Collected Name Resources from LoARs (2010-present)

Articles from Juliana de Luna, Lillia de Vaux, and Alys Mackyntoich

March 2014 - Lillia de Vaux Link to LoAR Cover Letter March 2014 - Scandinavian

Pelican Emeritus is a hard act to follow. Her name resources series lasted the length of her tenure and covered a wide range of languages. I plan to spotlight some of our lesser-known, but very useful sources from time to time.

I'm kicking it off with a source for Scandinavian names: Diplomatarium Norvegicum. This is a 22 volume-and-growing set of transcribed documents and letters relating to Norway from c.1050 until 1590. These documents are mostly written in Middle Norwegian, with some Latin and Danish. If you are referring to a source for medieval Norwegian names, like Lind's Norsk-Isländska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn från Medeltiden, the names from Diplomatarium Norvegicum are generally listed with the standard abbreviation DN.

The University of Oslo extracted the information in the first 21 volumes, and made the database freely available.

In the advanced search form (http://www.dokpro.uio.no/dipl_norv/diplom_felt.html), the name element that you want to find goes in the text box labelled "Brevteksten". Wildcards are inserted using % (for parts of words) or an underscore (single character), which is extremely useful if you are looking for names that are parts of patronymics. If you wish to focus on a specific time period, you can set upper and lower limits with the "Fra og med år" (from, and including year) and "til og med år" (to, and including year) boxes. If you are not feeling particularly adventurous, an English version of the search form is also available (http://www.dokpro.uio.no/dipl_norv/diplom_field_eng.html). The "Text" box is under the section heading "Regesta and transcribed text of the diploma".

It is important to note that names in this source may be inflected forms (modified according to the grammar). In addition, the online version contains some typographical errors. If you are in doubt over a particular spelling, most of the print volumes have also been digitized and are available for free through the National Library of Norway (http://www.nb.no/nbsok/search.nbdigital). In addition, links to most of the print volumes can be found in Þora Sumarliðadóttir, "Diplomatarium Norvegicum" (http://www.morethancod.net/norwegian-onomastic-sources-diplomatarium-norvegicum), along with a short, but very useful guide to this source.

Next month, I will cover a similar source for Danish names, Diplomatarium Danicum. Back to Collected Name Resources from LoARs