Tinto Maps #9 - 5th of July 2024 - Carpathia and the Balkans

[Tibi088]

First quick attempt to assign societal values to Hungary:

I will need to revise this a few times, probably.

I disagree with some:
traditionalist vs innovative. The Anjou's and expecially Charles completely rewamped how the realm was governed and introduced a lot of new institutions. We are late in his reign but I would still lean to innovative.

mercantilism vs free trade: Hungary at the time cant really be mercantilist because it barely has any industry at home. The massive amounts of gold that was extracted in the Anjou era went abroad for a reason. I would definately put Hungary more in the free trade direction.

land vs naval. The country at game start is practically landlocked (which is a bit ahistorical but just barely) I would go even more to land direction.

individualism vs communalis: i would go in the individualist direction - but I would be really interested in your reasning. On my part I think it was at this era that the fringe areas of the country were settled - meaning significant pop migration. I also think the estates did closely guard their privileges.

outward vs inward: looking at what they do I would lean slightly on the inward direction

 

[Znikii]

I disagree with some:
traditionalist vs innovative. The Anjou's and expecially Charles completely rewamped how the realm was governed and introduced a lot of new institutions. We are late in his reign but I would still lean to innovative.

mercantilism vs free trade: Hungary at the time cant really be mercantilist because it barely has any industry at home. The massive amounts of gold that was extracted in the Anjou era went abroad for a reason. I would definately put Hungary more in the free trade direction.

land vs naval. The country at game start is practically landlocked (which is a bit ahistorical but just barely) I would go even more to land direction.

individualism vs communalis: i would go in the individualist direction - but I would be really interested in your reasning. On my part I think it was at this era that the fringe areas of the country were settled - meaning significant pop migration. I also think the estates did closely guard their privileges.

outward vs inward: looking at what they do I would lean slightly on the inward direction

They were very deep in communalism. They were very open, fair with all major indigenous minorities Croats, Slovaks and Wallachians. All of them received several important privilege rights. Furthermore they actively supported and encouraged German colonization of mineral rich areas. Not to mention they were also very relaxed on which Christian denomination you follow as long as you were Christian.

 

[Tibi088]

They were very deep in communalism. They were very open, fair with all major indigenous minorities Croats, Slovaks and Wallachians. All of them received several important privilege rights. Furthermore they actively supported and encouraged German colonization of mineral rich areas. Not to mention they were also very relaxed on which Christian denomination you follow as long as you were Christian.

Putting aside that I disagree with some of that to quote the dev diary:
"Individualism vs Communalism
A country based on individualism may get more exceptional characters, while one focused on communalism is all about the greater good of society.

An individualistic country will have higher morale in its armies and navies and a far faster migration speed for its pops, but a slightly lower estate satisfaction.

A communalist country will have a lower satisfaction threshold for pops to join rebels, far cheaper to revoke privileges from the estates, a slightly higher estate satisfaction, but pops will migrate far slower."

So even if I agreed with you its not the communalism slider I would use to represent that.

 

[Bomaxx]

I feel there's some confusion between natural pop migration and state orchestrated migrations here (which isn't even a confirmed mechanic yet). It appears to me most migrations in this place and time happened by the will of the state rather than the will of the people, i.e., German settlements in Carpathia, the Ottomans settling various muslim groups in desolated Christian lands, etc.

 

[Fehervari]

traditionalist vs innovative. The Anjou's and expecially Charles completely rewamped how the realm was governed and introduced a lot of new institutions. We are late in his reign but I would still lean to innovative.

That's exactly why I put the value so close to 0. I doubt there's more than a couple tags in the entire world with actual positive values in this metric at the start date.

mercantilism vs free trade: Hungary at the time cant really be mercantilist because it barely has any industry at home. The massive amounts of gold that was extracted in the Anjou era went abroad for a reason. I would definately put Hungary more in the free trade direction.

The Court maintained strict control over the flow of many products. It was forbidden to export raw gold and silver, but also cattle. The king had monopoly over the salt trade, and just like with other mined resources, it had to be exchanged for money at the chambers for a fixed price. I most definitely wouldn't make the country lean towards free trade.

land vs naval. The country at game start is practically landlocked (which is a bit ahistorical but just barely) I would go even more to land direction.

Yeah, you're right.

individualism vs communalis: i would go in the individualist direction - but I would be really interested in your reasning. On my part I think it was at this era that the fringe areas of the country were settled - meaning significant pop migration. I also think the estates did closely guard their privileges.

The Andreanum, the Golden Bull, the autonomy of the Cumans, Székelys and Jassics, the various hospes privileges, the Vlach law. All of these deal with special rights bestowed to specific groups, in a collectivist manner. So people were judged based on the group they belonged to, which I wouldn't call individualistic.

outward vs inward: looking at what they do I would lean slightly on the inward direction

Hungary was very active diplomatically (just think about the Congress of Visegrád for example), and the country was constantly projecting its power abroad. The country was also rather active in the support of various Catholic missions (Bosnia, Cumania, Macho, Vidin). I think outward defines the country very well.

 

[Makkasag]

It appears to me most migrations in this place and time happened by the will of the state rather than the will of the people,

There were a fair amount of examples of the latter, but yes. Mostly motivated and encouraged by countries.

 

[Znikii]

There were a fair amount of examples of the latter, but yes. Mostly motivated and encouraged by countries.

Maybe they were refugees?

 

[Makkasag]

Maybe they were refugees?

Some. But economical migrants too. Not a very new concept, that one.

Serfs escaping from one lord to another because he demands less. The king later made it into law that serfs should be all taxed the same amount to prevent that.

 

[Tibi088]

That's exactly why I put the value so close to 0. I doubt there's more than a couple tags in the entire world with actual positive values in this metric at the start date.

Fair point though depends on the values of other cuntries we do not know yet.

The Court maintained strict control over the flow of many products. It was forbidden to export raw gold and silver, but also cattle. The king had monopoly over the salt trade, and just like with other mined resources, it had to be exchanged for money at the chambers for a fixed price. I most definitely wouldn't make the country lean towards free trade.

I think you are right in that it was a strongly controlled trade system however I simply cannot call a trade policy that resulted in absolutely massive quantity of gold leaving the country and where there is practically no domestic production of any sophisticated goods and all is brought in from abroad as mercantilistic.

The Andreanum, the Golden Bull, the autonomy of the Cumans, Székelys and Jassics, the various hospes privileges, the Vlach law. All of these deal with special rights bestowed to specific groups, in a collectivist manner. So people were judged based on the group they belonged to, which I wouldn't call individualistic.

Again from the dev diary:
"Individualism vs Communalism
A country based on individualism may get more exceptional characters, while one focused on communalism is all about the greater good of society.

An individualistic country will have higher morale in its armies and navies and a far faster migration speed for its pops, but a slightly lower estate satisfaction.

A communalist country will have a lower satisfaction threshold for pops to join rebels, far cheaper to revoke privileges from the estates, a slightly higher estate satisfaction, but pops will migrate far slower."

In this sense communalism does not represent that there were tons of groups with special privileges. If you go into communalist direction it will be much easier to remove those privileges. I think that if you want to represent the privileged groups you should either do it with estates created for them or some other way. As described here I dont think this would be a good way to do so.

Hungary was very active diplomatically (just think about the Congress of Visegrád for example), and the country was constantly projecting its power abroad. The country was also rather active in the support of various Catholic missions (Bosnia, Cumania, Macho, Vidin). I think outward defines the country very well.

I agree but at the same time it was an era of absolutely massive developmnt inside the country. The settlement of the fringes, the creation of mines and the actual appearance of cities. I think this was an era when hungary was both active outside but also experienced an incredibly inside development. Placing that on a slider like this is though....

 

[Inzano]

Some. But economical migrants too. Not a very new concept, that one.

Serfs escaping from one lord to another because he demands less. The king later made it into law that serfs should be all taxed the same amount to prevent that.

I remember this from elementary school, in the end it got so far that if a son or daughter married into another lordship, the father had to pay a tax for the loss of the serf to his lord. Often in the form of a cow or a horse.

 

[Inzano]

Yeah, had to take a break for a while. And now that I have too much other work to do, I am here back again.

Yeah, I have seen it, and had quite a long thought and a bit of research on it. But it is such a complicated mess of different things I had to put it back into the closet for a while, to get more cozy with the other skeletons I've tucked away...

But since you are asking, I think this is the right time to pick it up again...

Let's start with some basics. First names are important for the Christian Church because you get baptized and thus accepted as a full member of the community by your first name.
Surnames/Family names matter for civil authorities. Why? Mostly for legal reasons, so the writing of wills and contracts is more precise.
Not surprisingly, lowborns usually didn't even have established surnames at the time. So they usually picked one—sometimes by their professions, other times from the general area where they lived. Some Slavic languages as well as Scandinavians use the father's name + -ev, -son, etc., suffix for a surname.
Due to successful Christianization and the rising power of the Church, almost all names used are of Christian-Judean origin. And as time went on, fewer and fewer Slavic/pagan names persisted. As you correctly mentioned, Slovenes lost most original surnames because we lost most of our upper echelon nobility quite early on in peasant rebellions, plus the naming tradition I will talk a bit later on erased almost all Carinthian surnames.

But first, let's maybe start with some lesser-known or not so obvious problems that we should consider:

No orthographic or grammatical rules for correct writing, let alone any kind of prescriptive, standardized, agreed-upon rules. Even Latin, with its long history and preferred language of choice for educated people, was so bad that Vulgar Latin became... whatever funny monstrosity it became. (Any people with knowledge in Old Greek/Hebrew/Sanskrit languages around that can enlighten us if they are any better at this?)
That means that even in a single language, even inside the same dialect, there could be multiple ways of how to write the same name. Phonetic orthography can be a funny and ungrateful thing. (Serbs have a funny saying about it: piši kao što govoriš—"Write as you speak.") [Apparently, the full origin of the quote is from the German theoretic Johann Christoph Adelung: "Write as you speak and read as it is written." Imagine if his approach had won, and nowadays German would have several official German languages… Austrian, Bavarian, Saxon... Hahaha, that would be funny. As I said before, Germania is just part of the Balkans)]

Secondly, it was not set in stone which language you used to write down your family name, regardless of the name's origin. So people usually used the language depending on the context and surroundings. Are we talking about a dedicated professional clerk? Then he would use Latin. Did a Slavic nobleman just move to German heartlands or get a new Hungarian overlord? Then he would either use a German or Hungarian spin on it, etc., etc.
Then you have different manuscripts and writing systems, with different scripts and alphabets in use at the same time in the same region, which is just crazy.
Just the above makes the tracking of the original family names a nightmare.

Furthermore, whenever a noble family permanently moved its main seat of power—regardless of whether this happened because of promotion, expansion, inheritance, formation of a cadet branch, or whatever the reason or the prominence of their close relatives—the noble family almost always adopted a new surname after the name of the place/castle/town of their new home seat of power. This was especially common practice in the HRE, much less so in Italy. I guess because patrician surnames that can be traced to Ancient Rome were such a huge deal, it meant as close to achieving godhood as possible without getting an inquisitorial visit...
So this lovely tradition further muddies the water for following the cultural heritage of people with all the movement.
Due to successful Christianization and the rising power of the Church, almost all names used are of Christian-Judean origin.

What I realized while studying the problem is the fact that nobility rarely wrote down their first name (in full) at all. It's almost always "Surname + seat of power." But not the kings… they almost always go by "first name + king of blabla."
And of course, so all this is not too easy, 18th-20th-century systematic Germanization efforts erased a lot. And we get things like changes/destruction of all the records, so Dukes of Carantania (regardless of whether they were Slovene or German Habsburg) are turned into Dukes of Carinthia, even if the Duchy of Carinthia hadn't even been established yet. Or Steiners become completely normal German 100% pureblooded...
At other times, we must also consider simple and honest human mistakes. Not many people were literate at the time, so whenever some clerk was writing down, mistakes happened, and he would write down whatever he heard. It's not like the other guy could even tell the difference...

So where does that leave us? And how to proceed from here...
Probably the family names of Slovene Princes of Carantania are forever lost to history. (Although the Church and the Venetians were phenomenal and very meticulous record keepers… maybe someone just needs to dig a little bit deeper...), as well as any other higher nobility that was closely connected to the Princes.
But as you said, we retained the lower nobility, which in our case lived and ruled on their lands. Nobles of German, usually Bavarian descent, mostly reigned over what was inherited/given to the ecclesiastical polities for the purpose of solidifying the frontier against the Magyars and as an outpost for further Christianization efforts… Places like Ptuj, Krško, Gorizia… while small in area, all of those places had significant economic power for centuries (tolls, bridges over rivers, mints, centers of trade—all three places are surrounded by fertile land with a good climate while also being centrally located in significant wine-growing regions, etc.).

So let us ask ourselves two questions.
First, what do you think, how different, if any, were the surnames of lower Carantanian/Slovene nobility to those of our lost higher aristocrats?
Secondly, how much different were the surnames of Slovaks, Czechs, and Croatian nobility compared to Slovenians?

...Just found out another thing doing some double-checking…
None of the early Slavic ruling nobility had surnames—not Moravians, not Croatians, not Pannonians (exceptions were in the 9th century, Přemyslids and Piasts, probably because both of those dynasties first rose to prominence in an area of significant urban development [Prague and central Poland], while the Princes of Pannonia, Carantania, Croatia, and Moravia, for example, ruled from castles). For example, Moravian princes only after several rulers adopted the family name of Mojmir, which was the first name of the father. The rest of Slavic rulers were usually just known as "first name + prince of blabla."
Moreover, I also noticed that all the names of those rulers from Poland to Croatia, including Carantania, mostly have a bunch of rather similar-sounding names... In short, first names were definitely of West Slavic origin. And unless the family lived in or very nearby a major urban settlement, they didn't have distinct surnames. "Kings, Princes of blabla" was enough.

So what would I do to improve the list?
Compile all the first and family names of Polish, Czech, Moravian, Slovak, Slovene, and Croat nobility from the 9th-13th century. And any family/name that is the same or similar in more languages, I would include in the list.
Secondly, I would compile all the geographical names in Friuli and Austria that are of Slavic etymology, then find their German translations and look for any German surname carrying the root. And include those as well.
And thirdly, a more difficult and slow but probably more fun way to find new names is to dig for old documents. I think you are wrong when you claim their names were never written down. Church records (death records, reports...), tax reports, contracts, invoices are best bets, and of course, reading scientific historiography and using it for further research (example: this one paper covering administration employed by Counts of Cilli is full of names, and a lot of them are of minor nobility). Also, mercenary work was the economic work of those minor nobles, so look for mercenary companies or major battles fought by local overlords—they always hired them. That's how the Counts of Cilli first raised their initial capital, which they smartly invested.
Ooh, and of course, bank/loan documentation. Italian bankers and merchants were great at record keeping. Did you know the archive of Venice holds intact records from Koper, and trade records go back to the early 10th century! The amounts of goods that passed through Koper at the time were staggering! And since the early 12th century, when Koper joined the republic, you can also find documents like population counts, businesses paying taxes, etc., etc.
And you can be sure the Slovene and Austrian nobles used the services of those bankers.
Or lists of abbots and bishops in Slovene churches and monasteries should also be a nice source of local names. Mayor and town councils of major urban towns (Maribor, Ptuj, Ljubljana, Kranj, and those documents listing in called ducal estete diats shoube be infomative as well. I ve read in one papaer that Counts of Ptuj were a major local nobility and participated in almost every diet called in Styria during late 13. and 14. centuy. There surely must exist such lists for duchy of carniola as well, especially when Maksimilian, or was it Ferdidnad.... cant remember the name at the momet,.... gave them special priviliges. iirc it must have been somewhere in the early parts of 15. centry....

Peter Štern, Ivan Kacianar, Melhior and Krištof Lamberg, Trojan Turjaški, Benedikt Kuripečič, Sigismund Višnjegorski, Nikolaj Thurn (Thurns, were French nobles with Italian heritage, many marriages to Austrian nobility, living in Slovenian lands with Slavic names... You see, that's why I detest the idea that aristocracy at the time had any cultural nationality).
A few surnames I quickly found that you missed—of course, there is much more to be done if we want a better list

Edit:

Spoiler: stupid AI

God, I hate when AI creates such a nice formating on the one hand and then proceed to ruin everything in my text by doing things it shouldn't!

I'm also curious about which version of the dynasty names I should use, such as the original source in German or the Slovenian version. For example, "Ruespacher" or "iz Sajevca"?

 

[Makkasag]

I'm also curious about which version of the dynasty names I should use, such as the original source in German or the Slovenian version.

English

 

[Linbot#6018]

I feel there's some confusion between natural pop migration and state orchestrated migrations here (which isn't even a confirmed mechanic yet). It appears to me most migrations in this place and time happened by the will of the state rather than the will of the people, i.e., German settlements in Carpathia, the Ottomans settling various muslim groups in desolated Christian lands, etc.

Both were common.

 

[kagami1999]

I think that each of the Bulgarian polities (Tarnovo, Vidin, Karvuna, and Merope) should have a high degree of communalism. The zadruga - a traditional longhouse inhabited by an extended family/clan, endured until the 19th century and was especially strong in northwestern Bulgaria, where scores of villages possess names ending in -tsi (indicating that these settlements grew out of a communal dwelling). Additionally, there is a documented phenomenon in the Rhodope region of properties continuing to be held in common by two branches of the same family even after one converted to Islam while the other remained Christian - indicating the importance of kinship ties. I think some arguments could be made for making Merope a little more individualistic though, the local Rup people were very migratory due to their involvement in occupations such as pastoralism and mining. As such, they colonized vast swathes of Thrace after the Byzantine-Bulgarian frontier disappeared under Ottoman rule. A consequence of this is the fact that most ethnic Bulgarians in Thrace speak Rup dialects (well, excluding those who live north of the Maritsa river - their speech is related to the Tarnovo dialect), even places as far-flung as northwestern Anatolia received Rup settlers under Ottoman rule.

Regarding serfdom vs free subjects, I think that the Bulgarian polities (really, all countries with political institutions influenced by Byzantium) should lean toward free subjects. The pronoia system was the closest thing southeastern Europe had to feudalism, and it differed quite significantly in that land grants weren't hereditary nor were local peasants who lived on a pronoia restricted from moving. Wallachia and Moldavia had the "obște" system of autonomous open-field villages before feudalism picked up during the renaissance period, maybe a similar shift could occur in Balkan Slavic countries if they somehow remain independent past the 1500s? Similarly, the Ottomans should start off with a bias in favor of free subjects (given that the timar system was essentially a continuation of the pronoia system), while slowly moving toward feudalism with the rise of derebeys and such.

Karvuna should have a high outward and naval focus, they were very much oriented toward the Black Sea and competed with the Genoese for control of the Danube river delta. The Ottoman naval commander during the fall of Constantinople (Suleiman Baltoglu), was a Bulgarian convert born in Karvuna - and the Bulgarians of Silistra enjoyed a degree of autonomy until the 16th century in exchange for which they manned galleys guarding the port.

I'll add to this post if I think of anything else regarding Bulgaria's societal values.

 

[vikinglord]

Feedback confirmed for next week!

 

[Mingmung]

BALKANS NEXT WEEK, LIFE HAS PURPOSE AGAIN.

 

[GenericUsername1444]

 

[bokorthedust]

Can't wait for the Second Balkan War

 

[Mingmung]

Can't wait for the Second Balkan War

Even with the Moldavian discussion, it has been quite peaceful, all things considered.

 

[bokorthedust]

Even with the Moldavian discussion, it has been quite peaceful, all things considered.

It's the calm before the storm, shit will get real now, because it's how stuff will most likely look in the game. Like sure they'll still probably adjust minor stuff, but it's now or never to take the Moldavian fight to the next level