Custom Forenames Like a Response of Distant Past
We go on with the publication of a overview regarding the origin of European patronymics globally used today. Next part is related to names that arrived from far-away past.
• Ancient Mainland Germanic: Some very known forenames, that are William, Robert, Richard, Roger, Geoffrey, Guy, Hugh, and Matilda – all of those have settled ties in German, Dutch, French, and other linguas – originated in Germanic pre-history. It is possible to utilize English to Polish translation to find more. They approached English by a circuitous way. The official language of the judges of the Merovingian and Carolingian Franks (5th – 9th centuries) was Latin, but their everyday language was a Germanic dialect, and their given names were predominantly of Germanic origin. These Frankish personal names appeared to be established in medieval France and in due time were picked up by the Normannes who lived in Normandy in the 9th century. After the Norman occupation of Britain in 1066, these personal names were brought to England, where they largely replaced traditional Anglo-Saxon given names such as Ethelred and Athelthryth. A very insignificant Anglo-Saxon personal names preserved, for example Edward, which was borne by King Edward the Confessor (c. 1002–1066; ruled 1042–1066), the ancestor of an Anglo-Saxon father and a Norman woman, who was revered by British and Normans alike. A quite different case is that of Alfred, an Anglo-Saxon name that fell out from use because of the Normans, but was restored in the 19th century in honor of the famous 9th-century Royal of Wessex.
• Old Norse: Old Norse is, of course, a Germanic language, but its naming tradition is rather different from that of mainland Germanic, and many usual Norse names are still used in Scandinavia nowadays, for example Olaf, Harald, Hakon. There has been much brought from German (e.g., Helga, Ingeborg). Several Nordic patronymics such as Ingrid have been adopted much more broadly. Many looked for language service into Slavic. In the latter case, the film star Ingrid Bergman (1915–1982) was a powerful influence.
• Old Slavic languages: Names such as Wojciech (Vojteˇch), BogusLaw (Bohuslav), and StanisLaw (Stanislav) are hardly known in the English-speaking world except among Slavic immigrants, however demonstrate a strong and independent Slavic tradition, with cognates in different Slavic languages. A lot of such names are pre-Christian, whereas others have been sanctified by recognition as a saint’s name. Except where a saint has been involved, these forenames are not much used in Russia, because there the Orthodox Church has strongly stood for using names associated with Christian patrons, such as Fyodor (Theodore) and Dmitri. These are predominately of Greek origin. Among the Western Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks) and Southern Slavs (Serbs, Croatians, Slovenians, Bulgarians, etc.), every linguistic community of Slavic natives has its own contrast set of custom personal names, majority of which are of Slavic origin.