Az Anjou-kori személynevek kutatásának kérdései

Absztrakt

Problems of investigating personal names used in the Angevin period

The study surveys the most important past events as well as the present situation of the investigation into historical personal names. Significant results have been achieved with respect to names of the Arpadian age. Names of later historical periods, especially names of the Angevin period, however, have only been examined superficially, restricted mostly to the names of some smaller areas or to particular points of view. Systematic collection of these names has not been performed so far. Clarifying its reasons the author presents the methodological problems of such research. Regarding collection of names, the author emphasises the great number and uneven distribution of sources and highlights the imperfection of printed collections of source documents. With respect to analysis, the author calls attention to the problems of identifying historical persons, inspecting their age, their social status, their domicile, and their nationality. Possible mistakes due to misspellings are also discussed. The author identifies cases in which two etymologically or formally similar, thus seemingly related name forms should be treated as variants of the same name and cases in which they must be perceived as separate names. Because of these difficulties collecting and analysing representative names of the Angevin age is still a future task.