Studien zu sorbischen Personennamen. Teil 1: Systematische Darstellung by Walter WenzelReview by: Gerald StoneThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Jan., 1989), pp. 109-110Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4209891 .

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Reviews Wenzel, Walter. Studien zu sorbischen Personennamen. Teil i: Systematische

Darstellung. VEB Domowina-Verlag, Bautzen, I987. I75 pp. Maps. Tables. Glossary. M 28.00; DM 52.00.

THIS is the first volume of a two-volume work which will examine all Sorbian personal names in the territory between the middle Elbe and the upper Spree in sources dating from the end of the fourteenth to the beginning of the eighteenth century. The number of Sorbian names discussed is 3,500 (German surnames also get a bit of attention). The area in question covers the present-day Kreise of Wittenberg, Torgau, Jessen, Herzberg, Liebenwerda, Finsterwalde, Senftenberg, Hoyerswerda, Kamenz, and Bautzen. It is thus, roughly speaking, spread along the Schwarze Elster. In the east it includes most of Upper Lusatia, but excludes most of Lower Lusatia. In its western parts Sorbian died out centuries ago.

The sources consist of manorial rolls, land-tax registers, account books, court records, church books relating to births, marriages and deaths, charters, etc. Apart from names, they contain virtually no trace of the Sorbian language, but in the case of the area west of Finsterwalde names (place and personal) are almost the only evidence we have of the Sorbian once spoken there. That anthroponymical material can throw light on other levels of the language is amply demonstrated by Dr Wenzel's work.

In the early Middle Ages, not only among the Slavs settled along the Schwarze Elster but also in other parts of Europe, most people had only one name. Towards the end of the first millennium AD, first in Upper Italy and France, later in the Rhineland and South Germany, the practice grew of adding a second name. In Germany after I200 the possession of a second name was normal, though the innovation did not reach some remote parts until the seventeenth or perhaps even the eighteenth century. Second names usually started out as nicknames, borne by individuals, not by families. In time they came to be inherited, thereby becoming surnames. By the time Wenzel's study begins most Sorbs had Christian names of the German type. He notes that in his corpus the number of persons whose Christian name is recorded in its Sorbian form is very small compared with the number who have Sorbian surnames. He finds Sorbian Christian names mainly in the Kreise of Hoyerswerda, Bautzen, and Kamenz. Even here many Christian names without Sorbian features are recorded. It appears that Sorbian surnames were more frequently recorded, because their use was convenient for the authorities, particularly in establishing responsibility for the payment of feudal rent. Consequently, Sorbian surnames survived even in the west of Wenzel's territory long after their bearers had ceased to speak Sorbian. The ten most common Sorbian surnames found in his sources are (in order of decreasing frequency): Nowak, Jens, Benis, Kuba, Hanus, Manik, Rak, Mets, Kral, and Hanos.

Tojudge by the first volume, this is a brilliant piece of painstaking research. Its virtues will, however, be fully revealed only when we have both volumes to

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IIO THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

hand. The second volume will contain a full list, with etymologies, of all the names studied. In the meantime, half a book is better than none. Hertford College GERALD STONE Oxford

Olesch, Reinhold. Thesaurus Linguae Dravaenopolabicae. Volumes 2: P-S; 3: T-Z; 4: Indexes. Slavistische Forschungen, 42, II, 42, III, and 42, IV. B6hlau Verlag, Cologne-Vienna, I984, I984, and I987. 709-I I35, I I36-i648, and viii + 360 pp. Map. DM I 98.oo, DM I 98.oo, and DM I 36.oo.

THE language of the Polabian Wends, which until the eighteenth century was still spoken in a few villages in the Luineburg Heath, was not only geographically but also genetically remote from its Slavonic kin. These villages were a kind of Slavonic Galapagos, the home of a language abounding in sports and mutations. For example what other Slav would recognize 'Nolf' wifBe danneisna Stgeiba doy nam Dans' as meaning 'Give us this day our daily bread', or 'Johss zang minne tock peyohn peit' as meaning 'I want to get quite drunk'? Nevertheless, Polabian is a Slavonic language and the six thousand fossilized Polabian words which survive are of more significance to Slavonic philology than their geographical and genetic remoteness might suggest.

Professor Olesch's thesaurus, the first volume of which appeared in I983 (reviewed in SEER, LXII (1984), PP. 57I-72), is now complete. It contains every known Polabian word (except some place names) in all recorded variants and is arranged on the assumption that its users will look not for a normalized form, such as that given by Kazimierz Polan'ski andJames Sehnert in their Polabian-English Dictionary (The Hague-Paris, I 967), but for one of the forms used in the original sources. On average, each word has about five variants, so there are many cross-references. Each entry (except those merely giving cross-references) gives the locations of the word in the original sources, an etymology, references to relevant publications, and phrases embodying the word. The declared intention of omitting place names (vol. i, p. xiv) has been largely disregarded. One can scarcely complain about being given more than was promised, but the principle on which it was decided to include some place names but not others is obscure.

The thesaurus is the culmination of Professor Olesch's labours in the Polabian cause, which began at least as early as I 959 with the publication (in Cologne) of a facsimile edition of Christian Hennig vonjessen's Vocabularium Venedicum. Since then Olesch has made available all the remaining sources, illuminated in numerous articles much that was obscure in the sound-system and vocabulary, and produced the invaluable Bibliographie zum Dravdnopola- bischen (Cologne-Vienna, I968). Yet his Polabian work constitutes only one component of his impressive output. In the words of one of the phrases recorded by Hennig, 'Tgoli chole Mestro' ('The work does the master credit'). Hertford College GERALD STONE Oxford

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