Die Naturgewalt in deutschen Familiennamen
Elements of nature in German surnames

Summary/Abstract: The subject of the paper is German surnames derived from names denoting elements. The research material originates from the following dictionaries: Hans Bahlow, 1976,Deutsches Namenlexikon. Familien- und Vornamen nach Ursprung und Sinn erklärt, Suhrkamp, Baden-Baden; Josef Karlmann Brechenmacher, 1957–1960, EtymologischesWörterbuch der Deutschen Familiennamen. A–J, C.A. Starke Verlag, Limburg a.d. Lahn;Josef Karlmann Brechenmacher, 1960–1963, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der Deutschen Familiennamen. K–Z, C.A. Starke Verlag, Limburg a.d. Lahn; Duden. Familiennamen.Herkunft und Bedeutung. Bearbeitet von Rosa und Volker Kohlheim, 2005, Dudenverlag, Mannheim–Leipzig–Wien–Zürich; Max Gottschald, 1954, Deutsche Namenkunde.Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung, de Gruyter, Berlin; HorstNaumann, 1989, Familiennamenbuch, VEB Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig. The studyis an attempt to search for an answer concerning the derivational morphology of surnames. The corpus subjected to analysis includes non-morphologically-derived surnames,derivatives and sentence-derived surnames. In terms of semantics, the majority of thesurnames under analysis are anthroponyms with a single motivation. A few surnames areof Low German origin. Some surnames of the analysed material have graphical varieties.

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