Re: [tied] Re: -ham

At 4:52:48 PM on Friday, January 9, 2004, g wrote:

> 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.

I suspect that the <-heim> spellings have simply been
influenced by the standard language (or, even earlier, by
one of the Kanzlei standards).

> 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.

Probably not with <-ham> spellings, though.

>> 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)

Unfortunately, I haven't any early information on any of
these, and without that I'm at best making educated guesses.
Still, a few of these seem to be clear: <Geisenkam>,
<Wolferkam> and <Sachsenkam> look like <-ingheim>
derivatives of <Gi:so>, <Wulfheri>, and <Sahso>,
respectively. <Wettlkam> might be from an /l/-diminutive of
<Watto>. I could guess at a couple more, but with rather
less confidence.

> 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 last is one of a set that includes Bavarian Kemnat,
Kemnaten, and Kemating, Austrian Kematen, and Kemnade near
Holzminden in Brunswick, according to Schwarz. The basis is
a loan from Late Latin <caminata> 'mit einem Kamin
versehenes Gemach', a late enough loan that the /t/ isn't
verschoben. The earliest attestation is <Chemnata> 822 for
Kematen in Upper Austria.

>> 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]. :-))

I don't pretend to have a good handle on the dialect, so
I'll ask: that's <ich komme gleich> and <so ein Schwein>?

(Almost 40 years ago as an undergraduate I spent the
Christmas holidays with a fellow classmate who was Swiss
German by birth. He'd grown up in the U.S. and was
completely bilingual, but the family spoke Schwyzertüütsch
at home. It took me several days to get used to the idea
that something like [I'xa:nyt] could be both 'I can't' and
'I haven't'! Damn' southerners. <g>)

> 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.).

Yes, but for the most part those are just orthographically
different representations of the same basic pronunciation;
the difference between <-ham> and <-haim> ~ <-heim> is
likelier to represent a real difference in pronunciation. I
agree, though, with your statement that I erased to the
effect that some <-heim> spellings may be the result of
importation of more prestigious outside standards.

Brian