hellog〜英語史ブログ / 2024-04-18

■ #5470. 中英語における職業を表わす by-name の取り扱い [onomastics][personal_name][name_project][methodology][eme][by-name][latin][french][med][evidence][loan_word][occupational_term]

　「#5452. 英語人名史における by-name と family name の違い」 ([2024-03-31-1]) などで取り上げてきた，英語人名を構成する by-name の歴史研究について．初期中英語期に by-name を付ける慣習が徐々に発達していたとき，典型的な名付けのパターンの1つが職業名 (occupational terms) を利用するものだった．この方面の研究は，尽くされてはいないものの，それなりに知見の蓄積がある．Clark (294--95) は，カンタベリーにおける by-name を調査した論文のなかで，文証された by-name の解釈にまつわる難題に触れている．証拠をそのまま信じることは必ずしもできない理由が多々あるという．

The simplest of these Canterbury surnames offer supplementary records, mainly antedatings, of straightforward occupational terms. Yet all is not wholly straightforward. To begin with, we cannot be sure whether the occupational terms used in administrative documents were in fact all current as surnames, that is, in daily use among neighbours, or whether some were supplied by the scribes as formal specifiers, just as occupations and addresses are in legal documents of the present day. Nor can we be sure in what form neighbours would have used such terms as they did. With those examples that are latinized --- a proportion varying in the present material from three-quarters to nine-tenths --- scribal intervention is patent, although sometimes reconstruction of the vernacular base seems easy (such forms, and other speculative cases, are cited in square brackets). With those given in a French form matters are more complex. On the one hand, scribes had a general bias away from English and towards French, as though the latter were, as has been said, 'a sort of ignoble substitute for Latin'; therefore, use of a French occupational term guarantees neither its currency in the English speech of the time nor, alternatively, any currency of French outside the scriptorium: in so far as such terms appear neither in literary sources nor as modern surnames MED is justified in excluding them. On the other hand, many 'French' terms were adopted into English very early; use of these would by no means imply currency of French as such, either in the community at large or in the scriptorium itself.

　証拠解釈が難題である背景は多様だが，とりわけラテン語やフランス語が関わってくる状況が厄介である．この時代の税金名簿などに記されている人名はラテン語化されているものが多く，英語名はその陰に隠されてしまっている．また，フランス語で書かれていることも多く，問題の職業名そのものがフランス語由来の場合，それがすでに英語に同化している単語なのか，それともフランス単語のままなのかの判断も難しい．
　職業を表わす by-name は，そもそも文献学的に扱いにくい素材なのである．そして，これは職業を表わす by-name に限らず，中英語の固有名全般に関わる厄介な事情でもある．

　・ Clark, Cecily. "Some Early Canterbury Surnames." English Studies 57.4 (1976): 204--309.

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