Clustering Names of Medieval Novgorod: Geographical Variation of Personal Names Attested in the Census Book of Vodskaja Pjatina

Abstract

This article attempts to investigate ancient personal names through ­digital methods. The article focuses on names attested in the census book of Vodskaja pjatina, one of the five administrative areas of late 15th century Novgorod. The research data is compiled digitally. Regional differences in naming conventions are studied through two hierarchical clustering procedures: one based Jaccard index with the average linkage and other based on Euclidean distance metric with the ward linkage. Overall, 35,726 names are collected, whereas the number of ­individual name variants is 2748. Almost all of the most common names are of Christian origin. Names containing Finnic features are a minority, approx. 2% of all. Distance measures and clustering results turned out to be useful to study ancient naming conventions particularly at the fine-grained level. At larger scale, the outcomes of both procedures are mostly in line with previous treatises of the study area’s past: by the end of the 15th century, the southern region had already become Slavicized whereas the northern parts still had a significant Finnic population.

Keywords

• onomastics; personal names; finnic history; russian history; ­digital humanities; clustering