De la description définie au nom propre de personne : sur un apport possible de l’anthroponymie historique à la théorie du nom propre modifié

From definite description to personal name: on a possible contribution of historical anthroponymy to the theory of modified proper names The authors intend to revive exchanges between historical onomastics and theory of proper names. They use concepts introduced by recent proper name theories to analyse 1902 medieval French anthroponymical chains modified by a definite article (li Berart, le Clerc poessonnier, li dicte dame Marie Maqueriele) extracted from the international data base PatRom (Patronymica Romanica ). Examining in turn diachronical, categorical, syntactic, diatopical and morphological criteria, they propound a unified interpretation of the phenomena in connection with the definite description framework elaborated by Kleiber. The study concludes with an excursus on the journey from definite description to hereditary proper name as exemplified by the lexicalization of le dit X in form of the surname Ledit.