Les prénoms et les noms de la Bible. Étude quantitative à travers quatre siècles de littérature

Étienne Brunet (1)

1 BCL, équipe Logométrie : corpus, traitements, modèles

The 177 million lexical units provided by the National Institute of French Language allow the lexicographer the trace the evolutions and changes con¬cerning the use of first names in French literature since the XVIIth century. Thanks to linguistic statistics - called "lexicometry" - it is possible to spot quantif¬iable factors, to follow with acute precision how novel¬ists and poets, playwrights and polemists have used the 300 names of saints and martyrs scattered through our various calendars. Since the computer arbitrarily notes the number of times a name is used per century or per novel. careful distributional criteria have to he applied in the research, so that the main character of a particularly long novel does not falsify the results. Thus the 1,000 occurrences of Marius in Victor HUGO's Les Misérables count only as one. In addition, this stat¬istical approach must lie conducted cautiously. as the computer cannot easily distinguish the name of a saint when used as a Christian name from the same one used as a common noun or as a name of a place ( i.e. a church, a school, a river or a town...). This study offers a detailed description of people's tastes in Christian names as reflected in literature.

Mots clés: Bible; noms; prénoms; TLF; onomastique; statistique; littérature française

Domaines: Linguistique; Littératures; Méthodes et statistiques; Applications [stat.AP]

Étienne Brunet. Les prénoms et les noms de la Bible. Étude quantitative à travers quatre siècles de littérature. Onomastique biblique, Yannick Le Boulicaut, Nov 1988, Angers, France. pp.119-147. ⟨hal-01544825⟩