Orthographic Representation of Lithuanian Personal Names with the Endings -as, -a, and -is in Fourteenth-Century German Historical Sources

Abstract

The recording of Lithuanian personal names in historical sources and their adaptation into foreign languages have been widely investigated. However, the scope and depth of existing research remain uneven across historical periods and the empirical material analysed. Lithuanian proper names, especially personal names documented in German and Latin sources, have received comparatively less systematic attention. Lithuanian names recorded in German historiography and in the documents of the Teutonic Order in the fourteenth century represent some of the earliest attestations of the Lithuanian anthroponymic corpus. This article seeks to contribute to the study of historical Lithuanian personal names by introducing previously unanalysed material, thereby expanding our understanding of how the spoken Lithuanian name inventory was adapted in fourteenth-century foreign-language written sources.
The analysis demonstrates that in German and Latin records of the period, contemporary Lithuanian personal names ending in -as were consistently altered, with the original ending replaced by -e. The endings -a and -is, by contrast, were either preserved or similarly modified to -e. These patterns reveal systematic tendencies in the orthographic and morphological adaptation of Lithuanian names in medieval German and Latin texts.