Personal names in Polish in relation to gender

Abstract

In Polish, there is an established pattern of assigning distincly men’s and women’s personal names. The linguistic form of many names contains a grammatical marker of gender that identifies it as either a man’s or a woman’s name. Socially accepted ways of coding gender-related information are grounded in cognitively entrenched schemas, thanks to which the speaker distinguishes and categorizes names. A schema is linked with the linguistic form of a name, associated with a given gender. Taking into account morphological (inflectional) features of personal names, one can identify, in this anthroponymic class, more or less prototypical names (with respect to the category of gender). The more prototypical ones are those in which gender is clearly coded in a systemic manner (on the basis of primary schemas), i.e. when the masculine gender is marked by zero ending and a stem with a final consonant, while the feminine gender by the ending -a. In usage, however, there are also names in which this kind of correlation is violated, and which can be used as either men’s or women’s names. From this perspective, the study considers units in which the reference of gender is extended and some (especially modern, less traditional) names belong to the unisex category. The pressure from social convention and cultural patterns renders those names rather limited in circulation, with speakers obtaining information from other languages (foreign naming patterns) and increasingly from the media, especially the Internet. Naming practices in Poland are changing; for example, an increase in the use of unisex names can be observed. However, because those names do not identify gender, it can be assumed that their status in Polish will continue to be marginal. A separate issue that merits further research is the dynamics of names and naming that result from recognizing various gender (self-)identities.