Collected Name Resources from LoARs (2010-present): - Regional Naming Groups -
Articles > Names

Collected Name Resources from LoARs (2010-present)

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

- Regional Naming Groups -

Back to Collected Name Resources from LoARs

June 2012 - Juliana de Luna Link to LoAR Cover Letter

This month, in honor of the discussion of Appendix C, I'm going to discuss the philosophy behind the regional naming groups. They are not intended to be groups of languages that are closely related linguistically. Instead, they are intended to be groups of languages that share a set of names in common. Thus, Welsh, a Brythonic Celtic language, is grouped with English, a Germanic language, because names were borrowed freely back and forth by the 16th century. Likewise, Basque is grouped with other languages spoken in modern Spain and Portugal, although it is not related to them. This is because names were borrowed back and forth.

This reminds us, then, that names and languages are not identical: typically "English" names may be Aramaic, Greek, Latin, French, German, Norse, or Welsh in origin, to name a few languages. However, once these names are used by English people, we talk about them as English names.

Let us also be clear: just because we allow these naming groups to be mixed between elements does not remove the requirement that a name phrase (a given name or byname) be consistent with a single time and place.

Back to Collected Name Resources from LoARs