Surnames in the town of Murter

Abstract

The town of Murter is one of the largest rural settlements on the Adriatic islands. Its first mentioned in archives under the name of Srima dates back to the year 1285. The surnames that are dealt with in this paper have been confirmed in archival material, in authorial works and on the field from the 14th century to the present day. Besides listing all the accessible surnames down through the epochs the author gives a description of their genesis, their distribution and their meanings. The basic features of the body of evidence of Murter surnames are the following: a large number of autochtonous surnames, a large number of those bearing "old" surnames on the one hand and a large number of new surnames pertaining to a small number of people (all of these can be attributed to the process of litoralisation during the last thirty years). The Romanic element, confirmed on many points along the Adriatic (especially in the cities), hardly plays any role in the Murter surname formula. Of far more significance is the one (primarily Croatian) relating to those who settled on the island under pressure of different circumstances in the past. The author explains this by the fact that activities in which the alochton (particulary Romanic) population engaged on the island and in the town itself were underdeveloped or non-existent (seafaring, fishing, trade, crafts) so that the mobility of the population was exceptionally weak. On the semantic level, the lack of motivation of those impulses connected with these activities and the significant motivational confirmation of those stemming from the land, the natural world and farming ought to be expalined in the same light.