Preliminary communication
Nomina vulgaria in the village of Wulkaprodersdorf, Burgenland, Austria
Sabine Pawischitz
; Znanstveni institut Gradišćanskih Hrvatov, Trausdorf, Österreich
Abstract
The Croatian nomina vulgaria in the village Wulkaprodersdorf are not documented in a written form and are used exclusively in spoken Croatian. They belong neither to the category of the surname nor to the category of the first name. Family nicknames help the inhabitants of Wulkaprodersdorf to orientate themselves and to identify others, which means that these names cannot be valid for longer than two or three generations, and that in turn means that the names recorded in this article are not older than 100 years. They developed within the close community of the village because the streets had no names; instead, only the houses had numbers. Identification via nicknames worked quite well since before the appearance of television people in villages used to spend more time together, helped each other a lot, and therefore knew each other much better than they do nowadays. Family nicknames clarify kinship relations, and are regularly prompted by the question “To whom do you belong?” It is normally the head of the family who provides the motive for the nickname. The nomina vulgaria described here are motivated by vocation, lineage, appearance, surnames, and so forth. Nicknames are an ordinary aspect of the daily life of the Burgenlandcroatian minority in Austria. For each nickname there are adjectival and nominal forms in both masculine and feminine genders, which are used accordingly. Since younger people in Wulkaprodersdorf no longer speak Croatian among themselves, it is likely that the entire nickname system will soon disappear.
Keywords
onomastics; Burgeland Croats; minorities in Austria; Burgenland
Hrčak ID:
144202
URI
Publication date:
31.1.2010.
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