ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3355 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3355 ************************************ 15 Apr 2009 From: Julia Smith Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked about names for a Romany woman and man living in the Balkan region between 1350 and 1550; in particular, you were interested in the feminine "Tsura the older" and the masculine "Radovan the younger." First, we'd like to apologize for the time this letter has taken; we hope the information is still of use to you. I'd like to start with a brief note on sources: the SCA and the Academy of Saint Gabriel do not have a great number of sources that deal with names from the Balkans in particular nor the Slavic area in general. This is in part related to the locations and lingustic abilities of the individuals involved. There is relatively little published in English that deals with the medieval history of this area, and publications in Slavic languages can be hard to access by American researchers, even those with access to major research libraries. In addition, our ability to read Slavic languages is limited. However, we are glad to share with you what we do know. While is a modern woman's name, we can find no evidence that it was used as a feminine name in period. As you observe, the name is probably derived from the name of a goddess or group of goddesses. However, we have found no evidence that Serbians or other Slavic-speaking people used the names of pagan deities as given names in the Middle Ages. What may be a related name is found in Russian as , who is described as the daughter of a 13th century Serbian king. [1, 5] We can also tell you that there is a byname derived from the word 'dawn,' but it's not clear if it is derived from a masculine name or if it is a descriptive byname. [2] is found broadly in Slavic speaking areas: in Russian context by 1088, in Croatia in the 11th century, and as you observe, as the Latinized form found in 12th century Dalmatia (this is in the accusative casee; the nominative form should be ). [1, 3, 4] We believe that the spelling is also appropriate for Serbia in the 14th to 16th century. Bynames meaning "the older" and "the younger" are not the most likely bynames in a Serbian context, as most people used patronymic bynames, which described them as the son or daughter of their father. But there is some evidence for bynames with those meanings in Serbia, mostly from extrapolations from Russian usage. The name , dated to 1434, is probably a Slavic word meaning 'young' (though it is not the most typical Russian word). [1] We believe that the modern Serbian , with the same meaning, is appropriate for your period. The Serbian word 'old' is likely to be appropriate for your period, as there are various names and bynames related to that word in Russian. [1] Bynames with the meanings 'young' and 'old' seem more likely than bynames meaning 'older' and 'younger.' Despite that, the 1539 Russian byname may mean 'older' or 'eldest' rather than 'old.' [1] We believe that the Serbian 'older' and 'younger' are the forms more likely to be found in the sixteenth century ( is a modern form, but seems unlikely for your period). We'd note that these names normally are not used to describe mother and son, but to distinguish an older and a younger person of the same given name. We have found no evidence for the construction 'who/that is X' in bynames in Serbian in this period. It is not impossible that one would find that phrase in a document occasionally to describe someone, but bynames tended to use simply the term itself. To summarize: we believe that and would be reasonable names for the fourteenth to sixteenth century in the area of Serbia. We also believe that these would also be appropriate names for Romany living in the area, though we have no sources that explicitly address Romany names in this area. I hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Talan Gwynek, Coblaith Mhuimhneach, Ursula Georges, Walraven van Nijmegen, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Margaret Makafee, Bronwyn ferch Gwyn ap Rhys,and Adelaide de Beaumont. For the Academy, Juliana de Luna 15 April 2009 References [1] Paul Wickenden of Thanet, "A Dictionary of Period Russian Names", 2nd edition (WWW: SCA, Inc., 1996). http://www.sca.org/heraldry/paul/. [2] Unbegaun, B. O., _Russian Surnames_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 331. [3] Walraven van Nijmegen, Early Croatian Given Names, 1999, http://heraldry.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/croat.html. [4] Wikipedia, Radovan, 2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radovan [5] It is possible that is some mangling of a word for princess (tsaritsa), but the scholars from whom Paul took his material accept this as a given name, and we have no evidence that they are mistaken.