect-form has already been found to be of Slavonic origin according to a leading linguist of Sorbian languages this article adds another comparable Sorbian vernacular form of an other place-name unconsidered up till now. In this way two dialect forms are the sources in character and value of primary Old-Sorbian place-names formed in the Middle Ages and have been existing thus without any written traditional forms for many centuries.

In 2001 the first edition of the “Historical Dictionary of Toponyms for Saxony” was published, the new edition of the “Lexicon of Places in Saxony” was released in 2006. The present article compares both standard works of Saxon regional history and historical cultural studies, describes synergies and draws the model of a common knowledge system in the digital world.

In our 'Upper Lausitz Book of Place Names' the Slavic place names are given on eight colered maps with reference to soil value, in order to be able to determine the historical classification of the types of Slavic place names more precisely and to draw conclusions concerning the history of land-settlements. As a result it appears that the patronymic place names ending in -ici and -owici, as well as the habitative names ending in -jane and -y only occur where the soil was good, with values ranging between 50 and 70 points on a scale of 10 to 100. Other place names, including those ending in -jb, -ow, -in etc. also appear in rare instances here, but occur predominantly in areas of poor quality soil with values ranging between 20 und 50 points. They are therefore to be considered as later formations. Thus the oldest areas of land-settlement can be defined quite accurately and separated from later land-settlements. Our article presents a summary of the section in our book of place names dealing with the history of land-settlement and is illustrated with two new maps.

The article deals with an apparantly clear and uncomplicated place name: Pobershau in the central Erzgebirge region. By examining the early history of the settlement and the documentary records of its name, the author questions the different ways of interpretation put on it previously. He has his doubts about the name's pattern of word formation. To his mind Pobershau does not contain the root -hau which in comparable toponyms of the region generally denotes clearings of woodland for farming. Instead, the name is closely connected with the key role of mining. To all appearances, a similar but obscure dialect word, denoting a dilapidated house or shed, was adapted to other names of the type ending in -hau. - With his argumentation the author brings not only a new etymology of Pobershau up to discussion but at the same time turns our attention to the importance of dialect words for a closer linguistic approach to later place names.

The paper deals with the techniques of sanctifying space through the toponym Łysa Góra [Kahlberg] and similar names. Originally, these forms illustrated the mythology of former residents living in a territory and their system of beliefs. According to these beliefs, hilltops and peaks of mountains represent the cosmological heaven, the centre of the local space (the pre-sacred). In the secondary way, the considered proper names are an example of the influence that new Christian religion exerted upon the inhabitants of the given space. During the Counter-Reformation this religion consolidated the awareness of the force of the infernal power (the anti-sacred).