Many discoveries in the folios of the Teutonic Order

The present article can be considered a continuation of the article «Zu den russischen Personenamen in den Folianten des Deutschen Ordens» (On Russian Personal Names in the Folios of the Teutonic Order), which appeared in 2018 in this journal. That article examined the ethnic composition of densely populated Sambia. It was shown that it is impossible to postulate a homogenous population for the region. The naming of inhabitants and their personal names unambiguously demonstrate beyond doubt that they belonged to different ethnic groups. Sambia was inhabited by Prussians, Germans, Lithuanians and even Russians. In other Prussian lands Polish personal names can also be found. The present article focuses on Lithuanians who settled in the villages of Rogehnen and Schorschehnen of the Wargen district in 1372; a study of their names suggests that the last names might have originated from nicknames. Lithuanian personal names reveal both the ethnic identity of the name-bearers and the tendency of populations to mix. It would be a huge success for research of historical, namely Prussian, proper names to discover traces of language change and to determine what language was spoken by Lithuanian and Russian newcomers. It is natural to ask oneself how fluent were they in their respective mother tongue, as well as whether they spoke Prussian or were already Germanized. These questions require a well-founded and reasoned answer. The title of the article itself – «The Many Discoveries in the Folios of the Teutonic Order» – points to the unresolved enigmas of historical demography, which could be solved by carefully assembling reliable archival data and exploring the links between empiricism and theory.Folio 107 from the funds of the Historical K nigsberg Archive kept in the Secret State Archives Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin has already been thoroughly studied by the author; unfortunately, some important points were missed. Since 2001, the author has been studying the Prussian appellatives that were considered place names and accidentally found another damerau in OF 107, which had previously been considered a place name. It will be briefly discussed in the article. A fascinating drawing referring to the Latin privilege on the same page was found in the folio. It will also be mentioned in the article, as such expressive drawings are uncommon for the Order’s folios