Collected Name Resources from LoARs (2010-present)

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

November 2011 - Juliana de Luna Link to LoAR Cover Letter

This month, we continue with French names by turning our attention to the langue d'oc, modern Occitan/Provencal. Unfortunately, there are really no books that are readily available that deal with Occitan. Our main sources, therefore, are online.

Occitan is closely related to another language (or group of languages) spoken in eastern Spain, called Catalan. The best source for Occitan and Catalan names is http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/occitan.shtml.

A great source for early names is Ramons lo Montalbes' "French/Occitan Names from the XII and XIII Century" (http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/ramon/occitan/). This article, and the author's name, demonstrate an important feature of Occitan: it generally used a nominative marker, which for men is -s. So, we see forms like Azemars, Aimerics, and of course Ramons. Note that the French names in this article are modern, but the Occitan names are original. The other early sources we have are Latinized, which means that the names are written in Latin and modified from the likely spoken form.

For the 14th century, there are articles from several locations. One of the largest is Aryanhwy merch Catmael's "Occitan names from Saint Flour, France, 1380-1385" (http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/french/saintflour.html). For the late 16th century, I find myself using Talan Gwynek's "Late Period Feminine Names from the South of France" (http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/talan/latefrenchfem/). Unfortunately, many of the articles that deal with southern French names give the northern French versions of Occitan names.