Nimistust

Nimistust is a term used in Estonian-language scholarship to describe the systematic compilation of names and related terms from historical sources into a structured inventory. In onomastics and historical linguistics, nimistust serves as a methodological tool for studying naming practices, regional variation, and cultural contact over time. The word is formed from nimistu, meaning "list" or "inventory," with the suffix -st, yielding a sense of "of the list" or "the inventory of names."

The practice involves selecting a corpus such as parish registers, tax lists, cartularies, or manuscript archives, extracting names (given names, surnames, toponyms), and recording metadata such as date, place, gender, and social status. Normalization of spellings and lemmatization may be applied to enable cross-source comparison. Analysts then examine name frequencies, diachronic changes, and correlations with linguistic or religious influences. Nimistust can be implemented in traditional paper catalogs or modern databases, including digital editions and network visualizations to illustrate name diffusion and familial connections.

In Estonian studies, nimistust helps reconstruct medieval and early modern onomastic landscapes, track migration, and assess the impact of institutions like the church on naming. Limitations include inconsistent spelling, gaps in records, and biases toward literate groups. The concept remains a methodological baseline in debates about source preservation and comparative onomastics. See also onomastics, genealogy, and historical linguistics.