Diatopische Varietäten lettischer Rufnamen im 17. Jahrhundert anhand der Protokolle der schwedischen Revision von 1638

Abstract

The article analyses more than 12,000 given names of Latvian peasants recorded in the Swedish revision of 1638 in Vidzeme (Swedish Livonia). The revision was carried out by ten commissionsmaking it possible to compare the given names recorded within each commission’s respective area of activity. These areas vary in size and do not directly correspond to the later administrative divisions of Vidzeme or to Latvian dialects; however, they allow for observations within such provisional categories as Northern Livonia, Eastern Livonia, Southern Livonia, Western Livonia and Riga, and Central Livonia. The article examines regionally distributed given names such as <Brencis>, <Bērents>, <Ivans>, and <Jāks> as well as regionally differing forms of the widespread name <Pēteris>, attempting to identify the reasons for their distribution. Preliminary conclusions are of a general nature, yet they allow for the identification of four possible reasons for regional differences in given names: the influence of the onomasticon of foreign languages in the borderlands, the influence of Latvian dialects, the idiosyncratic spelling of the clerks, and the real, yet currently unexplained, regional concentration of specific individual names. A more precise interpretation of the data would be possible by analyzing the distribution of given names across individual manor estates or groups of estates. This would likely reveal more compact areas of distribution that do not coincide with the areas of activity of the revision commissions. It is possible that many existing dialect features of Latvian given names are not reflected in the source material as German spelling conventions significantly dominates their recording.