<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <html> <head> <title>Vocabulary item</title> <link rel="StyleSheet" href="angs.css" type="text/css"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UNICODE" /> </head> <body> <p><b><i>3.3 Vocabulary items and full names.</i></b> In most cultures of the world by far the greatest source for personal names is the general vocabulary of the language in use. In English there are about a hundred such names in the masculine given name pool against four hundred in the feminine. Generally names are chosen from common nouns referring to items in about nine categories. To these it is possible to add the pool of full names, any of which may have become popular or honored by a distinctive bearer. </p> <div class="center"><img src="gif/ngs-dphh.gif"></div> <p class="noindent"> There are many instances where the vocabulary item originally belonged to a classical or other well known language, but the meaning of the name has now been lost in the minds of many people. </p> <div class="center"><img src="gif/ngs-dpii.gif"></div> <p> A phrase may be condensed into one name when a title as a determiner in the given name is taken to be a name in itself. An example comes from the association of various phrasal names in Spanish. The given name &#147;Maria de Guadalupe&#148; comes from the name of a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary at a convent in the Guadalupe valley (C&#224;ceres, Spain). One form of this name is simply &#147;Guadalupe,&#148; which one might be tempted to say is a toponym that has become a given name. In this case, of course, without the Virgin Mary, associated with it as a determiner, use of it as a given name would never have occurred. The feminine given name &#147;Guadalupe&#146; has a variant form, &#147;Lupe,&#148; a pet form, which in turn has gotten a diminutive, &#147;Lupita.&#148; There is also a masculine counterpart, such as, &#147;Juan Baptista&#148; and &#147;Francesco Xavier&#148;. </p><p> If the full form of a compound is parsed as two or three given names, its alternation with the hypocoristic forms becomes clouded. Sometimes the origin of a name is separated into separate steps only with difficulty. For example, there is a title &#147;mael Maedoc&#148; in Irish, meaning &#147;disciple of Saint Maedoc.&#148; It is unclear whether &#147;Maelmadoc&#148; was ever a given name in Irish, but the English version, &#147;Marmaduke&#148; is well known. Then there is the Latin name for the 6th C. BC Chinese philosopher, &#147;K'ung Fu Zi&#148; (T[+YP[), which means &#147;Master K'ung.&#148; The borrowing into a Late Latin form, &#147;Confucius&#148; is the form used in English, but its use in the given name pool is doubtful. The same sort of clouding occurs with &#147;initial-speak,&#148; a means of abbreviation discussed with other forms of hypocorism. </p> <p class="center"><img src="gif/angs-cpy.gif"></p> <div class="nav"> <hr color = "#FF9933" width="50%" noshade> <a href="../../index.htm" target="_top">Works of Wonder</a> | <a href="../../genealogy1.htm" target="_top">Genealogy</a> </div> </body> </html>