On the Structure of First Names in Slovenia

Abstract

The discussion on the structure of first names in Slovenia is based on the statistical data from the year 1994 and consists of two parts. The first part brings a general introduction and discusses compound masculine and feminine names according to the alphabetical order of their component parts. An account of the foreign bases to which a Slovenian component was added (e.g. the morphemes -mir and -slav) is given, but also some other compound names were taken into consideration - especially those Germanic compound names which are, together with their derivations, frequently used in Slovenia. After general introduction on formation of the phonetic realization of first names the second part discusses masculine and feminine names according to their suffixes. Slovenian component parts, i.e. the morphemes and the suffixes transformed the originally foreign names so that they became part of the Slovenian linguistic and cultural systems.