Regular Given Names Like a Response of Distant Past
We go on with our publication of a overview regarding the origin of European names globally used today. This part is devoted to names that arrived from far-away past.
• Old Mainland Germanic: Some very familiar forenames, that are William, Robert, Richard, Roger, Geoffrey, Guy, Hugh, and Matilda – all of which have settled cognates in German, Dutch, French, and other languages – originated in Germanic pre-era. It is possible to utilize Polish translation to find more. Names approached English by a shaded route. The official language of the judges of the Merovingian and Carolingian France (5th – 9th centuries) was Latin, but their everyday language was a Germanic dialect, and their given names were predominantly of Germanic etymology. These French given names became established in medieval France and in due time were picked up by the Vikings who settled in Normandy in the 9th century. Upon the Norman invasion of England in 1066, these given names were taken to England, where they largely replaced usual Anglo-Saxon personal names like Ethelred and Athelthryth. A very insignificant Anglo-Saxon given names preserved, for example Edward, which was borne by King Edward the Confessor (c. 1002–1066; ruled 1042–1066), the offspring of an Anglo-Saxon man and a Norman mother, who was revered by Anglo-Saxons and Vikings alike. A rather different case is that of Alfred, an British patronymic that disappeared of use because of the Vikings, but was restored in the 19th century in commemoration of the famous 9th-century Royal of Wessex.
• Old Norse: Old Norse is, certainly, a Germanic language, but its naming custom is rather different from that of mainland Germanic, and many usual Norse forenames are still used in Scandinavia today, for example Olaf, Harald, Hakon. There has been much borrowing from German (e.g., Helga, Ingeborg). Some Nordic patronymics such as Ingrid have been adopted much more broadly. Many looked for language service into Slavic. In the latter situation, the TV star Ingrid Bergman (1915–1982) was a strong attraction.
• Ancient Slavic linguas: Names such as Wojciech (Vojteˇch), BogusLaw (Bohuslav), and StanisLaw (Stanislav) are hardly used in the English-speaking environment except within Slavic immigrants, however represent a vital and independent Slavic tradition, with traces in various Slavic linguas. Many such names are pre-Christian, whereas others have been sanctified by recognition as a saint’s name. Except where a saint has been participating, these names are not widely used in Russia, because there the Orthodox Church has long stood for using names associated with Christian patrons, such as Fyodor (Theodore) and Dmitri. These are mostly of Greek etymology. Within 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 traditional given names, majority of which are of Slavic origin.