Conjugation classes, e.g. strong verbs with change of vowel versus weak verbs with a t-suffix to express tense represent formal differentiations without functional equivalent. Thus, at first glance, they appear to complicate the language system. This study shows that conjugation classes by no means must be necessarily downgraded in the history of Germanic languages but rather maintained and reorganized. On the other hand it shows that their change is not arbitrary but steered by principles, e.g. linked functionally to grammatical categories such as tense.

This essential work with its more than a thousand maps and commentaries is the first to document the surname stock of the Federal Republic of Germany by statistical occurrence and geographical distribution. It meets the interests of linguists with a grammatical part (three volumes) dealing with the phonematics, graphematics, mor-phematics and syntagmatics of family names, while cultural historians and population historians are served with a lexical part (three volumes - surnames by place of origin and domicile, by occupation and by nicknames, by given names). The atlas provides a new basis for onomastics. It also presents an indispensable aid to other disciplines from social history through research into settlement and migration to genetics.