Re: A Slavonian name

Poul Erik Jřrgensen <33@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:7a086$44c3d97c$563000b4$13891@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

An old Danish document from 1231 (in Latin) says:
"... et preter alias possessiones quas bulizlaus hereditauit, mortuo
patre suo swćrcone antiquo. Et mortuo dicto bulizlauo easdem
possessiones hereditauit soror eius sophia."

I am *only* interested in the name Bulizlaus. Bulizlaus lived in
Sweden. His father was the Swedish king Sverker (in the text called
Swćrco); Bulizlaus' mother and grand father were Polish, and Bulizlaus
carried his grand father's name.

Today the name is Boleslaw (as far as I know).

That is the usual Polish spelling. It's a common Slavic name.
Other Western Slavs would spell it Boleslav with identical
pronounciation.

My problem is: How is the name Boleslaw supposed to have been spoken
in Old Slavonian the 13th century?

The 13th century is a little bit late for (a common) Old Slavonic.
However, the Slavic pronunciation of that particular name wouldn't
have changed much since 800AD till today.


Was it spoken Buli-slaw? Or
Bulit-slaw? Or simply Boleslaw? Or something quite different?

AFAIK, the ASCII IPA as per
http://www.alt-usage-english.org/ipa/ascii_ipa_combined.shtml
would be:

[bOlEslav] or [bOlEslaf] with devoiced "f" when spoken fast.

It is absolutely not sure that the medieval Danish writer of the text
was aware of the "correct" Slavonian form!

That is not surprising. There was hardly any "correct"
written Slavonic form then. Most of the educated Slavic
people in the countries of the Western Church wrote in Latin.
Only from around that time the W.Slavic literature was
being written in Old Czech in some significant quantity.

You will find that the official documents, minted coins,
etc of the 13th (and earlier) century used various Latin spellings
of ruler names like Boleslau Dux, Oldricus Dux, Wratislau, Bratislau,
Wenzeslau, etc. (Cz: Boleslav, Oldr^ich, Vratislav, Bratislav,
Václav.)

pjk


Poul Erik Joergensen
DK


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