Izvorni znanstveni članak
Croatian Names in Medieval Slavonia-according to Examples in Diplomatic Sources from the 13th to the 15th Century
Danijel Petković
orcid.org/0000-0003-3748-1808
; Gradski muzej Vinkovci
Sažetak
The subject of this work,.via a few examples from diplomatic sources of the period of the 13th to 15th centuries, are family and personal names as well as toponyms which are without doubt derived from the ethnonyms Hrvat and Hrvati and which have been "caught" in the area ofmedieval Slavonia especially in the areas of the medieval counties ofVukovar, Požega, Križevci, and those parts of Baranje county which were located on the right bank of the Drava. The Hungarian branch of historical topography within medieval knowledge, which is much more advanced than the Croatian, has already confirmed with a reasonable degree of confidence, that there is almost no county of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary in which there did not exist at least one similar toponym derived from a Croatian ethnic name. Therefore the presence of ethnonyms and ethnotoponyms of the same origin should be less strange on the southwestern edge of the area of Pannonia and Hungary, or in the framework of the Kingdom of Slavonia which is also geographically closer to the original source of that ethnonym in the area of the eastern Adriatic and western Dinarics. These assertions are easily verifiable in the volumes of the extensive Hungarian medieval famous Gyorffy historical topographical handbook (Gyorgy Gyorffy, Az Arpad-kori Magyrorsag t6rteneti jo/drajza, vols. 1-4, Budapest, 1963-1998), or in the handwritings of the late Hungarian historian Pal Engel (1938-2001), prepared for the 5th volume of the above handbook and which should have also addressed the areas of those "south Hungarian counties" especially Vukovar and Požega which were also considered part of the Kingdom of Slavonia. There also exists a range of other works of Hungarian rnedievalists who address the appearance of toponyms in the "Hungaro-Slavonian" medieval area both derived from the ethnonyms of H6rvat(i) as well as toponyms derived from "Vlach ethnicities" or Olasz(i). The origin of some of these toponyms in the area of Pannonia, at least as far as the name Horvat is concerned, is certainly of relatively great age, or some of them seem to date at the latest from the transition from the early to the high Middle Ages, that is at the latest from the period of the 11 th and l2th centuries because some of them such as these medieval H(6)rvats in the area of today's Mikanovci in VukovarSrijem county were registered as far back as the early l3th century. Of course all these Horvat toponyms which existed in the areas of medieval Slav ,mia and Hungary do not necessarily mean that those settlements were always inhabited by ethnic Croats in the medieval sense but we can suppose that those same settlements were at least founded and settled by people of Croatian ethnic origin. Therefore we can very really imagine migrations of individuals or better said "warrior-noble" family groups or clans from the Croatian heartlands of the eastern Adriatic and west Dinarics to Pannonia and that at the latest immediately after the moment when the Kingdom of Croatia came into the possession of the Arpadovićs at the end of the Ilth century. It seems that the Hungarian king himself, and this is as valid for the Anžuvinci and later rulers as for the Arpadovićs, initiated the migration of these Croatian "warrior-noble" family groups. Such exampJes of the migration of Croatian noble ancestors from the heartlands to medieval Slavonia were noted in diplomatic sources from as early as the 13th century, which was best shown back in the early 1950s by Croatian medieval ist Miho Barada in his work Lapčani. There he showed how individual members of one old Croatian rural community which originated in the Lapac, now disappeared, on the coast in the diocese and county o fNin, that is in the hinterland of Zadar during the J3th and 14th centuries founded a series of new noble communities starting with Karin in the II th century and then in the 13th century in Gomiljani near Bužan in Lika, in Donji Lapac and Nebljuh also in Lika and then finally in the area of lower Pounj in the county of Gorje which was already located in medieval Slavonia. Of course these migrations of individuals and family communities in the period from the 12th to the 14th century and which mainly remain unnoted in diplomatic sources are far from those great massive migrations from the "western Balkans" which began in the second half of the 15th century caused by Ottoman expansion. The same migrations of "Yugoslav ethnicities" caused by the Ottoman conquests would crash in the period from the 15th to the 18th century in a series oftime waves onto Pannonia and the sU1Toundings areas. The western Croatian half of these migrations in the north had by the 16thcentury reached the area of today's Gradišće, Moravia and Slovakia but also the area of modem-day Slovenia, Istria and the west coast of Italy. These Ottoman conquests in southeast Europe had numerous cultural, ethnic, political and other consequences which are still felt today and of which certainly one of the more interesting facts is that the surname Horvat is one of the most common among the Hungarians and Slovenes of today. Translation: Nicholas Philip Saywell
Ključne riječi
Croats; medieval ethnotoponyms; medieval personal and family names; medieval topography; High and Late Middle Ages; Slavonia
Hrčak ID:
81747
URI
Datum izdavanja:
22.9.2006.
Posjeta: 6.551 *