The book studies general name theoretical questions and universal features of personal name giving and also provides a description of the personal name system of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. The chapters on name theory introduce a cognitive-pragmatic model that is suitable for the characterization of the anthroponym system of any language in any of its historical eras. In the chapters discussing the features of old Hungarian personal name giving and usage we can find a specific application of the theoretical model. The medieval Carpathian Basin provides an excellent opportunity for such an analysis for several reasons. On the one hand because this region was at the crossroads of languages and cultures in the Middle Ages and this also clearly influenced its anthroponym systems. On the other hand, the time period under scrutiny, the Middle Ages (and more precisely the Old Hungarian Era between 895 and 1526) witnessed the restructuring of the name system on multiple levels, including the appearance and ensuing dominance of personal names of a Latin origin as a result of the country becoming a Christian nation and the emergence of family names as a new personal name category. The book also provides a detailed overview of the historical process in which personal name categories and personal name types were built and relied on one another. Dieses Buch behandelt einerseits allgemeine namenstheoretische Fragen und universelle Charakteristika der Personennamengebung und Personennamenverwendung, andererseits bietet es eine Beschreibung des Personennamensystems des Ungarischen Königreichs im Mittelalter. In den namenstheoretischen Kapiteln wird ein kognitiv-pragmatisches Beschreibungsmodell vorgestellt, das für die Darstellung des Personennamensystems jedweder Sprache in all ihrer Epochen geeignet ist. In den weiteren Kapiteln zu den Besonderheiten der alten ungarischen Personennamengebung und Personennamenverwendung ist die konkrete Anwendung des Beschreibungsmodells zu finden. Das mittelalterliche Karpatenbecken bietet für eine solche Analyse ein ausgezeichnetes Untersuchungsfeld. Zum einen galt diese Region als Sammelstelle von Sprachen und Kulturen im Mittelalter, was natürlich auch in den Personennamensystemen seine Spur hinterlassen hat, zum anderen ist die untersuchte Epoche, das Mittelalter (genauer die sogenannte altungarische Zeit, 895–1526) als das Zeitalter zu betrachten, in dem die Restrukturierung des Namensystems auf mehreren Ebenen zu sehen ist: Die Erscheinung und das rasche Dominantwerden der Personennamen lateinischen Ursprungs als Ergebnis der Einbindung in den christlichen Kulturkreis ist als einer dieser Prozesse anzusehen, während die andere große Veränderung die Entstehung der Familiennamen als neuer Personennamentyp darstellt. Im Buch wird auch der historische Prozess der Aufeinanderschichtung der Personennamenkategorien und Personennamentypen detailliert vorgestellt.

The popular genre of medieval romance explored in its physical, geographical, and literary contexts. The essays in this volume take a representative selection of English and Scottish romances from the medieval period and explore some of their medieval contexts, deepening our understanding not only of the romances concerned but also of the specific medieval contexts that produced or influenced them. The contexts explored here include traditional literary features such as genre and rhetorical technique and literary-cultural questions of authorship, transmission and readership; but they also extend to such broader intellectual and social contexts as medieval understandings of geography, the physiology of swooning, or the efficacy of baptism. A framing context for the volume is provided by Derek Pearsall's prefatory essay, in which he revisits his seminal 1965 article on the development of Middle English romance. Rhiannon Purdie is Senior Lecturer in English, University of St Andrews; Michael Cichon is Associate Professor of English at St Thomas More College in the University of Saskatchewan. Contributors: Derek Pearsall, Nancy Mason Bradbury, Michael Cichon, Nicholas Perkins, Marianne Ailes, John A. Geck, Phillipa Hardman, Siobhain Bly Calkin, Judith Weiss, Robert Rouse, Yin Liu, Emily Wingfield, Rosalind Field

A survey of the significance of names, or their absence, in medieval English, French, and Anglo-Norman romance.

In this handbook, scholars from around the world offer an up-to-date account of the state of the art in different areas of onomastics, in a format that is both useful to specialists in related fields and accessible to the general reader. Since Ancient Greece, names have been regarded as central to the study of language, and this has continued to be a major theme of both philosophical and linguistic enquiry throughout the history of Western thought. The investigation of name origins is more recent, as is the study of names in literature. Relatively new is the study of names in society, which draws on techniques from sociolinguistics and has gradually been gathering momentum over the last few decades. The structure of this volume reflects the emergence of the main branches of name studies, in roughly chronological order. The first Part focuses on name theory and outlines key issues about the role of names in language, focusing on grammar, meaning, and discourse. Parts II and III deal with the study of place-names and personal names respectively, while Part IV outlines contrasting approaches to the study of names in literature, with case studies from different languages and time periods. Part V explores the field of socio-onomastics, with chapters relating to the names of people, places, and commercial products. Part VI then examines the interdisciplinary nature of name studies, before the concluding Part presents a selection of animate and inanimate referents ranging from aircraft to animals, and explains the naming strategies adopted for them.

A “marvelous history”* of medieval Europe, from the bubonic plague and the Papal Schism to the Hundred Years’ War, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Guns of August *Lawrence Wright, author of The End of October, in The Wall Street Journal The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. In this revelatory work, Barbara W. Tuchman examines not only the great rhythms of history but the grain and texture of domestic life: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike. Granting her subjects their loyalties, treacheries, and guilty passions, Tuchman re-creates the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, grocers and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and, dominating all, the knight—in all his valor and “furious follies,” a “terrible worm in an iron cocoon.” Praise for A Distant Mirror “Beautifully written, careful and thorough in its scholarship . . . What Ms. Tuchman does superbly is to tell how it was. . . . No one has ever done this better.”—The New York Review of Books “A beautiful, extraordinary book . . . Tuchman at the top of her powers . . . She has done nothing finer.”—The Wall Street Journal “Wise, witty, and wonderful . . . a great book, in a great historical tradition.”—Commentary

This book examines the multiple contexts for the pseudepigraphal Apocalypse of Abraham, including the ancient Jewish milieu in which it was originally written and its medieval Christian Slavic setting.

Cecily Clark (1926-1992) is familiar to medievalists as editor of the Peterborough Chronicle; others will know her work in Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman and Middle English studies, in particular her extensive researches in medieval English onomastics. She lectured at the universities of London, Edinburgh and Aberdeen before settling in Cambridge as Research Fellow of, successively, Newnham College and Clare Hall. She was past joint editor of Nomina, a Council member of the English Place-Name Society, and a member of the International Committee of Onomastic Sciences.

Where did your surname come from? Do you know how many people in the United States share it? What does it tell you about your lineage? From the editor of the highly acclaimed Dictionary of Surnames comes the most extensive compilation of surnames in America. The result of 10 years of research and 30 consulting editors, this massive undertaking documents 70,000 surnames of Americans across the country. A reference source like no other, it surveys each surname giving its meaning, nationality, alternate spellings, common forenames associated with it, and the frequency of each surname and forename. The Dictionary of American Family Names is a fascinating journey throughout the multicultural United States, offering a detailed look at the meaning and frequency of surnames throughout the country. For students studying family genealogy, others interested in finding out more about their own lineage, or lexicographers, the Dictionary is an ideal place to begin research.

The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names of Ireland contains more than 3,800 entries covering the majority of family names that are established and current in Ireland, both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland. It establishes reliable and accurate explanations of historical origins (including etymologies) and provides variant spellings for each name as well as its geographical distribution, and, where relevant, genealogical and bibliographical notes for family names that have more than 100 bearers in the 1911 census of Ireland. Of particular value are the lists of early bearers of family names, extracted from sources ranging from the medieval period to the nineteenth century, providing for the first time, the evidence on which many surname explanations are based, as well as interesting personal names, locations and often occupations of potential family forbears. This unique Dictionary will be of the greatest interest not only to those interested in Irish history, students of the Irish language, genealogists, and geneticists, but also to the general public, both in Ireland and in the Irish diaspora in North America, Australia, and elsewhere.