Social Status and Identification of Prussian Women in the 14th–16th Century Documents of the Teutonic Order

Abstract

  The naming and identification of women in historical sources, especially in the chancery documents of the Teutonic Order (hereafter - DO) of the Middle Ages and the early modern period, constitutes a phenomenon that is in need of research from the point of view of many academic disciplines. The topic is not only the subject of research in onomastics, but also concerns general linguistics, history, sociology, anthropology and others. In the present paper, it is attempted to approach this topic in two ways. On the one hand, it is interesting to see whether the women in the historical documents are identifiable by their possibly recorded names; on the other hand, the question arises as to how their social status and the naming or identification of women correlate.