Journal of Literary Onomastics

<strong><em>The Journal of Literary Onomastics</em></strong> is the only scholarly periodical devoted to the study of names in literary texts (with "literary" defined as broadly as possible). Our focus is on literatures in the languages of Western and Central Europe of any period and any national origin. We are an affiliate publication of the American Name Society.

List of Papers (Total 35)

"Historia Brittonum

Certain versions of the ninth-century _Historia Brittonum_ have an additional chapter (66a), nominally containing a list of "all the cities in the whole of Britain, twenty-eight in number". It has intrigued medieval and modern scholars alike. They have struggled to identify the names as those of Roman Britain's cities, for the most part without success. In the present paper a new...

“The city was named after an Herb called Mesas in Ancient Spanish”: Rabbi Yosef Mesas’ Testimony concerning his Surname

Yosef Mesas (1892–1974), a renowned Jewish Rabbi, claimed that the origin of his surname is the ancient city Mesas near Madrid, named for a medicinal herb common there. He assumes that "Mesas" became a common name in Morocco after the Jews were exiled from Spain in 1492. Mesas suggests that the herb is "Masasa" in Moroccan Arabic (Darija dialect). In the 12th century, Maimonides...

Norse "Loki

The still debated Old Norse theonym Loki is projected against the wide semantic field of the ON verb lúka "to close", not, as current scholarship would have it, as relevant to Ragnarǫk and the closing down of the divine world but in its judicial applications to successfull negotiated outcomes. The ingenious Loki, the bearer of a praxonym, would then be the inventive Fixer. While...

The xxuiii ciuitates brittannię of the Historia Brittonum: Antiquarian Speculation in Early Medieval Wales

A reassessment of the list of civitates in Chapter 66a of the Historia Brittonum is attempted through the establishment of a reliable text as it is preserved in a number of versions. Analysis of each name is attempted by working back to its hypothetical Brittonic original. Some names attested in Classical and early medieval sources are readily identifiable and can be identified...

The xxuiii ciuitates brittannię of the Historia Brittonum: Antiquarian Speculation in Early Medieval Wales

A reassessment of the list of civitates in Chapter 66a of the Historia Brittonum is attempted through the establishment of a reliable text as it is preserved in a number of versions. Analysis of each name is attempted by working back to its hypothetical Brittonic original. Some names attested in Classical and early medieval sources are readily identifiable and can be identified...

Naming Practices in J.R.R. Tolkien's Invented Languages

No abstract.