Medieval Slavic-German Bilingualism in the Light of Austrian Hybrid Proper Names

Abstract

Examining the medieval Slavic-German bilingualism on the territory of present-day Austria, one should differentiate bilingualism of a territory (i. e. coexistence, within an area, of speakers of two different languages, each speaking one language) from individual bilingualism (capacity of an individual to speak two languages). The paper deals with the question whether it is possible to prove the Slavic-German individual bilingualism in the Middle Ages based on the study of hybrid proper names. The author argues that only calques (e. g., Tobropotoch German *Friesnik, modified by folk etymology into a compound name Friesenegg.

Keywords

• Slavic
• German
• bilingualism
• Austria
• names
• hybrid names
• loan translation