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Re: Tchélétis
Is there no chance that somewhere there could be a connection to what is nowadays the Netherlands? It's not like the German city of Trier is all that far away from Maastricht, the southernmost Dutch city. Tj- in Dutch could pretty easily have ended up transcribed or misspelled as Tch- in a foreign language.Otherwise, the name is probably a partially latinized Frankish given name (the -is ending indicates latinization), possibly written down by someone who was either not that literate or to whom the name was so foreign/unusual that he wrote it down exactly as he heard it (e.g. perhaps the name actually starts with Ch-, but the person thought he heard a 't', so he wrote Tch-). Both scenarios are not unthinkable for the medieval period, as not many people were literate back then (and those that were, were so in varying degrees) plus there were no strict or universal spelling rules at the time either.

"How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on... when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend... some hurts that go too deep... that have taken hold." ~ Frodo Baggins
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