This article confronts two methods of identifying individuals with reference to geography in a source from medieval Stockholm, Sweden: prepositional phrases with a place name as complement, such as Erich i Nyabode ‘Erik in Nyboda’ and appositions denoting origin, such as Peder Skaning ‘Peter Scanian’. A partly complementary pattern emerges where prepositional phrases are common for areas close to Stockholm, while corresponding appositions are rare; for distant areas, appositions tend to be more common and prepositional phrases rarer. There are two groups that do not follow this pattern: Finns and Germans. For Finns there are a relatively high number of prepositional phrases, while finne is a common apposition. For Germans, both appositions denoting origin and prepositional phrases are rare. A common trait is that both Finnish and German origin can be stated for women and for anonymous people, which is otherwise rare. These patterns may be explained by Germans constituting both an in-group in the city and a foreign group from a general Swedish perspective, whereas Finns were both compatriots and considered somewhat foreign.

Sveriges medeltida personnamn (SMP) is the name of a dictionary of personal names from medieval sources from Sweden, based on large collections in Uppsala. The forename-part of the dictionary is in course of publication. The aim of this paper is to review how the division between the categories forenames and bynames/surnames is treated in the dictionary. The authorfinds that the division to a large part is not problematic, but that some cases present lexical or theoretical challenges, that has not always been treated in a consistent manner. The problematic cases can furthermore be of considerable onomastic interest.

In the tax records of Stockholm from 1502 and 1503, a personal name appears which is interpreted in the dictionary of medieval personal names of Sweden (SMP) as a man’s name Hartvik or Hartika, written Gambla Artich ‘Old Hartvik’. The author finds this explanation unlikely and proposes that Gambla Artich is an attestation of a byname ‘old örtug’, where ‘örtug’ is a coin denomination. Furthermore, it is proposed that the name bearer is probably a woman. Bynames are not generally used to refer to women in Swedish medieval sources, and it is argued that the great majority of the relatively few known cases should be explained as a derogatory usage, typically denoting marginalized women.

Den 6 januari firar vi trettonde dag jul med anledning av att några stjärntydare eller visa män kommit fram till Betlehem efter en omväg kring Jerusalem. De har i kristen tradition blivit till tre kungar och begåvats med namn (Kasper, Melker och Baltasar). Här skall vi uppehålla oss vid vad gruppen som helhet kallas: de tre vise männen eller heliga tre konungar.