Personal Names in the Context of the Documents of the Medieval Church Office

Abstract

This paper analyses sixteenth-century Polish anthroponymia as preserved in the documents of Jarosław Bogoria Skotnicki, the archbishop of Gniezno. The onomastic material has been depicted in the context of the structure (form) of diplomas. They show Polish anthroponymy against the backdrop of medieval events they describe, a fact that constitutes the onomastic interpretation of official texts under study. The sources used here have shown the spontaneous changes in the manner of naming people, starting from one-word nomination, inherited from the pre-Slavonic epoch, through a more extensive system of identification by means of non-nominal onomastic elements derived from appelate, anthroponymic, and toponymic forms that are not surnames. The question of the way to identify person in the Middle Ages and its reflection in office documents may determine the direction for further studies on Polish anthroponymy.