erroneously as a forgery cf. Bistficky - Pojsl 1982, pp. 50“ 51). The male bias of this form of social Organization is enhanced by the exclusive privilege of sons to enter legal transactions and negotiations (on the Situation of women in 1 lth-to-12th-century Bohemia cf. infra). Before 1197, the register of CDB1 lists 12 instances in which two brothers act together (with fathers or without them), one instance of a father with his son and three cases of three brothers. It is not until the 13th Century that more nu* merous nuclear families occur (CDB II p. 450, register s.v. Beneä, and fbid. p. 471 s.v. Drizlaus — four sons in both cases). Daughters were clearly omitted from such transaction records and written sources refer to them most irregularly. I know of only one case of this time when a woman participates actively in a legal proceeding (Pra-zäk 1958, pp. 150— 151). Ecclesiastical sources are a little more rewarding. The necrology of the Benedictine abbey of Podlazice which recorded some 1634 personal names in the course of the period 1150— 1230 (the most extensive sample of personal names of early medieval Bohemia, cf. Charvät 1985 and 1987, esp. pp. 234—235), contains, among the 1348 names of persons who probably lived in the abbey*$ “catchment area”, 413 female names. The fact that Benedictine necrologies usually recorded persons who provided support of various kinds to the respective houses indicates that these ladies are likely to have been of some social importance. Another instance in which a complete family including two sisters appeared in written sources concerns the necrology of the Premonstratensian chapter of ChotHov, giving evidence for the relatives of the founder (<Grass! 1930).

What was the proportion of the -ici social groupings within the social landscape of early medieval Bohemia? Some idea may be gained by the quantification of the -ici toponyms in Contemporary written sources, unfortunately without any possibility to distinguish among the “well--born” and commoner lineages(?). Specialists in toponymy (cf. supra, F. Curin, E. Michälek, V. Smilauer) unanimous-ly declare that until the 13th Century, such names referred to the resident communities and their numbers could give us some clues. Within the first volume of G. Friedriche CDB I, 86 Charters list 1169 toponyms which may be assessed. Among these, the -ici names amount to 450 cases representing 38.5% of the Overall number of toponyms. This figure, however, masks a more complex development. Charters dating between 1000 and 1197 contain, without any explicit patterning, between 30% and 70% of the -/« toponyms (as against all toponyms of the Charters in question). The first texts in which this Proportion falls below 30% date from 1130 (CDB I : 111 pp. 111—115, duke SobSslav Vs donation to Vysehrad, 23.8%) and 1158-1169 (CDB 1: 245 pp. 214-216, donation of king VladtslavI to the Maltese knights, 26.3%). Twelwe Charters dating after 1180 have lower proportions of -ici toponyms (14.3% to 28.6%). Together with the two preceding ones, this makes up for 16.3% of the total of assessed texts. It may thus be said that in llth-12th-cen-tury Bohemia, approximately one-third to one-half of the Population probably belonged to the -/cf social groupings.

Let us now proceed to the Observation of a certain historical development of these groups. It seems that beyond a certain limit of the size of their property, its

joint management presented some difficulties and that it might have been considered useful to create the Office of an administrator, in general the eldest male, who would direct all property transfers within his particular group, assuming responsibility for the daily bread of all its members. A refiection of such a trend may be perceived in the introduction of the qualifying substantive “zupan”, meaning “holder of the highest office, overlord, the one endowed with the power to command, the paramount”, into our written sources in which it turns up from 1187 to the initial 14th Century (on this term cf. Lippen 1893; Modzeiewski 1987, 142—143; 'lemlicka 1985, 570 n. 36). The process of monopolization of the right to disposi-tions with property of the individual groups clearly con-tinued in the 13th Century. The first cases in which property transactions are put on record (and sometimes even sealed) by male relatives of the original disposers instead of themselves date from the 30's of the same Century {CDB 7///7: 99 pp. 114-115, year 1234; CDB III/l : 100 pp. 115—117, years 1232—1234). Since the second half of 13th Century, another indication in favour of my hypothesis is represented by the introduction of another new term, “vladykaM (e.g. RBMII : 1841 p. 789, year 1299), the functions of whom are amply documented in the so-called Laws of the old sire of Rozmberk of the early 14th Century (Jirecek 1870, 68—98, esp. sections II and III on pp. 71—77). There he clearly represents a male household head the constitutive attributes of whom are a wife and a fixed residence and who is entitled to the management of the family affairs including property transactions, having, at the same time, a responsibility of providing for the less privileged members of his social group (on similar developments in Germany and France cf. Duby 1988, 19-22, 135-136).

The end of 12th and beginning of 13th Century wittnessed another important change in the structure of the -ici groups. It seems that in most of the 12th Century, the -ici names referred to groups of individuals deriving their origins from particular ancestors remote in time. Investigation of the genealogy of descendants of sire Hrut of Buko-vina, bearing a halved coat-of-arms with three horizontal bars in the left half (all the evidence gathered in Hosäk 1938, cf. also Novy 1972, 162-163 n. 128) has, however, borne out that the singulär form of this name type, a patro* nymic ending in -;c, denoted only the first generation of descendants, i.e. sons vis-a-vis their fathers, in the period after 1200. Sire Hrut had three sons, Detrich, Mutina and Zdislav, who referred to themselves by the collective “Hrutovici”. Sire Hrut the younger, son of DStrich and grandson of sire Hrut the elder, calls himself “filius De-trici”, and DStrich of Knezice, son of Hrut the younger and great-grandson of Hrut the elder, is denoted as “filius Gruth’\ These patronymics thus did not refer to a distant ancestor but to the father of the person in question (quite in the manner of the present Russian “otchestvo”). This fashion of genealogical reference became subsequently widespread in Bohemia, surviving until the beginning of 14th Century (a list of such names in: Cufin 1964, 15—16).

By way of a conclusion to this section, it may now be said that the groups denoted by names derived from personal names by means of the -ici suffix are likely to represent patrilineal-character lineages. Though their