#anthroponomastics

[useless-catalanfacts]

I'm guessing now it's the same as Spanish because of imperialism, but did Catalan names originally follow the First name + Second name + Father's surname + Mother's surname naming system?

Yes, nowadays we use both surnames. We can't be sure of what would have happened, but the two surnames we have now were a Spanish imposition in most cases.

Before the 19th century, most Catalan men used only one surname. Only the upper classes had more surnames, since they often wanted to keep stacking titles (think of those really long names of nobles, if you marry into another powerful family and yours is powerful too you wouldn't want either of the lineages to get lost, the most titles you can "collect" the better!). Women could often use two surnames after getting married (their father's and their husband's).

In 1870, the Spanish law decided that civil register should have 2 surnames (first the father's and secondly the mother's) for each person to identify them better. That's how people started to have two surnames.

The most visible effect of this law, however, is the spelling. When Spanish-speaker state officers had to write down Catalan surnames, they would write them down according to Spanish spelling rules. That's why many Catalan surnames have a "Spanishified" spelling, like "Peña" instead of Penya, "Calzada" instead of Calçada, "Lladó" instead of Lledó, etc.

(As for first names, usually we only have 1 except you've been baptized, but that's not an official name and how much those 1 or 2 extra names are counted as part of your name depends on each person or family)

More information about the origin of Catalan surnames below the cut.

In the Middle Ages, Catalans had a name and a "nickname", often referred to a characteristic. Many of our surnames come from here. For example, physical attributes like Roig ("red", red-haired), Tort ("hooked"), Petit ("small"), Rossell ("blond"), Calvet ("balding"), etc; or jobs like Ferrer ("blacksmith"), Fuster ("carpenter"), Carnisser ("butcher"), Oller ("potter"), etc.

Among Catalan people, the use of surnames started being generalized in the 9th century.

In legal documents of the time, we see people are referred by who their father is. If the text was in Latin (even though people already spoke Catalan, Latin was still the most used language in writing), the first name would be in nominative case and the father's name in genitive case; if the text was in Catalan, it would be after the preposition "de", meaning "of" (same meaning as the cases in Latin). For example, Berenguer son of Ramon was Berengarius Raimundi in Latin and Berenguer de Ramon in Catalan.

Genitive case often ends in -is, that's why in Spanish and Aragonese you can find lots of surnames that come from a name+ez. For example: Sánchez would be the son of Sancho, Hernández of Hernán, López of Lope, González of Gonzalo, Rodríguez of Rodrigo, Martínez of Martín... Even nowadays, in Spain, 14 out of the 17 most common surnames are a name+ez! (Source)

This is not the case in Catalan. This Latin-derived surnames didn't become used. We only have 3 surnames with this origin (Peris, Sanxís, and Llopis) and they arrived to us from influence of Aragon, Castile and Navarre. Besides, neither of them is very common, unlike their Spanish equivalents. There was an exception in the Valencian Country, because some areas had a lot of Aragonese people as well as Catalan people or at least a strong Aragonese influence, so there existed more surnames related to the Aragonese ones.

From the 11th century on, the nobles started using the name of their lands as a surname, either after "de" (de Barcelona, d'Empúries...) or in adjective form (Barceló, Tarragó, Giró, Tàrrec). This started in the nobility to know who inherited what territories, but it was soon followed by the lower classes as well.

Lower class people often didn't have a territory to refer to and so they would use a name that made reference to their farmhouse, where they live, or other geographical terms. From here we get many of the most common Catalan surnames such as Riera ("stream"), Torrent ("watercourse"), Puig ("hill"), Pujol ("hill"), Vall ("valley") or Valls ("valleys"), Coma ("mountain pass"), Pomar ("apple orchard"), Vinyes ("vineyards"), Rovira ("oak tree forest"), Ribes ("shores") or simply the names of towns or areas like Solsona, Bages, Segarra, Agramunt, Vila, Canet, Cardona, Cabrera, Güell, Barberà, Cerdà...

All of this applies to men, but it worked differently for women because they weren't considered carriers of lineage in the same right as men, and were seen as under the property of a man (father or husband). In the Middle Ages, Catalan women usually had a feminine version of the father's surname (for example, if the father is Ferrer, she would be Ferrera). After getting married, women sometimes had both the father's and husband's surnames or only the husband's.

Source: Janer Torrens, Antoni (2014), "L'origen dels noms i cognoms catalans. Les arrels antroponímiques que marquen una identitat", II Congrés de la Societat d'Onomàstica i la XXVII Jornada d'Antroponímia i Toponímia de la UB. PDF.

#ask #anonymous #història #llengua catalana #onomastics #name #names #surnames #history #languages #langblr #cultures #catalan #etymology #coses de la terra #anthroponymy #anthroponymics #anthroponomastics #onomatology

[frankencanon]

it's six in the morning and i haven't slept and i just realized that santa claus and saint nicholas are literally the same name. like it's not alternate names for the same dude it's literally the same name

Saint Nicholas = Sint Nicolaas = Sinter Klaas

= Santa Claus

#holy shit #names #christmas #santa claus #saint nicholas #etymology #anthroponomastics #onomastics #onomatology #anthroponomatology #history #religion #saints #catholicism #catholic #christianity #christian #behindthename #wikipedia

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

probably at some point I'll get into semantics but I am too tired right now

#semantics is... not the right word. um. anthroponomastics. that's the one #please think of the mountain goats song getting into knives as you read this. getting into names. #or lack thereof #i told y'all you're getting the indefinite-hours tenet lockdown #Lu rambles #lu watches tenet

[hunxi-guilai]

Hi! Just wanted to add some info/context to that recent ask about generation names 派排字. 派排 existed in various forms since at least 後漢, but synchronic homonymy -- use of a generation word 班排 derived from a fixed sequence and shared horizontally across an immediate 宗族 -- only became a widely popular practice c. 晚唐 - 北宋, a period in which there was a broad movement for clans to syncretize and produce genealogies. CQL *appears* to occur in this era; if so, the Jin were on trend in adopting it. (1/?)

Further, the question of whether the other clans also use 派排 is ambiguous, since 派排 can be applied to both 字 and given names 名. Generational markers also aren’t always obvious; rather than a complete morpheme, a shared radical might be employed. This was almost always so with 名, the majority of which were monomorphemic. Huan 涣 and Zhan 湛 both start with radical 85 水, and it makes sense to me that the Lans would find the aesthetics & rigidity of 派排 appealing. For the Wen and the Nie, (2/?)

we lack info about characters’ 名 vs their 字, so don’t have enough data to draw conclusions. We similarly lack data for the Jiang, since JYL and JC are the only exemplars we have of a horizontal generation and females had different 班排 (if one was given at all; it rarely was). Another source of variation was the family poem 派字歌 being changed mid-stream, resulting in differing 班排 within the same generation. One last note: names were often abruptly changed, chiefly due to name taboos 避諱 -- (3/?)

-- if your name was too similar to a newly ascended noble, e.g., or if one's father made a friend with a too-similar name, or if a 汉字 in your name suddenly became inauspicious -- and so it was entirely possible that generation members began with matching 派排字 but changed 名 and 字 *several* times over the course of their lives. There would have still been a semantic connection, but you often have to dive into deep anthroponomastic depths to fish it out. Hope the infodump didn't overwhelm! (4/4)

goodness, it’s been so long since I’ve answered asks that I legitimately cannot find the post that might have started this conversation. Regardless, this is a lot of good information, thank you anon!

I didn’t know the thing about the shared radical in generational naming either, which is super cool -- we usually point at the Jins when talking about generational naming, since actual emphasis is put in the script about their generational naming (子 zi for Jin Zixuan and Jin Zixun’s generation, 如 ru for Jin Ling’s generation), but it turns out that we can interpret the Lans as participating in some level of generational naming as well, but on a subtler level. 

The shared-radical-but-not-shared-character style of generational naming crops up in 《红楼梦》Hongloumeng / A Dream of Red Chambers, in which we have a generation of the Jia family with 玉 as its shared radical -- 贾瑞、贾琼, among others -- and another generation with 草 as its shared radical -- 贾菌、贾蓉, etc.

(we now know my thoughts on the dating of CQL, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is solid research!)

#am also considering the merits of making an 'anon-submitted meta' tag #ask and ye shall receive #CQL worldbuilding #ish it's also just history #generational naming

[spindleprick]

1 of 3 RE. your fantasy naming question. I'm of the opinion that language should be one of the most important things when it comes to world building. Thus, whatever you do, linguistic consistency in your cultures, their languages and their names, fictional or inspired by real, should be first and foremost. ~x

2 of 3 Basing it off an already existing language’s naming system works and is the most foolproof. Making your own fantasy names works too but do they fit the language and the culture they’re a part of or are they just fantasy names for the sake of it? Can you build a consistent naming system, and a consistent fictional language that the names come from? Etymology and language history is pretty important in how all languages and cultures works, but gets ignored in fantasy a lot imo. ~x

3 of 3 You could also combine these two options. Take a real language, and their names, and base your fantasy naming system off those names. Change some sounds, or some syllables or something to make it a bit more fantasy, a bit more you, but still linguistically and culturally consistent. Anthroponomastics is the study of first names. Could be worth looking up. ^-^ ~x

these are all such compelling points that i am 10/10 saving this whole message for future use (and going to look up antroponomastics shortly). i’m so grateful to you for taking all this time to write these messages out for me, i wish i could thank you better -- but since it’s all i can do rn, THANK YOU SO MUCH!

#on world building #writing tips #ask #anon #answered

[thestoryreadingape]

Linguistics: What’s in a Proper Name? - by KDDidIt...

Linguistics: What’s in a Proper Name? – by KDDidIt…

Part of nomenclature, the study of proper names is called onomastics, a field which touches on linguistics, history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, philology, and much more.

There are several branches to onomastics:

Anthroponomastics is the study of personal names.

Literary onomastics researches the names in works of literature and other fiction.

Toponomastics is the study of place names.

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#Informative

[kathydavie]

Linguistics: What's in a Proper Name?

Linguistics: What’s in a Proper Name?

Part of nomenclature, the study of proper names is called onomastics, a field which touches on linguistics, history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, philology, and much more.

There are several branches to onomastics:

Anthroponomastics is the study of personal names.

Literary onomastics researches the names in works of literature and other fiction.

Toponomasticsis the study of place names.

View On WordPress

[misspepita]

i was looking up possible name meanings and origins for filbrick and somehow. somwhere. along the way. the name, as a surname with the alternate spelling of "philbrick" gets tied to a medieval tome by the name of "the domesday book"[x] or. you know. in modern english. "the doomsday book". its not like ! the pines family has to worry ! about end of the world scenarios !

#(ACTUALLY THE BOOK IS ABOUT LITERALLY JUDGING PPL BASED ON THEIR TAXES AND LAND BUT W/E) #me and shitty nerd-ass hobbies #filbrick pines #gravity falls #anthroponomastics

[haltlose-blog]

I think in my senior year, for my senior thesis project, I'm going to make a book of names. I will aggregate various meanings and stuff and cultural references, but each name is going to be of someone important to me in my life. If I met more than one person with that name, I will elaborate on their similarities and how their name could affect that. I will also use names I like, names I want for my kids, and names I made up. 

#anthroponomastics #anthroponymy

[mbgwho]

because seriously that white dude named his son 'tagg' and that white lady literally named her son 'track'

#names #racism #anthroponomastics #anthroponyms

[apex-nadir]

probably shouldn't be so annoyed that names which have been topping my future baby name list for the last six years are now in several 'Most Popular Names of 2013' articles. boo. by the time i actually bear progeny all my favorites will be used up.  

#personal #dumb #anthroponomastics

[beynotce]

Last year, 146 American girls were named Khaleesi. That's a 450% jump in the name's usage from 2011.

Laura Wattenberg, Khaleesi: The Non-Name from a Non-Language

#dear america i love you #minus the ~60 of you who thought 'Kaleesi' was an acceptable alternative #anthroponomastics #game of thrones #relevant to my interests

[pitchersandpoets]

best baseball name of the 1990s?

#Hipolito Pichardo #Kansas City Royals #baseball #anthroponomastics