Anthroponymic Neology: what does Germanic names have to tell us?

Author(s)

Letícia Santos Rodrigues

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2019-06-27

Examining board members

Mario Eduardo Viaro; Patricia de Jesus Carvalhinhos; Juliana Soledade Barbosa Coelho; Graça Maria de Oliveira e Silva Rio Torto

• Advisor: Mario Eduardo Viaro

Abstract

Researches in Onomastics - linguistic science dedicated to the study of proper names (particularly in this case, in Anthroponymy, the study of anthroponyms) - can reveal several aspects about a certain people or culture. Considering this, this work focuses on the analysis, from a specific scope, of the Brazilian anthroponymic system referring to the last decade of the nineteenth century, the entire twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, in order to understand the performance and importance of anthroponyms. To make it possible, this research bases itself on the contributions of Etymology and Morphology, as well as on the theoretical study of Cognitive Linguistics. Specifically, the analysis turns to the neological anthroponyms that use Germanic formatives in their constructions, due to the historical factor of the occupation of the Iberian Peninsula by the considered \"Germanic peoples\" influenced on the anthroponimic Brazilian system, as we still see it today. The corpus analyzed refers to the archives of the Ordem Terceira do Carmo, located in the Centro Histórico of the city of Salvador / BA. These archives are constituted by 10 volumes of the Livro dos Termos dos Irmãos of which we will analyze the last four by the historical period. The presence of neological anthroponyms was verified by the criterion of absence in some of the main Portuguese-language onomastic dictionaries: Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa - Tomo II, by Antenor Nascentes (1952), Dicionário etimológico de nomes e sobrenomes, by Mansur Guérios (1981), and Dicionário onomástico etimológico da língua portuguesa, by José Pedro Machado (2003), and also the Bible (because the biblical names have a traditional character). Among the results found, it is possible to observe the clear relationship between the increase of neological names and the abolition of slavery and the withdrawal of the civil registry from the hands of the Catholic Church, since such events offer some freedom for those individuals who could only choose names traditional traditions, often closely related to the Christian tradition, besides the increase of th trend to create neological names for individuals, so that, how the years progress, the number of occurrences raised. Among the results, the recurrent use of bitematic compositional structures is also observed, as well as the one that is believed to have been inherited from the German anthroponyms, demonstrating, in fact, the influence of such a morpholexical model. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 17/06792-7 - Anthroponymic Neology: what does Germanic names have to tell us?
• Grantee: Letícia Santos Rodrigues
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master