This study examines the use of morphologically marked vocative forms, mostly of personal names, as new nominatives or inflectional base forms, language-externally in situations of linguistic contact and, to a lesser ex-tent, language-internally. This phenomenon (Vocatiuus pro Nominatiuo = VpN) has received some attention in previous scholarship, but it is here for the first time studied in a wide typological context, involving appr. two dozen languages of various genetic affiliation from Europe, Northern Africa and the Near East, and covering a period of almost 4.000 years. The aim of this paper is to collect a large sample of VpN and to draw typological conclusions about its development and the situations in which it normally occurs. VpN emerges as a frequent phenomenon, especially in situations of linguistic exchange, and not as a rare and marginal one.