This article deals with a Latvian first-name system, and with the given names of common origin in particular. The author (together with Dana Beņķe – a student at the University of Latvia) has collected and made “trees” of the anthroponyms having the same etymon (starting with capital letters A, Ā, B, C, Č). The purpose is to gather information about all Latvian given names which have “grown” from the same name or the same etymon, to find the time when particular name was recorded in Latvia, when it was included into name almanacs, to ascertain the contemporary usage of the name in Latvia. The largest anthroponymic nests/trees are the following: etymon name Anna (includes 82 names), Andrejs (68 names), Antonijs (58 names), Aleksandrs (51 name), Bartolomejs (48 names). Most of the alterations analysed have been coined in other languages as hypocoristic forms and have been adopted into Latvian in a ready-made form. Majority of name variants came to Latvia from or through German and Polish, but there are hypocoristic forms coined and known only in Latvian (e.g., Anna > Annuža, Ance, Annele; Barbara > Baiba). The research, which includes 1114 Latvian names, connected into “nests” or “trees” of common etymon. This article introduces with 10 such anthroponymic “trees”. The research is in the beginning stage and has to be continued.

Peer reviewed