Summary
Mate Šimundić: Dictionary of Personal Names
Have you asked your parents, relatives, godparents and neighbors about the origin and meaning of your name? What and what name will you give your own child? Did you also ask the professors at school, at the university? No one knows, but everyone points to that dictionary that contains all names.
At the time it was first printed (1988), published by Matica Hrvatska Publishing House, Šimundić's Dictionary of Personal Names acquired the status of a mandatory household book, like, for example, Klaić's Dictionary of Foreign Words. The author devoted fifteen years of painstaking theoretical and field work to the dictionary, which in terms of scope far exceeded similar world nomenclature, which was helped by the fact that in the Croatian language there is a great sense of derivation, so for every basic name there are on average ten more derivatives. Thus, from the dictionary with nine thousand basic names, a tenfold more extensive nomenclature was created, in which Šimundić's etymological work is the most scientifically intriguing: not taking already ready-made and standard solutions from the world etymological literature, Šimundić offered many new and unique solutions for the origin, history and meaning of individual personal names.
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