LL-L "Etymology" 2010.02.24 (02) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 24 February 2010 - Volume 02
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From: Jonny <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics"

Beste Lowlanners, Marcus,

to my previous mail of today LL-L "Language politics" 2010.02.23 (06)
[DE-NDS] I would like to add some more thoughts I meanwhile made. (I'll
continue in English because this might be interesting for other people,
too.)

Marcus and I lately had a discussion about 'endonym' and 'exonym', the first
a *development* of a word within a certain language or dialect, the latter a
*translation* from another language.

I asked for a confusing example, dealing with an island on the Elbe river
which in todays NDS is 'Kruutsand', in DE is 'Krautsand' (E: 'weed
sand', also 'Krautsand' ;-)). My argument was that it in the early time of
the Hanse had been MLG 'De grote/groute Sand' (E 'The great sand'), then
incorrectly became translated into DE as 'Krautsand', which at least became
the exonym NDS 'Kruutsand'.

Marcus, thanks for your very useful doubts in this matter; they give me
another view upon it.
Meanwhile I think it to be a very bad example to find out more about the
facts around endo-/exonym. Who had given the name to an (probably unsettled)
island between the North Sea and the important port of Hamburg? It probably
have been seafarers, who draw the first maps and told each other about their
navigational experiences. And these captains came from all parts of Europe,
spoke different languages and probably were not perfect in writing at all,
in special not in writing Middle Low German, which was the lingua franca
amongst them.
So of course these different varieties we deal with in old documents as 'De
groote Sand', 'De kro(u)te Sand' or 'Dat Crudsand' were confusing for the
drawers of 'official' maps in the later middleage.

I'm still convinced that the basic name was NDS 'de groote Sand', because it
is and had been the biggest sand, but it wasn't a true endonym. The variety
with 'Kruut-' may have been existing at the same time, too, so we don't
stringently deal with a typical exonym as well.

Things are not always as they seem to be on the first glance!

With allerbest' regards to a very intelligent and engaged young man from a
grateful

Jonny Meibohm
Lower Saxony, Germany



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