The Morphology of Names in Germanic

Due to their function, names are distinctive nominal expressions. They often contain marked phonological-prosodic structures and require additional cognitive effort, which also affects their grammatical behavior. Morpho-syntactically, names often lack definiteness marking, tend to adopt specific onymic genders, and exhibit only minimal inflection (case, number). Comparing the different Germanic languages, significant differences can, however, be observed regarding the dissociation of names from their common noun counterparts. When it comes to name formation, properhood may involve using specific onymic suffixes or may be indicated by partially transparent structures resulting from irregular word-formation processes. As bases of word-formation, proper nouns behave similarly to common nouns with non-onymic outputs.