Throughout the many political and social upheavals of the early modern era, names were words to conjure by, articulating significant historical trends and helping individuals and societies make sense of often dramatic periods of change. Centered on onomastics-the study of names-in the German-speaking lands, this volume, gathering leading scholars across multiple disciplines, explores the dynamics and impact of naming (and renaming) processes in a variety of contexts-social, artistic, literary, theological, and scientific-in order to enhance our understanding of individual and collective experiences.

List of Figures and Tables
Notes on Text

Introduction: The Dynamics of Early Modern Naming
Joel F. Harrington

PART I: NAMING THE PAST

Chapter 1. Picards, Karlstadtians, and Oecolampadians: (Re)Naming the Early Eucharistic Controversy
Amy Nelson Burnett

Chapter 2. From the Council to the Founding Myth: How the Spirit of Trent Came to be Named
Birgit Emich

Chapter 3. Triplets: The Holy Roman Empire's Birthing of Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed in 1648
David Mayes

PART II: NAMING AND ORGANIZING KNOWLEDGE

Chapter 4. Naming and Singing the Psalter in Counter-Reformation Germany
Alexander J. Fisher

Chapter 5. Naming the Ambiguous: Income and Royal Service in the Seventeenth Century
Heiko Droste

Chapter 6. The Mystery of the St. Sebastian Lazareth: Mapping Place-Names and Contagious Disease Hospitals in Sixteenth-Century Nuremberg
Amy Newhouse

Chapter 7. Global Goods in Local Languages: Naming Cotton Textiles in the Swiss Cantons
John Jordan and Gabi Schopf

PART III: NAMING THE OTHER

Chapter 8. Naming the Turk and the Moor: Prehistories of Race
Carina L. Johnson

Chapter 9. Denouncing the Spendthrift: Debating Social Identity in the Court of Law and Public Opinion
Ashley L. Elrod

Chapter 10. Confessionisten, Calvinisten, Tibben: Nomenclatures of Legal Exclusion in Northwestern Germany, 1535-1650
David M. Luebke

Afterword: Names All the Way Down: Naming Practices in Early Modern Germany and Early Modern Historiography
Randolph C. Head

Index