A study of the general scope and geographical distribution of religious place names
3. Interpretation of the patrociny settlement names in Eastern Germany
3.1. Early data of this type and the role of Latin
The relation between Latin and the vernacular language in historical docu-mented forms can be characterised in this way. Until the 14th century Latin is dominating while we can find vulgar forms only later on. There are only isol-ated colloquial German forms in the 13th and 14th centuries: 1214: Sentemarien-dorf (MergenSentemarien-dorf), 1251: Martinskirche (Martinskirchen), 1266: De villa Warte, das man ytzt sant Gangolff nennet (St. Gangloff), 1336: Mergendorf, 1348: Mariental (Marienthal), 1354: Clostir Marienstern, 1367: Merginstern (St. Marienstern), 1389: Mergintal, 1394: Mergintall (St. Marienthal).
3.2. Motivations and reasons for the creation of patrociny settlement names The analysis of the documented official forms allows the conclusion that all these names from the Middle Ages were used by upper class people, i.e. by representatives of the Christian church in connection with the lords as the owners of certain territories. And especially in clerical and secular offices all the names were written down to differentiate and to identify the settlements in documents as property of a monastery or another landowner. However, it is rather difficult to decide the various possible reasons for the individual name-giving process with respect to every separate village. We can assume one reason was always to secure the protection of a saint for the village and its inhabitants.
The deeply religious population in the Middle Ages was surely thankful for such name-giving. For their part peasants and other inhabitants of a village probably named the settlement of their neighbours by using the patron’s name of the church—and they did so in the vernacular. In the case of an “artificial”
name-giving in Eastern Germany then it was at once completely accepted by everybody, i.e. it was accepted like popular name-giving and followed by a popular name-using practice from the beginning. Up till today people use these names in shortened forms, i.e. in colloquial speech they use only the name of the saint with respect to the village, e.g. he/she lives in Jakob, went to Niklas, came back from Micheln, etc.
1 Information from the thankful letter (18th of march 2010) by MONIKA CHOROŚ, Opole, Instytut Śląski (Poland).
Our material allows us to state that even in the 15th century and later on the same reasons and motivations determined the formation of patrociny names for new settlements in the eastern regions of Germany.
It is evident that the church was a characteristic feature to differentiate one settlement from another. Therefore even later on the patrons’ names were used to differentiate and to identify villages along a small river even in the 15–16th centuries. But these forms were always only written variants and represent the more official language while dialectal forms were the reduced ones.
Historical forms from the late Middle Ages show us additional differentiation with the help of the patron’s name in Saxony:
Niederlungwitz near Zwickau: 1460: Lungkwicz ad sanctum Petrum, 1489: in der Nider-Lungkwitz, 1531: Inn der Lunckewitz zu Sant peter, 1720: Nieder-lungwitz with a church St. Peter.
Oberlungwitz near Zwickau: 1482: in der obirn Lungkewitzt, 1547: Ober Lunnkwitz zu S. Mertten with a church named St. Martin.
An official differentiation with help of the church-names is demonstrated in Obhausen near Merseburg (Saxony-Anhalt) up to the 19th century: 1804: Ob-hausen St. Petri, ObOb-hausen St. Johannis, ObOb-hausen St. Nicolai.
3.3. The formation process of patrociny settlement names
The formation process of such patrociny settlement names can be described in this way:
a) It is primarily a process of compounding with three elements: Sankt ‘saint’
+ hagionym + radical word (-berg ‘hill’, -dorf ‘village’, -feld ‘field’, -fließ
‘run’, -kirche ‘church’, -stern ‘star’, -thal ‘valley’).
b) A secondary form is represented by only two elements: Sankt + hagionym.
c)And since the 13th century it is possible to observe a process of shortening those names with three elements, i.e. they could lose the first member Sankt.
In this manner they got adapted to other German settlement names with the same structure consisting of personal name plus radical word, e.g. Petersbach and Petersberg. But Sankt was always preserved in the official names of villages with nearby old monasteries.
3.4. Chronological features of the name type
Observations on the chronology of patrociny settlement names in Eastern Germany enable us to distinguish two periods:
a) These names had their origin in the period of rural colonisation mainly by German settlers from the time of the 12th century on.
b) There followed a second wave in the 15–16th century in connection with an early industrial development when new towns were founded by dukes in Saxony.
Later on we find only very rare examples for using a patron’s name with respect to a village, but new dwelling places could get such names. In Saxony they continued as the primary names of mines. This type of naming has been absolutely out of use since the 19th century.
3.5. The area of patrociny settlement names
The spreading of this name type in eastern Germany is relatively limited. Sev-eral examples can be found in Saxony, but it rarely spread to the other fedSev-eral states. This seems to be dependent on its use during the time of rural colonisa-tion in the western and eastern regions of Saxony while all other regions signify only isolated nominations. With regard to the names of this type in western Saxony the reason can be that the settlers came from the South of Germany, especially from the northern regions of Bavaria, while in eastern Saxony the primary names of monasteries were transferred to the villages.
3.6. Structure and changes of patrociny settlement names
The structure types of settlement names in Eastern Germany are characterised by compounds of two elements, mainly a) a personal name plus a generic word with the function of a radical word, e.g. Albertsdorf (Albert + -dorf
‘village’, so-called anthropotoponyms) or b) two appellatives in the role of determinative plus radical word as e.g. Kirchberg (‘church + hill’) or Wolkenstein (‘cloud + rock’). The patronymic settlement names formed the so-called hagiotoponyms, and their official forms were absolutely adopted to the anthropotoponyms by eliminating the element Sankt, e.g. Sankt Annaberg
> Annaberg or Sankt Marienthal > Marienthal.
Vernacular hagiotoponyms such as St. Niklas were reduced and now only the pure hagionym (without Sankt) is habitually used. These forms follow another type of German toponym called simple names (simplicia), e.g. Thurm ‘tower’
or Dittrich (a pure first name).
Changes to settlement names of patrociny origin are not observable and this did not occur even in the atheistic decades of socialism. Only the loss of Sankt in connection with the adaptation to the rules of German toponymic formation as already described can be mentioned. But this formal change beginning in the 13th century and lasting for several centuries did not concern all names of patrociny origin and was not connected with a change in meaning.
On the contrary names like Annaberg, Marienberg, Lorenzkirch, Martins-kirchen, Marienthal, Mariendorf, Marienfelde are clearly ecclesiastically
determined names for everybody. Only Mergendorf with the dialectal form of Saint Maria is an exception. Furthermore, we can note that a small number of dwelling places in some villages and towns were named after the patron saints of nearby churches from the 17th to 19th centuries.
In conclusion it is possible to say that patrociny settlement names in eastern Germany have a very low frequency but that they are typologically in agree-ment with the rules of toponym formation in the German language.
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