Natalia Wohlgemuth

Natalia Wohlgemuth - i/'/_ shift, transliterating the soft sign

[returned b/c of byname]

M at 2009-11-02 02:57:00

This might be registerable as a saint's name. We don't have evidence that the Russian church venerated this saint but only the Greek Orthodox. I didn't find Natalia in Farmer's Saints or the Catholic Encyclopedia. This isn't the Russian spelling of the name as the documentation is cited wrong. French isn't registerable with Russian so we can't use that route. The name and the saint appear to be unknown in period Germany so that way is closed. This spelling of Natalia could not be found in any combination that would be registerable with the German byname. The modern form of the German byname only adds to this issue. We would correct the spelling to a period form but the submitter chose the return my submission no changes box so we look forward to her resubmission.

Response:

I see no problem with Natalia as a plausible alternate spelling/transliteration of a period Russian name.

The fact that St. Natalia was venerated in Russia is clear in the evidence of the names of period Russians named in her honor as already listed above from Wickenden. Saint Natalia was the wife of a 3rd century Nicomedian martyr named Adrian or Hadrian. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_and_Natalia_of_Nicomedia , http://www.comeandseeicons.com/n/inp161.htm ] As ancient Greek Orthodox saints, she and her husband would have been on the roster of saints adopted by the Rus on their conversion to Greek Orothodoxy in the 10th century. Indeed, my copy of an index of a 14th century Russian church Kanonnik lists her husband as the saint to be commemorated on August 26th. [Van Den Baar, A.H. A Russian Church Slavonic Kanonnik (1331-1332).]

It was quite common for period Russians to substitute i [и] for what is now called the soft sign [ь] indicated as ' in the Library of Congress transliteration system, or even to omit the letter completely. Examples from Wickenden include: Ananiia (header), Anania, Anan'ia, Onania, Onanii, Onaniia, Onanya, Onan'ia; Sof'ia (header), Sofia, Sofiia, Sof'a. So Natalia is a completely plausible alternate spelling of Natal'ia.

Furthermore, not all transliteration systems used to convert Cyrillic words into the Latin alphabet represent the soft sign. For example, the Revised English Transliteration System used by journalists omits the soft sign when converting Cyrillic. The soft and hard signs were also omitted from our SCA Russian Alternate Titles Lisa. So Natalia is a reasonable alternate transliteration of Natal'ia. [Wickenden, 3rd Edition, ix] http://heraldry.sca.org/paul/zpreface.html