Статьи автора

Personal Names on Visigothic Slate Tablets

Выпуск 2 от 22.06.2022

This article analyses the personal names that appear in texts inscribed on slate tablets from Visigothic Hispania (sixth to eighth centuries AD). The texts were found at rural sites clustered around the borders between the provinces of Salamanca, Ávila and the north of Cáceres, in areas about which the historical sources are largely silent. The author analyses the kinds of text in which these personal names appear and the ways in which they are presented. In some cases, the slates simply contain lists of names, probably of farmers who worked the land, but in others they provide the names of sellers, buyers, judges or witnesses to legal documents, some of whom wrote their names and signed in their own hand. The origins of the names, mainly Graeco-Roman or Gothic, are also analysed. The presence of names of diverse origin in the same documents, especially in those dealing with agricultural matters, might perhaps indicate the presence of a mixed population. Finally, the author considers the names of Hebrew origin, which on these slates almost always refer to biblical characters or angels.

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