Sarah Chevalier Livres

This Festschrift comprises a series of papers written in honour of the philologist Andreas Fischer, on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. As in Andreas Fischer's own research, the main focus of the volume is on words: words in modern varieties, such as emergent conjunctions in Australian, American and British English, words in their cultural and historical context, such as English keywords in Old Norse literature, and words in a diachronic perspective, such as Romance suffixation in the history of English. Many contributions are anchored in the philological tradition that has informed much of Andreas Fischer's own scholarship, such as the study of verbal duelling in the late thirteenth-century romance Kyng Alisaunder. Others examine the construction ofdiscourses, such as those surrounding the Black Death. The volume, with its innovative studies, offers fascinating insights into words, discourses, and their contexts, both past and present.

Personal Names are often thought of simply as labels - terms we use in order to identify our fellow human beings. In fact, however, there is a great deal more to personal Names than this. Besides their historical meanings, Names also carry an array of associative meanings. For example, a given Name may evoke a particular socio-economic class, generation, or ethnic group - and it will almost certainly carry information concerning gender. Based on a large corpus of interviews undertaken among residents of the Sydney region, this study explores these lesser-known meanings of Names. It addresses questions such as: What factors influence the choice of given Names? In what ways are these Names then modified, and what are the social significations of the modifications? (When, for example, is Caroline called Carrie, Caro, Cazza or Caz?) And to what Extent do immigrant groups adapt their Names to the patterns of the dominant culture, and what does this tell us about processes of assimilation? According to Peter Trudgill, the study „treats a novel topic in an original, innovative and insightful way“.