Par 17. Gadsimta latviešu personvārdu reģionāliem variantiem Vidzemē

The article analyzes more than 12,000 personal names of Latvian peasants registered in the Swedish plough metrics (Zviedru arklu revīzija in Latvian) in Vidzeme in 1638. Ten commissions carried out the metrics; thus, it has been possible to compare each commission’s activities for registering personal names in every respective area. The areas are different in size, and they do not correspond to later administrative divisions in Vidzeme or to Latvian dialects (see Picture 1); however, they can be categorized into Northern Vidzeme (on the border to Estonia), Eastern Vidzeme (on the border to Russia, and also Latgale), Southern Vidzeme (on the borders of Latgale and Kurzeme), Western Vidzeme (the coastal area) and Riga, and Central Vidzeme. The article analyzes rare personal names in the region, for example, Brencis, Bērents, Ivans, Jāks, and regional variants of the widespread first name Pēteris, with the aim of identifying reasons for the distribution of the variants. Preliminary conclusions are general, but they allow us to establish four possible reasons for regional variants: 1) the influence of foreign languages on the onomasticon in the borderland (cf. Picture 4) 2) the influence of Latvian dialects (cf. Table 7) 3) clerks’ peculiar style of registering names 4) the regional concentration of real individual names (currently inexplicable) (cf. Pic-tures 2 and 3) A more precise interpretation of data is possible through the evaluation of the distribution of personal names in manor estates or groups of manor estates that would likely result in more compact areas of distribution that do not match the commissions’ work on metrics revision. It is possible that many existing dialectal features of personal names in the Latvian language have not been reflected because the German spelling dominates in registered names.