--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <tgpedersen@...>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Thursday, February 06, 2003 11:00 AM
> Subject: Re: Fw: [tied] Latin versus *Proto-Romance
>
>
>
> > May I answer your question with a question: Why should a king
with
> > the status of Charlemagne be named as a lower freeman? Possible
> > answer: because the Carolingians were usurpers. He might have
been of
> > another class, or ethnos. You assume 'freemen' were one class.
Not
> > necessarily so.
>
> If you are a usurper, you don't deliberately give your son a name
that tells the world "I'm an usurper". The names Charles and Pepin
simply ran in the family and I don't think any particular meaning was
associated with them by Charlemagne's time. The Carolingians were a
family of ambitious landowners, some of whom had become bishops and
generals well before they decided to put an end to the Merovingian
fiction. Charles the Hammer was not a king yet, but the position of a
royal majordomo was the very opposite of churldom. Besides, Charles
is a monothematic name, thus possibly an abreviation of something
once longer, or an informal pet-name of some sort. If you need a
comparable example, the first known rulers of Mercia had funny-
sounding names like Pybba, Penda, Peada ... and yes, Ceorl.
>
> Piotr
What are the names that are composed with Karl- (or Swain-, a
parallel example)?
Anyway, if something was once down, now up, it must have changed
position at some time. Are you saying the word had become meaningless
at that time?
Torsten