Onomastica

Professor Hanna Popowska-Taborska (1930–2022)

2024-04-10T20:22:36+00:00

Memeplexes in the Ukrainian information landscape: An onomastic path

2024-04-10T20:31:19+00:00

This paper is an effort to present our understanding of onyms as memetic entities. Here we made an attempt to define and analyse the essential characteristics of memeplexes and proper names. The analysis of the traditional and modern approaches to proper names is offered. According to these views, a proper name can be regarded as a concept, it defines a unique phenomenon and is actualised by social convention, thus being embedded into the onomastic landscape. These characteristics over lap with those of memeplexes. The study proposes insight into the similar features of memeplexes and Ukrainian proper names and concentrates on the defining aspects of memetic onyms (onymic memeplexes). An onymic memeplex is seen as any proper name possessing memetic qualities. All memeplexes are highly likely to possess the following key features: rapid spread, expression of social and cultural norms, longevity, adaptability, variability, revealing collective identity and defining cultural heritage. These aspects have many iterations in national and international onomastic landscapes.

General theory of name and naming policy: An outline

2024-04-10T20:31:49+00:00

This paper aims to outline the general theory of name and naming policy (GTNP) that is developed therein. A broad GTNP design should have a constellatory structure, and its definition should take into account the variety of actors involved in designing and conducting naming policies (NPs). This paper discusses linguistic dimensions of NPs, along with possible overtness or covertness of NPs. It outlines the hierarchy of NPs and explains possible policy ranges. The GTNP is illustrated with a general model of NPs and some examples of Central-European toponymic, anthroponymic, and chrematonymic NPs.

“His wish is to give him the name Vincent Kadłubek”. The cult of the Blessed Vincent in the light of Małopolska vital records (mid-18th–early 20th centuries)

2024-04-10T20:32:31+00:00

Based on the Małopolska vital records from the period 1765-early 20^th century, anthroponymic material was collected, showing that the name Wincenty Kadłubek was given at baptism at that time. This is undoubtedly connected with the cult of the then beatified Bishop of Cracow, but it is difficult to link it with the reception of his Chronicle. This custom was practised rather among the peasant and bourgeoisie strata, and its characteristic feature is that the name Kadłubek was given to boys born in early autumn, i.e. around the time of the liturgical commemoration of Bl. Vincent.

Boundary phenomena in contemporary Bulgarian anthroponymy

2024-04-10T20:33:05+00:00

The influence of the trends towards plurilingualism and globalization observed within the EU over the last two decades has also affected the Bulgarian language. Such new phenomena, which could be defined as boundary ones, may also be found in Bulgarian anthroponymy, where they appear as a result of the process of globalization via internationalization. In general, they may be seen primarily in the transmission of many foreign forenames from different cultures, be they familiar or not to Bulgarian, the onyms of which have, in most cases, not been adapted to the Bulgarian language rules (Джой/Dzhoy, Дуйгу/Duygu, Ефе/Efe, Нанси/Nansi). Due to the untypical context, they have become unconventional anthroponyms following relocation. The other process is of crossing the existing grammatical rules expressed by the omission of the feminine gender flection which is obligatory in Bulgarian. These two phenomena are directly connected with the appearance and acceptance of the so-called unisex names which, until recently, remained unknown to Bulgarian official (conventional) anthroponymy. The present research analyses how and to what degree they affect the different types of official anthroponyms (forenames, patronyms, and family names). The onomastic tendencies described represent boundary phenomena and may be taken as the beginning of a new level in the development of the Bulgarian personal name system.

Trends in the use of patronyms in Ukrainian literary language of the 21st century — Europeanization vs. tradition

2024-04-10T20:33:31+00:00

The article analyzes the changes that have occurred in the ways of the official naming of persons in Ukrainian literary language of the 21st century. The reasons for these changes have been established and substantiated, as well as evaluated from the point of view of practical expediency. In particular, the factors that led to the shift of the official naming of Ukrainians include the socio-political processes that began in Ukraine in 1991, the desire of speakers to distance themselves from anything in common with Russia, the practical inconvenience of using three-component structures due to their cumbersomeness etc. An attempt has been made to predict the further development of the trend of the use of patronyms in the modern language. It has been suggested that in the future, in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the European Union, the analysed trend will become even more powerful, as a result of which patronyms will acquire the status of intralingual anthroponyms, functioning in a limited communicative space.
The material of the study were two- and three-component anthroponymous models of the formal names of persons selected during the period 2015–2022 from two functional styles of Ukrainian lan
guage — journalistic and scientific. With the help of general scientific methods (induction, deduction, observation, analysis, synthesis, comparison, systematization) and linguistic methods (descriptive, comparative, pragmatic), the typical manifestations of trends in the use of patronyms in the Ukrainian literary language of the 21st century are comprehensively characterized.

On Jewish names and surnames in the registry of births of the Jewish metrical district of Lubycza Królewska (1907–1929)

2024-04-10T20:26:33+00:00

This article examines names and surnames of the Jewish community members listed in the birth register of the Jewish metrical district of Lubycza Królewska (1907–1929). The first names appearing in the register are mostly of biblical origin, although Yiddish and a limited number of Romance and Slavic first names are also noticeable. In the case of surnames, structures with Germanic linguistic features predominate, with the majority of first name-derived and denominal anthroponyms. Equally distinctive are surnames derived with the suffix -er and compound surnames of German origin. Beyond its main analytical focus on the anthroponyms of the Lubycza district Jews, the article also delineates some trends in the name-forming processes in connection with the legal regulations of the time, as well as in relation to the history, culture and traditions of the Jewish community living in one Jewish qahal.

From Midoń to Mitoński, from Bartosz to Bartosiewicz. Historical surnames of residents of Radwanowice

2024-04-10T20:26:14+00:00

The aim of this paper is to describe the surnames of Radwanowice village, near Kraków, from the diachronic perspective (from the end of the 14th century to the present). Nowadays, surnames are perceived as meaningless, serving primarily the purpose of identification. In personal reception, they constitute an important component of the individual as well as family identity. In a broader context, they attach to particular local communities (national, regional). In the collective consciousness of small local communities, surnames are relevant elements of belonging to a group. They are evidence of somebody’s identity and embedment in tradition. This paper fits into regional studies and is is an attempt to bring a certain segment of Lesser Poland’s anthroponymy closer to the reader. It ought to picture the creation, evolution, and stabilization of surnames used in a small village community. Methods used in the analysis include those created by historical anthropology. Moreover, they take into account historical, social (stratification), and economical contexts. The paper is based on the oldest historical sources coming from medieval original texts and surname records coming from the register of the Rudawa parish. This paper describes almost two hundred surnames used by residents of Radwanowice. Together, the names constitute a unique archive of the local community’s culture.

Parliamentary names as a strategy for social positioning and manifesting identity traits

2024-04-10T20:33:52+00:00

Drawing on the theoretical presuppositions of socio-onomastics, the present study provides an analysis of the parliamentary names adopted by state and district legislators elected in Brazil. A Brazilian parliamentary name is an anthroponym chosen by individuals elected for a legislative position to be used in official acts and documents of their respective legislative houses. The corpus is comprised of 1,157 names of representatives from the 27 federative units elected for the 2019–2023 term. When observing the relationship between the parliamentary names and the rules of the house for their composition, the analysis shows that, among the legislative houses that have norms on the issue, the chosen anthroponyms abide by the rules in only half of them. When the parliamentary names are compared to their respective civil names and ballot names, the results show that, although most of the politicians retain parliamentary names linked to elements from their civil name, a considerable number of them employ creative resources in order to hold variant forms, enabling them to have identity features of group membership or associated with the political realm.

The influence of Romanticism on Finnish personal naming

2024-04-10T20:34:13+00:00

The article outlines in a synthetic way the influence of national romanticism on the development of the Finnish personal naming and its new shape. It presents the main trends present in the process of creation, modification, transfer and Fennicization of names and surnames. Naming acts during the Romantic period were shaped by such extralinguistic factors connected with the consolidation of national identity, including: national awakening; mental aspirations for selfdefinition and shaping one’s own identity as well as strengthening national awareness; return to the roots (adding new meanings to mythography, community pride), etc. The phenomenon of the emergence of “Romantic names” as a specific layer of Finnish anthroponymics is correlated with a historicalcultural process, whose elements include: restitution of national (cultural, linguistic) heritage, justification of Finnishness, ennoblement of patriotism, manifestation of national individualism, etc. The analysis covers personal names used and formed both in the Romantic era (e.g. Rauha, Suometar, Aimo, Heimo, Kullervo, Onni, Toivo) and in later times, which are the successors of Romanticism. A symbolic place in Finnish anthroponymy is occupied by names taken from the epic “Kalevala” and the heritage of the KareloFinnish folklore. The name material was excerpted from the Finnish topical literature. The author formulates the following thesis: Finnish “Romantic” personal naming represents the national onymic worldview. The analysis of naming patterns leads to the conclusion that, despite the social and cultural transformations taking place in Finland as well as globalization and glocalization tendencies, traditional, indigenous Finnish names have not lost their prestige.

What’s in a Vlach name? Patronyms, double naming and ethnic identity of the Vlachs of Eastern Serbia

2024-04-10T20:34:33+00:00

This paper discusses the existence of two different systems of naming used among the Vlachs of Eastern Serbia: a private one, based on their Vlach patronyms, used exclusively in their home villages and transmitted only orally, and an official, Serbian one. After presenting an overview of Romanian names and naming practices in the 18 th –19 th centuries, with a focus on the double naming system, the author explains how the Vlachs kept their Vlach patronyms after settling in Eastern Serbia, and how the second, official naming system, was Serbianized over time. In the second half of the paper, the author focuses on the recent phenomenon of the private, Vlach name gaining visibility and being used in writing, starting with the turn of the millennium, based on a variety of data sets. The increased visibility of the Vlach naming system reflects the recent increased prestige of the language, which was standardized and has started to be used in writing. The paper demonstrates that the double naming of the Vlachs reflects their dual, contextual identity, while the use in writing of the Vlach names signals an important shift in the attitude towards identity and language.

Czech place names and their exonyms in parallel corpus — between preserving the original form and adaptation

2024-04-10T20:34:56+00:00

The aim of the paper is to present strategies for the adaptation of Czech geographical names (their translation in particular) in a foreign language texts. Using the parallel corpus InterCorp, version 13 (part of the Czech National Corpus) we look at the variants of Czech toponyms (referring to objects in the territory of the Czech Republic; settlement names, names of natural features, urban names) used in English and German translations. We analyze and interpret the strategies used to incorporate Czech toponyms into non-Slavic translations; in addition, we highlight the potential which he corpora (parallel corpora in particular) have for the research of toponyms. Given the centuries-old historical contacts between Czech and German, most Czech toponyms have a German variant (i.e., Namenpaaren), and these German variants are used rather extensively in translations. This, of course, is very unlike the case with English, but, from a historical perspective, these German variants often stand behind the English version of the place name.

Exonymization of Polish and Polonized geographical names in 17th-century French (based on the memoirs of François Paulin Dalerac)

2024-04-10T20:25:54+00:00

This paper discusses the exonymization strategies applied to Polish and polonized geographical names in the French memoirs of François Paulin Dalerac. It is established that the author, in order to bring the exotic names closer to the French audience, on the one hand used a wide range of adaptation techniques (foreign quotations, graphical modifications, taking over names with the help of intermediary languages, reflexive loanwords, morphological and syntactic adaptation). On the other hand, he attempted to faithfully imitate the source forms (both at the level of pronunciation and spelling), using a variety of procedures which resulted in exophones and exographs (often placed in the margins or distinguished graphically) imitating source forms, important for the linguistic landscape of the areas described.

Anthroponyms in the poetry of Pavel Vasiliev: From identifying function to artistic and stylistic one

2024-04-10T20:35:18+00:00

Anthroponyms are conceptually and aesthetically significant elements of the idiostyle of Pavel Nikolaevich Vasiliev, a Russian Soviet poet. The onyms that function in poetic texts perform, in addition to identifying, an artistic and stylistic role, i.e. become poetonyms. We offer a typology of onyms based on the correlation of the name with the referent, objective reality and the author. The first type includes anthroponyms, the referent of which is real persons, chronologically relevant for the author — relatives, friends, acquaintances. The second type includes onyms, the referent of which are real-life persons, chronologically separated from the author, but relevant in his po etic world picture. Onyms of the third and fourth type have a fictitious referent, these are the names of characters in fiction, folklore, or the names of characters in the works of the author. The artistic and stylistic function in the poetic texts of P. Vasiliev is most characteristic of anthroponyms of the second and third types. They function as allusive-precedent names based on associations with a certain cultural text and on the symbolic interpretation of the onym. It is these types of anthroponyms that can be qualified as poetonyms that perform in a literary text, in addition to identification, a stylistic, characterizing function. This is due to the diachronic remoteness of the onym from the author, the long “life” of the onym in culture allows it to acquire different meanings. Anthroponyms of the first and fourth types mainly perform the function of identification, the artistic and stylistic function in them is most often limited to character typing. Among the names of the characters in Vasiliev’s texts, there are Kazakh names, which reflects the transcultural nature of his poetry as part of the literature of the Kazakh-Russian borderlands.

Bezruč, from Těšín. Toponyms in Silesian Songs from the viewpoint of quantitative linguistics

2024-04-10T20:27:50+00:00

The study focuses on toponyms and their role in “Silesian Songs” by Petr Bezruč (1867–1958), an important Silesian poet and bard. The authors build on their previous quantitativelinguistic research on Bezruč, which focused on anthroponyms (“Géro versus Ondra. Anthroponyms in Silesian Songs as Seen through the Prism of Keywords and Collocations”), and thus present a comprehensive picture of proper names in this poetry collection. The aim of the study is to use quantitative methods — frequency and collocation analyses and keyword detection — in order to clarify the functioning of place names in “Silesian Songs”, to classify their interrelationships, and to compare them with the system of Bezruč’s anthroponyms. Analyses show that proper names make up 30% of the keywords of “Silesian Songs”, they are thus an important feature of the poet’s poetics. Anthroponyms and toponyms are equally frequent. The distribution of geographical names corresponds to the Zipf distribution — Bezruč prefers a narrow range of names, while many others are only used occasionally. Furthermore, most toponyms are oriented towards Silesia, but there are also localities associated with the Habsburg monarchy, Antiquity, and exoticism, which usually serve as building blocks of metaphors. In the context of Silesia, Bezruč places his poems primarily in the Těšín region; the Opava and Hlučín ones are in most cases the settings of his intimatelytuned poems. Other important traits of the collection are the tension between the names of inhabited and natural places and the multifaceted lyrical subject, which links, via collocations, the four most frequent geographical names of the text — Těšín, Beskydy, Ostravice, and Dombrová.

On the onymic system of contemporary dystopias (on the example of French and Czech literature)

2024-04-10T20:35:51+00:00

The onymic structure of a literary work — especially anthroponyms and toponyms — creates a functional system linked to the author’s poetics, stylistic and contemporary conventions, and also to a given literary genre or subgenre or modus. The genological aspects and motivations of the use of proper names in an artistic text are among the least treated in contemporary literary onomastics, although they touch upon a wide range of linguistic and literary scientific questions, perspectives and problems. In this regard, our comparative case study focuses on the recently highly productive genre area of dystopias and the analysis of its onymic landscape, namely abionyms; the corpus under study consists specifically of eleven Czech and French prose works published after 1989. Due to the nature of these related genres (among others, representation of the future, but often also in intermingling with the previous present, anticipatory construction, negative image of development striving for realism, believability), the paper focuses primarily on the distribution of the use of authentic and realistic, or authorial, names. The study observes the frequency of these proper names and their functions in (re)modelling the fictional world in relation to the actual world, with the intention of characterising any typical features, tendencies or variations. In this paper, we deliberately chose a comparative approach, which, we believe, more appropriately captures general patterns beyond the scope of individual national language systems — on this basis, the study concludes that the identified and interpreted characteristics of onymy can be assessed as immanent, generally valid in a given genological category of contemporary literature.

The Javelin and Bayraktar chrematonyms in modern Ukrainian military discourse: semantics, pragmatics and functional load

2024-04-10T20:39:57+00:00

The Russian–Ukrainian war entered every Ukrainian home and this is reflected in the daily military discourse. Many new military lexemes, including numerous chrematonyms, have appeared in the speech of every Ukrainian. One of the most popular words of the Ukrainian military discourse in 2022 emerged from this class of proper names — the chrematonyms Javelin and Bayraktar, the semantics, pragmatics and functional load of which are analyzed in this study. The relevance of this work is determined by the fact that the phenomenon of chrematonymy is understudied and consists in a new anthropocentric approach to the study of the chrematonymy problem. The purpose of the article is to investigate the functioning of the specified proper names of weapons, to reveal their culturally informative cumulativeness, onymic potential and axiological possibilities in neonomination. It has been proven that the chrematonyms Javelin and Bayraktar turned from neologisms to commonly used words in a short time; they also occupied an important place in the system of onymic area, which is evidenced by their common knowledge, frequency of use, functioning in various styles of speech, Internet memes, and pop culture. The onomasiological approach made it possible to find out the productivity of the analyzed chrematonyms in the creation of new onyms, the relationship between onymic units in the process of their formation, as well as the socio-cultural determination of neonomination and appellativeization of proper names (de-onymization). It was established that the analyzed military chrematonyms are a source for the creation of new onyms (in particular, anthroponyms) as a result of a positive connotation caused by extralingual socio-cultural factors. A linguistic-cultural approach to chrematonyms opens up the perspective of studying the names of weapons as a cultural code, because weapons are one of the oldest artifacts created by man.

Zoonymy of the Africarium in Wrocław

2024-04-10T20:36:30+00:00

The article discusses the names of the animals in the Africarium, one of the key segments of the Wrocław Zoo. This synchronous study examines the tendencies in contemporary naming patterns. The research material was obtained from the animal records and interviews with Zoo employees. The corpus consists of 140 proper names of animals that represent 13 species. Against the background of the whole Africarium collection (more than 300 species and 4,000 animals), the collected nomenclature material constitutes only a fraction (approx. 0.03%). The research con ducted proves however that not only mammals, but also birds and fish get names — the names of these classes of vertebrates constitute more than 80% of the analysed zoonimic corpus. These animals represent a significant part of the Africarium collection, which in turns results from the specific nature of the African biotope. Naming motivation is the core criterion for the categorisation of the items found in the corpus. Three basic sets have been distinguished in the material collected: I. Single-motivation zoonyms, II. Multi-motivation zoonyms and III. Zoonyms with an unclear motivation. Within the first of them further specifications have been introduced. The most productive set is the one including single-motivation zoonyms (91.5%), and within it the class of zoonyms motivated conventionally (46.1%) and motivated externally, referring to circumstances and situations connected with an animal (36.7%). The names of the inhabitants of the Africarium follow certain naming patterns, some of which pertain to the particular species (e.g., members of the Arctocephalus genus receive pragmatically motivated names; the names of the hippopotamuses are based on the names of dances; and the names of Oman cownose rays are based on the names/surnames of fashion designers); other naming patterns are used universally (e.g., matronymic names that begin with the first letter of the mother’s name are given to, i.a., manatees). The majority of the research material contains semantic transformations based on metaphors or metonymies (92.1%), while lexical derivations are fairly rare (7.9%). Repetition and the existence of variants of the names are relatively infrequent within the corpus.

The onomastic terms inhabitant name, katoikonym, demonym

2024-04-10T20:37:00+00:00

The article deals with the characteristics of the onomastic terms inhabitant name, katoikonym, and demonym and with their place (position) in the system of onomastic terminology. The author analyses the definition, content and character of these terms and their use, primarily in Slovak linguistics and onomastics. Different views on their content also lead to an orthographic problem. This problem concerns in particular the differentiated writing of initial letters in the names of the objects that are denoted by them. The problem of writing capital or small initial letters comes to the fore in Slovak, especially in the case of so-called living (unofficial) inhabitant names or inhabitant nicknames.

The study of company names in communication — research problems

2024-04-10T20:37:16+00:00

The main aim of the article is to critically review and discuss selected research problems concerning the study of company names. First, the emphasis is placed both on the challenges in their (chremat)onomastic classification and on some attempts at their classification in the field of chrematonymy. Next, some characteristic features of company names, such as multi-discursivity, compoundedness, variantivity, formal and semantic diversity, are discussed. These features are not only determined by legal, marketing and communicative factors, but also as by the specific context of their referents, i.e. the dynamic and ever-evolving paralinguistic domain in which those companies operate. Those and other factors, mostly related to the unique and heterogeneous nature of the analysed material, pose a great challenge in terms of their sufficient data collection, adequate classification, proper description, and many more. The presented material has been illustrated by the examples of company names with mythological tropes. The paper offers an insight into the discussed material from the onomastic and chrematonomastic perspectives.

A Beemer, Queen Elizabeth and The Steaming Elephant – a comprehensive overview of vehicle names in onomastics

2024-04-10T20:37:33+00:00

Although names of vehicles surround us in our everyday life, vehicle names are seldom subject to research in onomastic literature: in most cases, the research only describes the naming patterns of one vehicle category. This paper aims to review the notion ‘vehicle names’ in light of the onomastic literature to provide a comprehensive overview of the name category. The paper takes the literature review as its research method: vehicle name-related research in English and German onomastic literature is synthesized to show in which onomastic research contexts vehicle names appear. Based on the results of previous onomastic research, the paper argues that the notion of vehicle names should be defined broadly. It also shows that vehicle names can be considered from different viewpoints: it is possible to distinguish official and unofficial name-giving, but the setting in which the vehicle name is used is also important. The final part of the paper shows how these viewpoints interact with one another: The paper also provides a taxonomy of vehicle names and indicates future research directions for vehicle names.

Old Russian one-stem deappellative anthroponyms with the suffix -ko (introductory remarks)

2024-04-10T20:29:01+00:00

Affixal derivation of one-stem deappellative anthroponyms in either Old Polish or in Old Russian has not been widely discussed so far. In previous studies, the analysis has essentially been focused on anthroponyms without word-formation exponents in relation to common names motivating them. The exception was one-stem deappellative personal names that were derived paradigmatically. Other issues of the morphological structure of Slavic one-stem personal names that differ from common names motivating them have been overlooked until now and need to be studied. The aim of the article is to present introductory remarks on Old Russian one-stem deappellative personal names with the suffix -ko that were recorded in the 15th–17th century texts. In the selected sources under review, derivatives of one-stem deappellative personal names with suffix -ko (Proto-Slavic -ъko, -ьko) have a more numerous representation than derivatives with other suffixes. The analysis will distinguish between: 1. derivatives created on the onomastic plane; 2. anthroponyms created on the appellative-onomastic plane.

Remarks on the margins of the first Czech regional hydronymic monograph

2024-04-10T20:37:55+00:00

This review article is devoted to the 2021 book by K. Kovářová “Hydronymy of the Ostravice River basin. Names of rivers, streams, ponds and wells” based on her doctoral thesis of 2019. This is the first systematic Czech monograph of a particular river basin, although in this case a relatively small one. The paper outlines, discusses and tries to improve the main shortcomings of the work concerning both documentation (important source publications were left out of consideration, especially Polish ones) and the etymological interpretation of several items which in fact require more profound insights into Slavic onomastics.

An important step in the development of research on the unofficial urban toponymy. Comments on Justyna Groblińska’s book “Unofficial urban naming of Łódź. A dictionary”

2024-04-10T20:30:05+00:00

The aim of this review article is to introduce additions and clarifications, as well as to correct errors in a work which is important from the point of view of research on urban toponymy. The author of the review appreciates the value of the monograph in which Groblińska gathered a large amount of material consisting of 396 unofficial urban names of Łódź, collected mostly by means of questionnaires and subjected to semantic, communicative and formal analyses. The author of the review disagrees with the opinion of Groblińska, who claims that Łódź became an important cultural and academic centre at the beginning of the 21st century. The city obtained such a status much earlier, and especially immediately after World War II, which is explained on the basis of a number of illustrative examples. For example, the University of Łódź, which continued the traditions of the Free Polish University — Łódź branch (1930–1939) was founded in 1945. A new etymology of the name Park Śledzia (‛herring park’) was presented: not from Jewish shops and herring warehouses on the area of the later park (as in Groblińska), but from śledź ‘herring’, i.e. in the criminal parlance ‘prosecutor, investigator’. The author publishes corrections and comments to the headline articles developed in Groblińska’s book, e.g. Wieża Babel, Grandka, Złoty Róg. Work on the unofficial urban names of Łódź should be continued.

First colloquium “Los topónimos: denominaciones espaciales dentro y fuera de las representaciones cartográficas” (Mexico City, 17–20 October 2022)

2024-04-10T20:38:17+00:00