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Archiver > LITHUANIA > 2003-06 > 1054841025


From: David Zincavage <>
Subject: Re: [LITHUANIA-L] Fw: Lithuanian Onomastics
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 12:23:53 -0700
References: <010101c32b8c$3ef400a0$210110ac@THINKPAD><002b01c32b93$f92f0120$6401a8c0@ne1.client2.attbi.com>


Vytautas the Great, as a phrase, is not contemporary to Vytautas himself,
but is a judgement of posterity on his status as a leader.

In most traditional European societies in the early Middle Ages, members of
the elite segments of society were usually given considerably more
rhetorically impressive and complimentary personal names than were bestowed
upon the serfs and villains. One might encounter in England the equivalents
of Walter Scott's fictional noble Sir Wilfred ["desires peace"] of Ivanhoe
and his adversaries Philip de Malvoisin and Guy de Front-Bouef, along with
the swineherd Gurth and the thrall Wamba, son of Witless. An Italian
medieval nobleman would be called something like Ferderigo or Guidobaldo di
Montefeltro. An Italian peasant might by comparison be known as Scalzo
"barefoot."

Equality in naming practices and conventions came gradually over time, at
different speeds in different regions and countries.

----- Original Message -----
From: "msjallen" <>
To: <>
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 11:55 AM
Subject: Re: [LITHUANIA-L] Fw: Lithuanian Onomastics


>
> The use of Stanislaw, and other traditional Slavic personal names, by
> peasants would be just like the later use of Vytautas and Kestutis and
> Mindaugas as personal names by non-armigerous Lithuanians. Obviously
these
> names were not used by peasants in the actual period in which these names
> were originally being created.
> ------------------
> Not disputing, just asking a question in the interest of information ...
why
> would you say OBVIOUSLY these names were not used ... one might suspect
that
> these names, or some of them, were already in spoken usage and thus
> additional clarifying phraseology like "The Great" was applied to
> differentiate between the particular person/nobleman and others with the
> same name - eg Vytautas the Great, THE Vytautas, as opposed to 1000 or
more
> other men with the same name. No? Again, just curious!
> Sharon A
>
>
>
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> If you try to unsubscribe from an email address different from the one
which was subscribed, it is simply not going to work.
>
>

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