DENOMINATION OF IDENTITY (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE FRENCH SYSTEM OF ANTHROPONYMY)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to attempt to show what lies behind the term name on the basis of Medieval French legal documents. We will try to show which notions and concepts this term covers and try to see whether the claim that name is purely an indicative, that is, demonstrative, mechanism is true. The basic corpus for the diachronic study of the origin and the development of the ways of identifying persons in the European cultural circle consists of archival medieval documents. In the names recorded in archival documents the extension and intension of the naming formula are mixed, and most analyses of such corpora do not take into account whether the systems of identification by name from the Medieval period, prior to the stabilization of the
formulae used for naming, are (and if yes, to what extent) compatible with the present day system. In this paper, we try to show to what extent a medieval record identifying a person matches contemporary understanding of such records and which elements were crucial for the development of contemporary formulae used for naming.