Summary
’Wolf and ’Bear’ in Germanic and Romance Name-Giving
Names embedding animal designations, i.e. so-called theriophoric names, are
particularly common among Germanic anthroponyms. Names containing
Germ. *wulfa-z M. ,wolf are most numerous, followed by those formed with
Germ. *berdn M. or *bernu-z M. ,bear\ These Germanic personal names find
their semantic counterpart in the Romance names Lupus and Ursus as well as
in the varied diminutives and suffix-derivations of those latter.
It is striking that mainly from the 6th century onwards Romance names
increase noticeably, the majority of which is already accounted for as
cognomina as well as in inscriptions in almost all parts of the Roman Empire
from the 1st century BC on. Their importance apparently declined, however,
in the 4th and 5th centuries. The article investigates whether we can speak of
independently formed, parallel developments or whether interferences can be
detected when exploring the semantic field of those Romance and Germanic
anthroponyms embedding animal descriptions, which mainly appear in areas
of Romano-Germanic interference. It can be shown that a major portion of the
Lupo- and LTvo-names formed mainly from the 6th century onwards is owed
to the increasing predominance of the Germanic name system. We are
therefore looking at one of the numerous linguistic phenomena that can be
explained by the encounter of the Roman and the Germanic name systems
during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.
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