On the variability of names of Baltic historic personages

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Abstract:

The issue of normativisation of names of historic personages from the Baltic states is discussed here for the purposes of research and popularizing the knowledge of them. On account of the specific cultural and historic aspects of these countries and the nature of their historic development in rendering the names of historic Baltic personages there inevitably appear some terminological doublets, even triplets sometimes. In the process of normativisation of these names the leading principles that should be followed should be the principles originally accepted in this respect: the degree of presentation of the name in the most authoritative authors; its distribution; legitimacy of the form by basic linguistic laws, i.e. the preservation of the principle for morphological and syntactic uniformity of terminology. This is particularly significant regarding historic names connected with the era of the so-called Great Kingdom of Lithuania. Illustrated by the name of one of its rulers it is inevitable to mention at least three names while describing his period of power or for other purposes: first Витанус, which is the accurate Lithuanian form of the name; Витовт, which corresponds to the normative requirement in the approach of greatest frequency of use, since this is the most often encountered form of the name in the sources, and Витолд, inasmuch as it is the most widely used form in German and Polish media and is quite often come across in some sources. The principle of morphological and syntactic uniformity of terminology is well illustrated by examples of names which should correctly reflect the initial name when used in a foreign medium. Thus the name Abraomas Kulvietis in a foreign language, such as Bulgarian or Russian, should adopt the form Абрам Кулвинский or Абрам Кульвинский, because the family name is derived from a toponym. On the whole, in this relatively clear situation side factors sometimes interfere among which subjectivity of description is most frequent and from this arise many incorrections and contradictions.

Keywords:

normativisation, historic personages, the Baltic region, Vytautas, Witold, ³òà¢ò, Vitovt the Great, Abraomas Kulvietis, Abram Kulvinskii

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