[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Prussian Names

[Jerry Frank]

At 07:26 AM 18/04/2003 -0700, Magton wrote:

>Does the male name AUGUST have particular Prussian
>overtones?  Can anyone shed some light on a female
>name like EUPHROSINA ??(spelled EUFROZYNA in the
>Polishj writing from German Lutheran records ) I am
>not sure what the German spelling of that name would
>be ? I know it's an ancient , isoteric kind of Saint -
>name . Would German Lutherans have Saint names for
>their children - or purely ethnic German or cultural
>and  political allegiance types of names?


Is it necessarily true that babies are named after someone?  Certainly it 
did happen but, maybe then as now, some children were named simply because 
the parents liked the name.

In my experience with extractions (though I cannot back this up 
statistically), I can say that many boys born in the month of August are 
named August.  Ditto for girls named Augustine.

Saint names among German Lutherans seems less popular among the Russian 
Germans but John and Mary are very commonly honoured by German Lutherans in 
the Baden and Wuerttemberg regions of Germany (perhaps others as well) with 
several children in a given family carrying the Johann and Maria 
names.  They would have been more commonly known by their second name.  So 
Johann Georg and Johann Gottlieb might be brothers who are known as Georg 
and Gottlieb.



Jerry Frank - Calgary, Alberta
jkfrank at shaw.ca