hellog〜英語史ブログ / 2023-10-30

■ #5299. 中英語人名学の用語体系 [name_project][me][onomastics][personal_name][terminology][by-name]

　「#5297. 古英語人名学の用語体系」 ([2023-10-28-1]) の中英語版をお届けする．中英語になると，人名のあり方がガクンと変わり，それに伴って人名学の用語使いも変わる．Clark (551--52) より，関連する箇所を引用する．

Neither the structure nor the content of the Present-Day English personal-name system owes much to pre-Conquest styles. The typical Old English personal designation consisted of a single distinctive name (or 'idionym'), such as Dudda, Godgifu or Wulfstan; and only occasionally was this supplemented by a qualifying by-name (usually postposed), such as sēo dæge 'the dairymaid' or sē hwīta 'the white(-haired man)' . . . . A Present-Day English 'full name', on the other hand, necessarily involves two components; the second denoting a patrilinear family group and the first (which may consist of one unit or or several), an individual within that group. In Present-Day English usage, moreover, the familial, hereditary component is the crucial one for close identification, whereas in Old English usage, as in early Germanic ones generally, the idionym was central, any addition being optional. Beside this total change of structure, it is trivial that, out of the hundreds of Old English idionyms, only a handful, and those mainly ones which, like Edith, Edmund and Edward, were associated with widely venerated saints, are today represented among Present-Day English first-names.
   The change of system demands a change of terminology. The special term 'idionym', no longer appropriate, will be replaced by 'baptismal name' ('Christian name' is needed for a more specific sense, neither 'forename' nor 'first name' is appropriate until family naming is well established, and 'font name' is unidiomatic). For an optional identifying component, the term 'by-name' will be retained. Only when continuity between generations is demonstrable will the term 'family name' be used ('surname' is rejected as insufficiently precise).

　古英語と異なり，中英語では2つの種類を組み合わせた人名が一般的になってくる．つまり，現代的な「名＋姓」という構成が一般的となってくるわけだ．この点で，古英語からの idionym という概念・用語は廃れていくことになる．むしろ，キリスト教社会における名前として baptismal name という概念・用語がふさわしくなってくる．この baptismal name に加える形で，それを限定するために by-name が加えられるようになった，と考えられる．この by-name は実際上家族・家系を表わす役割を果たすことが多い．こうして中英語に，現代に続く人名システムが定まったのである．

　・ Clark, Cecily. "Onomastics." The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 2. Ed. Olga Fischer. Cambridge: CUP, 1992. 542--606.

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