Digital Humanities and Big Data: Introduction to the Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources Dr. Sara L. Uckelman IMEMS/Philosophy, Durham University s.l.uckelman@durham.ac.uk @SaraLUckelman , @theDMNES 9 May 2018 Innovative Computing Group Seminar Dr. Sara L. Uckelman Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 1 / 14
What? A Dictionary of given names found in European sources between 500 and 1600, with etymological information, information about usage and distribution, and other relevant information. Dr. Sara L. Uckelman Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 2 / 14
What? Currently: 54982 citations of 2252 names (published); 65976 citations of 6042 names (total) From 519 to 1599. Covering: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Spain, Portugal, Algeria, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Ukraine, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Malta, Italy, France, Belgium, the Low Countries, Switzerland. Dr. Sara L. Uckelman Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 3 / 14
Why? To fill a lacuna. A resource for: ◮ Linguists and philologists. ◮ Historians. ◮ Genealogists. ◮ Re-enactors. ◮ Parents. Big data! Dr. Sara L. Uckelman Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 4 / 14
To fill a lacuna (1) Recent significant interest in lexicography of medieval languages: Middle English Dictionary the TLFi project (Old French) Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources Dictionary of Medieval Latin from Celtic Sources Anglo-Norman Dictionary Dictionary of the Scots Language Dictionnaire Étymologique de l’Ancien Français Dr. Sara L. Uckelman Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 5 / 14
To fill a lacuna (2) Daniel W Hieber, “Renaissance on the bayou: the revival of a lost language”, https://theconversation.com/ renaissance-on-the-bayou-the-revival-of-a-lost-language-43958 Dr. Sara L. Uckelman Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 6 / 14
To fill a lacuna (3) Names are part of the language Importance for vernaculars Problem of invented names Dr. Sara L. Uckelman Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 7 / 14
How? Primary motivation: Document everything . Version control: Every change to every file is recorded, along with who made the change, via git. Track responsibility (“blame”) for errors. Assign authorship credit: Dr. Sara L. Uckelman Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 8 / 14
How? Why this way? Stable citations; reconstruction of thought processes Particularly important for historically-oriented projects. Focus on perfection/completion erases contributions. We should provide the info that we ourselves are interested in. Dr. Sara L. Uckelman Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 9 / 14
What makes this interesting to ICG DH/cross-disciplinary collaboration: How can computing/computer scientists help? Potential for new tools and applications: Date parser/sorter; GIS and visualizations; statistics Big data Dr. Sara L. Uckelman Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 10 / 14
The problem of DH ‘Humanities’ people don’t know what to ask for; ‘Digital’ people don’t know what to give HUMS has a project and needs to find a COMP. How? Problem of articulating needs/wants; no common language What is research to HUMS is application to COMP. £££. Program/tool constraints Dr. Sara L. Uckelman Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 11 / 14
What has this got to do with Big Data? What is ‘big’ for the humanities scholar might be quite small for the computer scientist. Dr. Sara L. Uckelman Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 12 / 14
Big Data Cross-linguistic/cross-cultural patterns and trends. ◮ Patterns of diminutive and hypocoristic usage ◮ The eclipse of native names by “Christian” names in the 12th C ◮ Distinctly “Protestant” names. Scholarship beyond the English language. ◮ “Made-up”/invented names: Shakespeare, J.M. Barrie, Neil Gaiman Name/gender tools. Semantic support for OCR. Automated name-identification tools. Dr. Sara L. Uckelman Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 13 / 14
Big Data Cross-linguistic/cross-cultural patterns and trends. ◮ Patterns of diminutive and hypocoristic usage ◮ The eclipse of native names by “Christian” names in the 12th C ◮ Distinctly “Protestant” names. Scholarship beyond the English language. ◮ “Made-up”/invented names: Shakespeare, J.M. Barrie, Neil Gaiman Name/gender tools. Semantic support for OCR. Automated name-identification tools. . . . and more: You tell me! Dr. Sara L. Uckelman Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 13 / 14
Where? http://dmnes.org/ @theDMNES http://www.facebook.com/thedmnes http://dmnes.wordpress.com Dr. Sara L. Uckelman Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 14 / 14
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