Re: -ham

From: g
Message: 29337
Date: 2004-01-09

BMScott@ wrote:

>According to von Kienle (Historische Laut- und Formenlehre
>des Deutschen), 'mhd. _ei_ wird im Bair. früh zu _ai_ und
>weiter zu _a:_', so this may be a late-medieval Bavarian
>phenomenon. Ah, better yet: Schwarz (Deutsche
>Namenforschung II:17) says that '<-heim> unter dem Nebenton
>im Bair. zu <-ham> geworden war'.

Well, they must be know something, don't they. :-) I haven't
studied these theories. But I thought that, here, in this
southern dialect, <ei> > <oa> (and it has done so in most
significant cases); and <aa> [a:] is a further development of
<oa> (e.g. <oans> for <eins>, that becomes <aans> in East-
Austrian). OTOH, significant to me that, in Bavarian, the
pronunciation of the traditional <ei> is *still* closer to
[æj] (as in other German dialects as well) than to [ai]. But
only the native-speaker and someone who has thoroughly studied
the dialect are able to apply the correct diphtong or long
vowel [a:] in the right place.

NB: the -ham ending is usually short [a].

The curious thing, at least to me, is the co-existence of -ham
& -heim. Today in Bavaria proper one will say <Hoam> and <Heim>
[sort of hajm]; in order to hear [ha:m], I'll have to travel far
away, to the place where they play [da 'veana 'vojtza :-]].

I expect some of the -ham places to have quite early
attestations, even earlier than the 11th c.

> Are there any names in <-kam> in that area? According to
> Schwarz, this is often from <-ingheim> in Bavaria and Upper
> Austria.

There are, even if not as frequent as the -ham ones.
Here a few:

SOUTH BAVARIA
3 Heig(e)nkam, Erlkam, Wettlkam, Wöllkam (Krs Miesbach)
Geisenkam, Bolkam, 2 Osterkam, Wolferkam (Krs Rosenheim)
[BTW, 4 Osterham in Southern counties incl. 1 in
Rosenheim]
Piesenkam, Sachsenkam, Weidenkam (Bad Tölz)
Emerkam (Munich county)

NORTH BAVARIA (actually FRANCONIA)
Eschlkam (Krs Cham, Franconia)
Poikam (Franconia)

OTOH, I don't know whether these belong to the same
group (I assume they don't):

-> (Hohen)Kammer, Kammerberg/-grub/-hub/-ing
-> Kaming (G Gars am Inn, Krs Mühldorf)
-> Cham [ka:m] (Franconia, at the "border" to Thuringia)
-> Kemathen (Krs Rosenheim)

> That one is misleading: it's in record in 1277 as
> <Alhalming>, so it's from *<Adelhelm-ing>.

Oh, was it a typo?

> I don't have early forms of the place-name per se, but
> Brechenmacher (Etym. Wörterbuch der dt. Familiennamen) has
> <Jorg der Ahaimer> 1371, an Austrian Lehensmann.

Hence some of the Austrian -hams aren't that good, since
in some relevant areas they tend to make aaaaa out of
oaaa, i.e. <ei> (but by far not in any circumstance:
special attention has to be paid to [æ:] situations,
such as [i kum glæææ] and [so a Svæææææn]. :-))

>> Holzham (G Burghausen, Krs Altötting)
>> Holzham (G Halfing, Krs Rosenheim)
>
> <Ulr. der Holzhaimer> 1395 at Passau.

I'd also pay attention to the dychotomy local dialect
vs. written standards "imported" from outside (e.g.
for style reasons). As it happens today too: many a time
in Hochdeutsch dictionaries & al. texts as well as in
audio/video media, North German words are preferred to
South German synonyms, much to the annoyance of most
German-speakers South, say, of Frankfurt (Main).

Besides: in my previous post, I didn't want to add
the cases where in the same area for <word>ham there
are one or more <word>heim names. As long as I don't know
the history of a place name, I can't tell which one
is an old -ham and which one is so only because of a
mere inconsequence in spelling (German spelling was
quite adventurous until the end of the 19th c. Just
look at "Bavarian": Baier, Bayer, Bayr, Payr, Beyer,
Beier &c.).

> Brian

George