ŠIAULIAI UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH PHILOLOGY RENDERING OF GERMANIC PROPER NAMES IN THE LITHUANIAN PRESS BACHELOR THESIS Research Adviser: Assist. L.Petrulion ė Student: Aist ė Andži ūtė Šiauliai, 2010 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................3 1. THE CONCEPTION OF PROPER NAMES.........................................................................5 1.2. The development of surnames.............................................................................................6 1.3. Proper names in Germanic languages .................................................................................8 1.3.1. Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic surnames.................................................9 1.3.2. Dutch surnames ..........................................................................................................12 1.3.3. English surnames........................................................................................................13 1.3.4. German surnames .......................................................................................................14 2. NON-LITHUANIAN SURNAMES ORTHOGRAPHY .....................................................16 2.1. The historical development of the problem.......................................................................16 2.2. The rules of transcriptions of non-Lithuanian proper names ............................................22 3. THE USAGE OF GERMANIC SURNAMES IN THE LITHUANIAN PRESS ................23 CONCLUSIONS ......................................................................................................................36 REFERENCES .........................................................................................................................37 DICTIONARIES AND ENCYCLOPEDIAS...........................................................................39 WEBSITES...............................................................................................................................39 SOURCES ................................................................................................................................39 APPENDICES..........................................................................................................................40 2 INTRODUCTION Proper names, particularly the act of naming, is a well-established research topic in disciplines as diverse as anthropology, history, law, linguistics, philosophy, social psychology and sociology. Proper names represent people on their birth certificates, various documents, gravestones and on other papers. Name forms and functions also the ideas about names and naming might differ from one culture to another. Proper names can serve as ‘culture markers’, i. e. they implicitly indicate to which culture the character belongs. The two most important criteria for proper names are their uniqueness and that they function as the identification marks of individuals. In other words, a name signifies an individual being or has unique reference. Thus, names serve to identify persons by singling them out from among other persons. The research will focus particularly on the surnames of Germanic languages, however, their etymology and orthography are indespensable from proper nouns in general. Therefore, the terms proper nouns, proper names, personal names and surnames will be used interchangeably in this thesis. Germanic languages comprise a largest branch of Indoeuropian languages. Currently, there are eight living Germanic languages. Nowadays when Lithuania is the member of the European Union and NATO as well as it is involved in the unavoidable globalization processes it is obvious that the Lithuanian press faces up with foreign surnames including their orthography. From the very beginning when the written language emerged in the sixteenth century in Lithuania our linguists Simonas Daukantas, Simonas Stanevi čius, Dionizas Poška and others confronted with difficulties how to write foreign surnames corretly. There are no strict rules proposed by the State Lithuanian Language Commission but it provides certain guidances which should be followed. However, such famous Lithuanian linguists as Sližien ė (1990), Ambrazas (2008) and other representatives of various public institutions disagree with these rules and suggest their own. We still do not have the single opinion about foreign proper names rendering into the Lithuanian language. The subject of the work has been restricted to the proper names of Germanic languages in the Lithuanian press. Bearing this in mind surnames of Germanic languages will be analysed. The aim of the present study is to analyse the usage of Germanic proper names in the Lithuanian press. To achieve the aim, the following objectives have been set up: 1. To present theoretical background of proper names in Germanic languages; 2. To reveal the non-Lithuanian surnames orthography in the Lithuanian press; 3 3. To classify examples according to the Lithuanian rules; 4. To estimate the frequency of examples found in the newspaper. The problem of spelling of foreign surnames in the Lithuanian press have been widely analysed by many Lithuanian linguists such as Gustainis (1934), Jonikas (1963), Sližien ė (1990), Kni ūkšta (2001) and Ambrazas (2008). Great theoretical reviews on how to write foreign surnames were presented by Ambrazas (2008). However further investigation is needed, as the above mentioned linguists provide contradictive opinions, emphasize irregularities of the proper name usage in the Lithuanian press and stress the significance of the preservation of the national language. The novelty of the work is in the attempt that has been made to discuss the usage and spelling of Germanic surnames in the Lithuanian press and to relate them to the Lithuanian rules set by the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language. To achieve the best results, the following research methods have been used : 1. Descriptive – the analysis provided the possibility to review numeral issues concerning surnames of Germanic languages; 2. Meta – the analysis enabled the author of the bachelor thesis to interpret the results and conclusions made by other authors; 3. The statistical method helped to systemize and generalize the results. Statistical method was salutary for the processing of the results of the empirical part of the research. Material used in this work . For the purpose of the investigation all examples of Germanic surnames have been compiled from the newspaper Lietuvos Rytas . The scope of the research is 414 instances of surnames of the Germanic origin. The collected examples illustrate the usage of Germanic surnames in the Lithuanian press. The structure of the work. The bachelor’s paper consists of two major parts. The present paper begins with the Introduction which defines the subject of the investigation, formulates the aim and sets the objectives, discusses the novelty of the theme, describes the methods and material used in the research paper and presents the practical value of this work. The first part provides the theoretical framework of the research. The practical part consists of the classification and analysis of the drawn instances according to the Lithuanian rules. The conclusive remarks are presented at the end of the research work. We presume that the collected data and the research itself might be useful for students and lecturers conducting research in journalism or comparative linguistics. The results of this work could be used practically in non-Lithuanian orthography teaching. 4 1. THE CONCEPTION OF PROPER NAMES Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (1976) defined a proper noun (or proper name) as “a noun that designates a particular being or thing, does not take a limiting modifier and is usually capitalised in English”. The famous French Grand dictionnaire encyclopedique Larousse (1984) defined a proper noun as a sub-category of nouns, that designates a being or an object considered as unique. It distinguishes the following features: 1. A proper name designates a particular being or thing. Typically, authors cite names of persons and names of places as examples of proper names. 2. Proper names have a capital initial letter. 3. Proper names are not used with determiners in the same way as common names are. Names are specifically individual and mark identity both of the unique person and of the person as a member of a group. The family chooses a name for a newborn. But society may impose constraints on the choice. Constraints inhere in social organization. A group’s naming custom is one constraint. Other constraints arise in contemporary society from proccesses of economic, political and cultural unification and integration and from institutionalized state control over individuals. (Jernudd, Bjorn.1995) Personal names include not only individual names but also collective names such as inhabitant names, certain bynames and especially family names. It has appeared that language philosophers tend to view proper names as a kind of indexicals, i.e. as affiliated to personal pronouns and demonstratives. Proper names constitute an open class of words. (Langendonck,W.2007) Mark Antony Lower (1853:1) notes that, “Our proper name is ourself - in our thoughts, and in the thoughts of those who know us, and nothing can seperate it from our existence. A name, however apparently insignificant,