On terminology of historical personal name research

Abstract

On terminology of historical personal name research

One of the central topics in historical personal name research is the question of development of family names. Almost all researchers who discussed this topic had to face vague terminology, especially in connection with two problems: 1. how to refer to non-Christian single-element name forms, 2. how to refer to temporary name forms appearing before proper surnames were emerged. It proved difficult to elaborate terms for certain special name forms; in other cases, several terms are used in parallel to indicate a single type of names in the literature even today. The reason for this diversity lies either in theoretical differences behind creation of terms, or in misunderstanding the system of names. The paper presents the variety of relevant terms and suggests a possible solution to eliminate variations by introducing two new terms: névszerkezet (‘name structure’) and megkülönböztető névelem (‘distinctive name element’; adopted from a toponymic work by András Mező).