Failure to inflect first names and surnames, or a new way of avoiding inflection by the Church (based on the example of selected parishes in Podkarpacie)

Abstract

The subject of the article is to show a new, modified way of avoiding Polish inflection by the Church, understood here as an institution represented by priests. The analysis included first names and surnames excerpted from Holy Mass intentions and parish announcements published on the Internet from October 2020 to March 2021 by selected parishes of the Podkarpacie region. Publishing Mass intentions on the parish website resulted in the fact that inflection mistakes became permanent and could easily be indicated. In order to avoid criticism for linguistic incorrectness, the Church decided not to inflect first names and surnames in the messages published online.
The analysis of the Mass intentions indicates that the Church promotes the use of an official and practical model of inflection that prefers nominativisation of names and surnames, as well as writing them in the form of lists. First names and surnames of the deceased (which are preceded by the symbol of the cross) are written in the nominative form, as opposed to inflected names of living parishioners. As a result, a name/surname that is not inflected (even without the cross) has begun to be perceived as a linguistic symbol of a dead person.