Towards the History of Spanish Compound Anthroponyms with the Preposition de (Based on the 16th Century Baptismal Registers of Seville’s Parishes)

Abstract

The paper focuses on Spanish compound names with the preposition de (e.g. María de la Concepción, Juan de los Santos, Catalina de Santiago, etc.) retrieved from baptismal books in Seville prior to 1600. This research was outlined years ago by Ramón Menéndez Pidal who studied names with Marian dedication, based mostly on the 17th and 18th centuries sources. The paper reprises the theme but in a more elaborate way: the study is based on baptismal registers from the century preceding 1600 when Menéndez Pidal began his research and on the baptismal books of all parishes of Seville, which makes it possible to draw reliable quantitative conclusions. Besides, the study considers all kinds of names with the preposition de. The corpus contain two kinds of such names: compounds with Marian dedications and those containing a saint’s name (e.g. Fernando de San Pedro, Elvira de San Vicente, Juan de Santo Agustín, etc.). In the 16th century such names were relatively rare: only 115 children are found to have been baptised with a compound name containing preposition de, such names being based on the combination of a first name with one of only 30 dedicative elements (de San Pedro, de la Concepción, etc.). Female names with Marian dedications were almost twice as frequent as compounds with a saint’s name. The analysis shows that in the last case, the choice of the name depended on the catholic calendar: in the overwhelming majority of cases, the newborn baby got baptised immediately on the corresponding saint’s day or some days around this date (all deviances from this practice are discussed in the paper). It is also found that prior to 1600 names with de were characteristic of the most disadvantaged social groups, especially slaves and abandoned children, where the dedicative element that followed the preposition served as a substitute of a missing second name.

Keywords

• history of the spanish language
• anthroponymy
• first name
• compound names
• parish registers
• seville
• marian dedications
• catholic calendar