# Apocope for classical male names in vernaculars



## Villeggiatura

When a pair of male and female names of classical origin became popular in Germanic and Slavic cultures, the ending vowel or diphthong of the male name were much more likely to be curtailed than its female counterpart. For example, _Patricius & Patricia_ became _Patrick & Patricia_ in English, _Anastasius & Anastasia_ became _Anastas & Anastasia_ in many Slavic languages.

Some more examples:
Antonius & Antonia -> Anton & Antonia (Slavic)
Caecilius & Caecilia -> Cecil & Cecilia (English)
Dominicus & Dominica  -> Dominik & Dominika (Slavic)
Valentinus & Valentina -> Valentin & Valentina (Slavic)

What led to the "male privilege" of being closed and the "female privilege" of being open?


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## CapnPrep

Is this really something specific to names of classical origin? Or is it an example of the wider generalization that the feminine tends to be marked with respect to the masculine? For example, the feminine form is often built from the masculine + suffix: Freund ~ Freund*in*, prijatel ~ prijatel*ka*.


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## Sobakus

In Slavic, the masculine names were originally borrowed as [-ьjъ] which turned to [ij] after the fall of the yers. This [ij] sounds foreign to the Slavic ear, so it was dropped in the colloquial. Nothing happened to the feminine _-a_. As for Germanic languages, with the official status of Latin in those areas many names were preserved in their Latin forms. In the vernacular, the Romance _-a_ and -_ia _were re-analysed as a feminine suffix which meant the masculine names were generalised as the name minus the feminine suffix. In other cases the endingless forms were borrowed directly from French where the masculine ending was regularly dropped and the _-j-_, being a final consonant after another consonant, disappeared.


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## ahvalj

In Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic, both male and female names ended with a vowel (most often on_ ъ/ь_ for the former and _a_ for the latter: _Ольгъ/Olьgъ_ & _Ольга/Olьga, Ѳеодоръ/Θeodorъ_ & _Ѳеодора/Θeodora_). The fall of the final reduced vowels (_ъ_ and _ь_) made the masculine variants one syllable shorter (except in the _jo/jā_ stem pairs like _Ѳеодосии/Θeodosьjь & Ѳеодосиꙗ/Θeodosьja > Ѳедосий/Θedosij & Ѳедосьꙗ/Θedosja_).

In Germanic, only East Germanic (Gothic etc.) at the time of christianization had feminine declension with the Nom. Sg. ending on -_a_ (<*_ō_), but for some reason it was considered unsuitable to render foreign feminine names on -_a_, so we find e. g. _Marja & Marþa_ declined as _masculine_ _an_-stems (see http://wulfila.verbix.com/book/Johannes.html — _Marjins, Marþins, Marþan; _also the masculine_ Zakaria, Zakariins_). The Greek and Roman masculine names were borrowed with the ending -_us_ (_Xristus, Pawlus, Silbanus, Teimauþaius _— http://wulfila.verbix.com/book/AndieThessalonicherII.html) and adapted to the _u_-declension (_Xristaus, Xristau — _ibidem). So, masculine and feminine names of foreign origin were in Gothic of the same length.


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## Villeggiatura

CapnPrep said:


> Is this really something specific to names of classical origin? Or is it an example of the wider generalization...


Many Germanic and Slavic languages tend to avert open ending syllables for masculine nouns of any origin, there should be some philosophy behind.


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## CapnPrep

I don't know if it counts as philosophy, but stress-timing languages tend to lose unstressed final vowels (leaving you typically with a closed final syllable), but this can be slowed down or blocked in cases where the vowel encodes a morphological or lexical distinction.


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## ahvalj

Villeggiatura said:


> Many Germanic and Slavic languages tend to avert open ending syllables for masculine nouns of any origin, there should be some philosophy behind.


Could you provide examples when foreign male names with vocalic endings were borrowed into Slavic without them? Those in #1 either have lost their vocalic endings due to unrelated phonetic reasons (#3, 4), or have been already borrowed with zero endings. Male names ending on -_a_ remain so in e. g. modern Russian (_Никита/Nikita, Илья/Ilʲja, Лука/Luka_), and the majority of other names have diminutive forms on -_a_ (_Саша/Saʂa, Ваня/Vanʲa, Дима/Dʲima, Вася/Vasʲa_). I can't recall any Russian male name that has lost its final vowel after the regular drop of the final yers (reduced vowels) in the 11–13th centuries (_Антоний>Антон_ has lost the entire syllable with the final consonant, and as mentioned in #3, this most probably was an adaptation to the inherited Slavic onomasticon that didn't know male names on -_ij_-; Russian _Юрий/Jurʲij _has vowel-ending counterparts in the Polish _Jerzy _and Czech _Jiří _and consonant-ending in the Ukrainian _Юр/Jur_).


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## Scholiast

Greetings


CapnPrep said:


> Is this really something specific to names of classical origin? Or is it an example of the wider generalization that the feminine tends to be marked with respect to the masculine? For example, the feminine form is often built from the masculine + suffix: Freund ~ Freund*in*, prijatel ~ prijatel*ka*.


At the risk of veering off-topic, what about  Germ. _die Gans_, but _der Gänserich_, _die Maus_, but _der Mäuserich_?
Σ


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## berndf

Scholiast said:


> At the risk of veering off-topic, what about Germ. _die Gans_, but _der Gänserich_, _die Maus_, but _der Mäuserich_?
> Σ


These examples actually support CapnPrep's point. As German has a generic suffix to produce female forms out of male ones, the is nothing the other way round. If such a derivation is required, German creates compound nouns. The etymological meanings of _Gänserich and Mäuserich _are_ goose-ruler and mouse-ruler _(_-rich _is the High German rendition of Gothic _reiks=ruler_, cognate to L. _rex_; c.f._ Þiudareiks(=people-ruler)_>_Theoderich_).


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## ahvalj

To summarize a bit.

(1) Ancient Slavic and Germanic languages had the same morphemic structure as Greek and Latin, and they borrowed foreign names adapting them more or less successfully to the existing declension patterns. The male and female names were of the same length (with the exception of the few female ones derived from the Greek _n_-stems, like _-n_ (m)/_-nia_ (f), e. g. _Apollon/Apollonia_). This stage is fully attested in Gothic, Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic (see #4). Among modern non-Romance languages this pattern persists in Lithuanian (_Aurelijus/Aurelija_).

(2) With time, for purely phonetic reasons, the male forms in the counterparts of the Latin _-us-_type lost their final vocalic element: in Slavic it was caused by the drop of the reduced vowels _ъ_ and _ь_, in Latvian, Prussian, Norse and West Germanic by the loss of one mora (element of length), which in the case of the short vowel meant the disappearance of this vowel: _*-as>-s _in Latvian and Prussian, *_-az_>_-aR>-R_ in Norse, and _*-az>*-aR>*-R>-∅_ in West Germanic (with the additional loss of the consonant).

(3) In female names, the originally long vowel in the Nom. Sg. of the _ā_-declension also lost one mora, resulting:

(a) in Latvian and Prussian, in the final short -_a_, which is nevertheless one syllable longer than the -_s_ of the _o_-declension (Latvian _Aleksandrs/Aleksandra_),

(b) in West and North Germanic, in *-_ō>-u,_ which then either preserved or dropped to the time of christianization; in Old High German the ending was -_a_ (borrowed from the Acc. Sg.). Since -_u_ in Old English etc. was unsuitable for adapting Roman and Greek female names ending on -_a_, these were either borrowed as is, or used the _n_-declension: in any case they were one syllable longer than the male counterparts. In most modern Germanic languages, the female names borrowed long ago have either a zero ending (_Ann, _phonetically regular in English), or -_e_ (<-_a_, _Anne, _phonetically regular in German), or the completely foreign -_a (Anna)_.​Thus, I see absolutely no semantic reasons for the pattern you mention when the female names of Greek and Latin origin are one syllable longer: this is entirely the result of standard phonetic changes, observed across the entire vocabulary.


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## Scholiast

Greetings again


berndf said:


> These examples actually support CapnPrep's point. As German has a generic suffix to produce female forms out of male ones, the is nothing the other way round. If such a derivation is required, German creates compound nouns. The etymological meanings of _Gänserich and Mäuserich _are_ goose-ruler and mouse-ruler_


Thanks berndf - this has puzzled me for ages. What about _Witwe_/_Witwer_ (> Lat. _vidua_/_vidu_*us *> Sanscr. _vidhava_, according to L&S)?
Σ


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## Sobakus

Villeggiatura said:


> Many Germanic and Slavic languages tend to avert open ending syllables for masculine nouns of any origin, there should be some philosophy behind.


In addition to the above explanations you may want to take a look at the situation Icelandic, a European language least affected by Romance borrowings and preserving the masculine nominative ending. There, the situation is dictated entirely by available declension types with the proportion of endingless personal names heavily skewed towards the feminine reflecting the proportion among the rest of the nouns in the language.


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## Villeggiatura

What I mean by "Germanic and Slavic languages tend to avert open ending syllables for masculine nouns of any origin (including their own) is like the form _Kasimir_ as it is, the form _Casimiro_ is to avert the opposite.


CapnPrep said:


> I don't know if it counts as philosophy..





ahvalj said:


> and the majority of other names have diminutive forms on -_a_ (_Саша/Saʂa, Ваня/Vanʲa, Дима/Dʲima, Вася/Vasʲa_).  .


I'd consider hypocorism explanatory in and of itself to be a philosophy for these changes.


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## ahvalj

_Kazimir_ is a Slavic name (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Казимир), and it is _Casimiro_ that is its foreign adaptation.


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## ahvalj

I think I have found a good analogy to the topic question: _the feminine adjectives and nouns in French are often one sound longer that their masculine counterparts and often end on a consonant (blã/blãʃ, ʒwajø/ʒwajøz, savã/savãt); is there any hidden semantic reason behind this?_


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## Villeggiatura

ahvalj said:


> _Kazimir_ is a Slavic name (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Казимир), and it is _Casimiro_ that is its foreign adaptation.


It is. Sorry if my phrasing misled.


ahvalj said:


> I think I have found a good analogy to the topic question: _the feminine adjectives and nouns in French are often one sound longer that their masculine counterparts and often end on a consonant (blã/blãʃ, ʒwajø/ʒwajøz, savã/savãt); is there any hidden semantic reason behind this?_


Am I misled? Is this a mockery or what?


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## Sobakus

Villeggiatura said:


> Is this a mockery or what?


To be frank, it's exactly the same question you just asked yourself, and as such having exactly the same answer, so I'm not sure why you consider it a mockery. If you know the answer to that question (and consider it obvious by the looks of it), you know the answer to your own (which is equally obvious).


Villeggiatura said:


> What I mean by "Germanic and Slavic languages tend to avert open ending syllables for masculine nouns of any origin (including their own)



P.S.: Ukrainian and BCS colloquial forms prefer masculine in _-o (Danilo, Petro, Pejo, Ivo, Ranko, Branko etc)_, the Russian forms in _-a _have already been mentioned.


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