Noble names: changes in Lithuanian aristocratic name-giving during the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė (LDK; Grand Duchy of Lithuania; GDL); Lietuvos istorija; Socialinė istorija; Vardai; The Lithuanian history; Social history; Names.

ENА паше forms an important part of a person’s identity. Usually names are not chosen by an individual but received at birth. On the one hand, a name distinguishes a specific person from his fellows, while on the other it places him within a certain group of people with regard to origin and cultural tradition. Changes in a system of name-giving may offer significant data about the development of a social group, especially at a time for which we lack direct sources for studying personal identity. Names allow us to understand better the internal structure of the aristocracy, especially kinship organization. The creation of inherited kin names or surnames is not only a general European onomastic phenomenon, but also an important marker which reveals changes in aristocratic kinship. In medieval Lithuania personal names began to change at the end of the fourteenth century as the pagan population underwent official conversion to Roman Catholicism and the hitherto pagan north-western parts of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became Christian. It was when baptismal naming traditions became established that Christian names spread alongside the old ‘Lithuanian’ names. Until then Christian names were common only among the Eastern Orthodox community of the Grand Duchy. Admittedly, the Lithuanian ruler Mindaugas (Mendog) was baptized in 1251 and was crowned king in a Catholic ceremony two years later.We do not know whether he received a new name at baptism, but in any case sources refer to him (unlike his wife Martha (Morta)) and other Lithuanian noblemen of his day only by their old pre-Christian names. Only Lithuanian nobles who withdrew to Ruthe- nian (Rus'ian) or Livonian lands such as Prince Daumantas of Nalsen (Nalšia), who moved with his warrior band to Pskov, where he became the Orthodox Prince Dovmont-Timofei, took Christian names.3 Another nobleman from Nalsen named Suxe became a vassal of the archbishop of Riga and was baptized Nicolaus. After King Mindaugas’s assassination in 1263 the Lithuanian core of the Grand Duchy reverted to paganism, and the greater part of the Lithuanian elite remained heathen until the fateful events of the end of the fourteenth century, despite the country’s continued territorial expansion into Orthodox Christian Ruthenian lands throughout the fourteenth century. [Extract, p. 91-92]