This pilot volume serves to present the project entitled "PatRom (Patronymica Romanica - An Historical Dictionary of Patronymics in the Romance Languages)" and assembling 18 research groups from various European Romance countries and Germany (University of Trier). The aim is by the year 2000 to have completed for publication an historical dictionary of personal and family names of delexical origins in the Romance languages. The present volume is a pilot publication acquainting potential scholarly audiences with the dictionary and its aims. The body of the volume takes the form of 47 articles on representatives of lemmatized etymological source names that have taken root in the onomastic stock of the various Romance countries. A substantial introduction traces the historical development of the project and expounds its aims, structures and methods. The work closes with four trial indexes serving three of the articles in the volume.