A leading name (German ''Leitname'', plural ''Leitnamen'') is a given name that is used repeatedly over several generations in a lineage or broader kin group. Usually the entire name is used again and again, but sometimes a

root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the sur ...

of a name may be reused in several different forms. A leading name could function as a sort of "moral property", where only those of the lineage had a right to use it and it was expected that nobody else would do so. Both the

Merovingian The Merovingian dynasty () was the ruling family of the Franks from the middle of the 5th century until 751. They first appear as "Kings of the Franks" in the Roman army of northern Gaul. By 509 they had united all the Franks and northern Gauli ...

and

Carolingian The Carolingian dynasty (; known variously as the Carlovingians, Carolingus, Carolings, Karolinger or Karlings) was a Frankish noble family named after Charlemagne, grandson of mayor Charles Martel and a descendant of the Arnulfing and Pippi ...

dynasties of Frankish kings drew from a repertoire of names that were rarely or never used by other families. Names could be passed on from the paternal or maternal side, often depending on which ancestors were more prominent. The idea of tracing lineages and proposing genealogies based on analysis of leading names is old. In 1043, when Abbot

Poppo of Stavelot Saint Poppo ( Deinze, 977 – Marchiennes, 25 January 1048) was a knight of noble descent who turned to a monastic life after experiencing a spiritual conversion. He became one of the best known abbots of Stavelot and was one of the first recor ...

opposed the marriage of the Emperor Henry III to

Agnes of Poitou Agnes of Poitou ( – 14 December 1077), was the queen of Germany from 1043 and empress of the Holy Roman Empire from 1046 until 1056 as the wife of Emperor Henry III. From 1056 to 1061, she ruled the Holy Roman Empire as regent during th ...

on grounds of consanguinity, he traced the ancestry of Henry's mother: "the descent of the genealogy is achieved through Mathildas and Gerbergas, in such a way that Mathilda, the daughter of Gerberga (with the same name as her grandmother) called her daughter by her mother's name, and she left her own name as an inheritance to her granddaughter."

Notes

Sources

* *{{cite book , first=Stephen , last=Wilson , authorlink=Stephen Wilson (historian), title=The Means of Naming: A Social and Cultural History of Personal Naming in Western Europe , publisher=UCL Press , location=London , year=1998 Onomastics