Dialectics of baptism names in an immigrant community

Abstract

From a linguistic perspective, first names play a special role in the use of languages. This is coherent with the explicit concerns in the fields of historiography and recent anthropology. In the scale of an ethnic group, choosing a name when the child is baptized, expresses a specific signal or sign, constituting one of the “diacritical features which people look for and exhibit to show their identity”. This article sets out to develop some theoretico-methodological questions based on a research project whose thesis concerns the naming ceremony at the baptismal fonts. The work follows the genealogy founded by a married couple of German immigrants using the baptism, marriage and death records of the old Deutsche Evangelische Gemeinde in Curitiba, capital of the State of Paraná, in the south of Brazil. The identity of descendants of this couple of settlers, organized by generations is expressed by their first names and last names, thus allowing the scientific investigation of this work. The hypotheses elaborated here are based on the idea that categories of first names (“immigrant”, stock, “German-Brazilian”, stock, “Brazilian” stock) can help us understand the dynamics of the ethnic frontiers built by the immigrant group and their descendants. The methodological discussion unfolds around the genealogy’s inventory of names in relation to the different generations. However, in the conclusion of this article, we give out suggestions to improve and refine this methodology if it is to be used in the exhaustive enumeration of names in relation to matrimonial cycles.

Key words: first names, methodology, immigration; ethnicity; ethnic group.