Medieval Naming Guides: Slavic and Baltic

Slavic Names

There's a fine bibliography of sources on Slavic naming available as part of the Slavic Interest Group website.

Russian Names

Grammar of Period Russian Names, by Paul Wickenden of Thanet
An excellent discussion of how name elements were put together in period. This is part of the introduction to Paul's dictionary, the next item.
A Dictionary of Period Russian Names, by Paul Wickenden of Thanet (2nd edition)
A compilation of period names gleaned from a host of sources, organized to show variant forms, diminutives, and patronymics, and accompanied by an excellent description of how to put names together. The author has published a 3rd edition in print, but has no plans to publish it on the web.
"A Chicken Is Not A Bird": Feminine Personal Names in Medieval Russia, by Paul Wickenden of Thanet
A discussion of women's bynames.
Locative Bynames in Medieval Russia, by Paul Wickenden of Thanet
Occupational Bynames in Medieval Russia, by Paul Wickenden of Thanet
Sorted by type of occupation.
Russian Personal Names: Name Frequency in the Novgorod Birch-Bark Letters, by Predslava Vydrina
An analysis of names from a collection of documents spanning the 11th to 15th centuries, incuding tables of masculine and feminine given names and bynames.
Name Frequency in Medieval Novgorod, by Marya Kargashina
Zoological Bynames in Medieval Russia, by Paul Wickenden of Thanet
Bynames based on the names of animals.
Russian Ornithological Bynames, by Paul Wickenden of Thanet
A discussion of medieval Russian bynames based on the names of birds.
Botanical Bynames in Medieval Russia, by Paul Wickenden of Thanet
Bynames based on plant names.
Inscriptions for their memory: 14-17th century Russian names from the collections of the Trinity-Sergius monastery, by Marya Kargashina.
Names from Muscovite Judgment Charters, by Marya Kargashina
Russian names from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century legal documents.
Russian Merchants at River Ports of the Bay of Bothnia, 1548, by Rebecca Lucas (ffride wlffsdotter)
Names of Russian people recorded in Swedish documents.
Names of Finns from the Birch Bark Letters of Novgorod the Great, Pskov, and Staraja Russa, by Rebecca Lucas (ffride wlffsdotter)
Names of Finnish people recorded in Old Slavic documents, from the twelfth to the fifteenth century.
Scandinavian names from the Birch Bark Letters of Novgorod the Great, and Staraja Russa, by Rebecca Lucas (ffride wlffsdotter)
Names of Scandinavian people recorded in Russian documents. Includes the Russian and a normalized Old Norse form of each name.
Polish Names

A Preliminary Survey of Names from the Historical Dictionary of Personal Names in Białystok, by Lillia de Vaux.
A collection of names from the late 14th to the late 17th C, with most dated to c. 1560. The article includes names in Latin, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and other East Slavic languages, as well as a few Arabic and Jewish names.

Selected names from the University of Kraków's Roll of Students, by Constanza of Thamesreach.
Latinized masculine given names from matriculation record. The article has lists of the most popular given names for the periods 1400-1508 and 1509-1551, as well as lists of unusual and rare names from both periods.

Polish Given Names in Nazwiska Polaków, by Walraven van Nijmegen and Arval Benicoeur
An index of late-period masculine and feminine given names taken from a dictionary of Polish surnames. Note that the spellings are not necessarily period ones and in some cases are simply the standard modern forms. The appearance of a name in this article proves only that some form of it was used in late-period Poland.
Polish Feminine Names, 1600-1650, by Aryanhwy merch Catmael
A short list of given names collected from dated examples in a dictionary of surnames.
Some 14-17th century Polish tavern names, by ffride wlffsdotter
Names of taverns, classified by the origin of the name (location, taverns named after their proprietors, etc.)
Ukrainian Names

Early 17th century names from Zhytomyr, Ukraine, by ffride wlffsdotter
A collecton of names from a town which is now in Ukraine but in the 17th C was a part of the Polish-Lithuanian empire. The names date from 1605, 1609, 1611, and 1648, and come from records written in Ruthenian, in the Cyrllic alphabet. Transliterations of the names have been provided.
Czech and Slovak Names

Common Czech Names of the 15th and 16th Centuries, by Walraven van Nijmegen
A list of common men's and women's given names.
German Names from Kosice, 1300-1500, by Guntram von Wolkenstein and Anya Mstyslavyaya
A collection of names from the register of offices of a prison in Slovakia. The article contains surnames as well as given names. The given names are Latinized; most of the surnames are not. Most of the names are German; a few are Slavic. Master Talan has provided notes on the surnames in the articles.
Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin Names

Early Croatian Given Names, by Walraven van Nijmegen
Lists of men's and women's names, with some advice on forming complete names.
Heads of State of Croatia List (originally elsewhere)
We aren't sure if the spellings can be trusted, but given our limited resources on this culture, this list seemed worth including.
Personal Names from Early 17th C Bar, Montenegro, by Aryanhwy merch Catmael.
Masculine and feminine given names from Latin records. The names show influence of both Italian and Serbo-Croatian.

Some early 17th c. bynames from Silba, Croatia, by Rebecca Lucas (ffride wlffsdotter)

The Medieval Names Archive is published by the Academy of Saint Gabriel and Sara L. Uckelman. It was historically published by Joshua Mittleman.
© 1997-2013. Copyright on individual articles belongs to their authors.
http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/slavic.shtml