Apart from Sorbian-speakers, the last
"German Slavs" to lose their linguistic identity were the (Draveno-)Polabians in
Drawehn and Lüneburger Wendland on the western bank of the Elbe. They spoke a
(very distinct) West Slavic language until the early 18th century. There are
four volumes of Polabian word-lists and texts collected by the German linguist
Reinhold Olesch and published during the 1980s as the Thesaurus Linguae
Dravaenopolabicae.
A beginner's guide to Slavic toponymy and
ethnonymy:
*-ov- is possessive: in place-names, X-ov
means "belonging to or founded by X"; in personal names it acquires a patronymic
sense; after *-j- the vowel is fronted (*-j-ev-). Another suffix with a similar
function is *-in-, originally added to (j)a- and i-stems (such as typical
feminine nouns).
*-itj- (> Russian -ic^, West Slavic -ic
[-its], OCS -is^tI, S/Cr -ic') is primarily patronymic; it may also
indicate the ancestor of a family or clan, just like Germanic *-ing-. Hence
numerous Polish placenames in -ice (pl.) meaning "[village inhabited or owned
by] the children or descendats of..." (parallel to Old English -ingas > Eng.
-ings, as in Hastings). It could also form tribal names derived from a
location.
*-ov-itj- with the palatal variant
*-j-ev-itj- (> -ovic, -ovic^, -ovic', -evic, etc.) is a combination of both
of the above, in which *-ov- is redundant but common nevertheless. Cf. Russian
patronymics in -ovic^/-evic^ and innumerable Slavic surnames and (formally
plural) placenemes.
*-e^n-(in-) and *-j-an-(in-), pl. *-e^n-e,
*-jan-e (the extension *-in- is restricted to singular case-forms), form
tribal names or, more generally, "membership" terms, e.g. *gord-j-an-in-U
'town-dweller', hence Russian graz^danin 'citizen' (from OCS), or
*slov-e^n-(in-) 'Slav'. The suffix *-ak- has a similar function -- cf.
Slovak vs. Slovene or <Polanie> (*Poljane, the tribe that established the
first Polish state, from *polje 'field, plain') beside the modern term
<Polacy> 'Poles' (sg. Polak).
*-Isk- (related to Germanic *-isk-) forms
adjectives derived from placenames or personal names, and may secondarily give
rise to new adjectival placenames (in -sk or -sko) and surnames (in
-ski).
You can work out for yourself the origin of
names that include suffixal combinations like *-ov-Isk- or *-ov-itj-Isk-. My own
surname (Ga,siorowski) contains the noun <ga,sior> 'gander' (someone's
nickname once upon a time) plus two suffixes. <Ga,siorów> or
<Ga,siorowo> is a plausible (multiply attested) village name, and
<Ga,siorowski> is the corresponding adjective ("de
Ga,siorowo").
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2001 1:11 PM
Subject: [tied] Slavic peoples in what is now east
Germany
How much is known about these various Slavonic peoples who
lived in
what is now eastern Germany, and when they lost their identity and
language? I have heard of: Obotrites (Mecklenburg); Havolane (around
the
river Havol = Havel in the region of Berlin; Sprevjane (around the
river
Sprevja = Spree); Polabe (in the southewest); Sorbs alias Wends
(in the
south; their language persists to this day in Lusatia =
Lausitz); Wiltzes
(in Brandenburg) and others whse names I forget now.
What do Slavic
placenames "X-owitse" or "X-onitse" mean? Does it mean
"X-stream" or
"X-place" or what?