The Danish Name Lexicon is an ongoing project that will establish a web dictionary of Danish personal names. The first edition of the lexicon includes data on the meaning and origin of the most frequent first names. As in most countries, these names originate in a wide range of languages, cultures and time periods.
The full-scale project will include data on the most frequent surnames and middle names, as well as supplementary first names. All name entries will hold information on the meaning and origin of the names as well as quantitative data on the geographical and temporal distribution of each name in the 20th and 21st century, based on an extract from the Danish Central Person Register.
The presentation will focus on two challenges:
- How to develop a data structure that utilizes the relationships between the individual names, thereby allowing all entries about names with shared origin to share this info.
- How to establish a suitable format for web publication of the first edition, based on free-ware and without substantial financing, and handle the multitude of languages involved.
The first edition is available for the public in 2020, and apart from providing the interested public with scholarly information on names, it serves as a starting point for funding applications for the full-scale project. The preliminary results of the first edition show that the innovative data structure is promising, and therefore we have good reason to believe that a full-scale project will be feasible.