In the article there are presented the most popular Jewish names selected from the municipal books of Grabowiec and fi les of city Grabowiec XVII and XVIII century. As a result of gathered materials it has been found that Jews adapted their names to the patterns existing on the area of residence. The formant –ko was especially popular. That formant was the most popular in Ukrainian antroponymy: Heszko, Icko, Judko, Lewko. To the most popular names used by Jews as Icko (17), Lewko (11), Marko (5), Moszko (4) the names of the origin of the Bible: Dawid (6), Juda (5), Aron (4), Boruch (3), Hebraic: Jakub (9), Chaim (5), Maier (4), Yiddish: Leyba (6), Zusman (3). can be added. Frequencies complement the variants of the specifi c names.

The authors presented the tendencies in Russian toponomy after the October Revolution, when geographic naming became one of the most important tools of communist propaganda. They showed – following A. Supieranska – three groups of oekokonyms in the 1920s and 30s: 1) those derived from the names of individuals who had achieved renown (e.g. Ленинакан, Ленинск, Лениногорск, Ленинабад, Троцк, Киров), 2) those commemorating phenomena and events linked with the Revolution and the era of Soviet rule (e.g. Комсомольск-на-Амуре, Красногвардейск), 3) those referring to areas of production (e.g. Асбест, Бокситогорск, Магнитогорск, Электросталь). In this context, changes in the naming of towns inhabited by Germans are presented, in particular Marx and Engels, located in the Volga Region. The presentation of the changes is preceeded by a description of the development of the oekonymic system of Volga Germans.

The names of wives in Belarusian Narew dialects were most often formed from the husband’s name using the formatives -iχa, -ča and -ka. These forms were neutral in the past, and the formatives in questions were a maritonymic indicator. During the post-war period, particularly in the nineteen-seventies, a tendency for the gradual disappearance of wives’ names with the formatives -iχa, -ča and -ka was observed. The names of this type now refer almost exclusively to old women. They are used by persons of the oldest generation. In this usage, the names in question retain their maritonymic function and a neutral tinge. The names of wives with the formatives -iχa, -ča and -ka, used to refer to old women by young or middle-aged people, usually have an augmentative-pejorative or jocular- ironic connotation. The names of this type are gradually becoming functionally close to nicknames. What is conducive to the process is without doubt the archaic form of the names in question. The archaization of the traditional names of wives with the formatives -iχa, -ča and -ka is accompanied by the distinct activation, infl uenced by the Polish language, of maritonymic f Keywords: Białystok region, Narewka village and its vicinity, peripheral Belarusian dialects, mari-tonymic forms with the formative -iχa, -ča and -ka, disappearance and change of function Narewka village and its ormatives -ova, -ava, and partly -ina, -yna.

Taking as a starting point Vyacheslav Ivanov’s poem Eden – the epilogue of the 5th book of “metaphysical lyric poetry” Rosarium as well as his critical and philosophical works – the article proposes a culturological interpretation of the key topoi of the poet’s artistic thought: his poetic anthropology. The principal point in these considerations is conceptualisation of the category of paradise/Eden in Ivanov’s writings and the notion of happiness as “metaphysical and religious feeling” connected with a person’s spiritual life in its vertical dimension (relation man – three-personed God). Moreover, the article presents intertextual relationships between Ivanov’s poetry and cultural texts (St Augustine, Petrarch, and others) being the source of European understanding of the concepts: soul, memory, oblivion, paradise.

Balmont’s only contribution to Russian Symbolist Drama is discussed in the forthcoming article as an attempt of quitting narcissistic “lyrical solitude”, which parallels Blok’s situation upon staging the play Balaganchik. Motifs of the mythologeme of Narcissus scattered all over Balmont’s poetry and prose, given narcissistic features of his individual character seem to reinforce that a subtle decoding of the myth as a sujet of semiosis, constitutes one of the chief constructive principles of the play. By means of contrasting allusions to the Blue Flower of Novalis Balmont accentuates metamorphosis via dematerialisation and transmutation coded in the myth. The pattern of colour and fl oral imagery juxtaposing the complementary yellow and blue is meant to reveal the harmony of universal correspondences shown through the omnipresent principle of the Eternal Feminine.

The book The Secondhand Time completes the artistic-documentary cycle of works The Voices of Utopia by S. Aleksievich, a Russian-speaking Belarusian author. Like her other books, it actualizes, in her own words, “the genre of human voices, confessions, testimonies and documents of a human soul”. Unlike Western documentary writers whose works oppose the artistic world by undressing and desacralizing it, S. Aleksievich, by following the traditions of the Russian literature, strives to preserve the sacred in her material, oftentimes introducing the artistic and esthetic elements. The article analyzes the tools that the author uses in her book, such as selecning facts and documents, alternating “voices”, editing them, including other sources in the text, moving from location to locatoin, explicit and implicit depiction of conscience, psychology of interlocutors, accentuating basic elements in monologues and remarks, allusions, reminiscences, etc. The conclusion evaluates artistic value of this work.

The subject of the article is interaction of Russian hand-written rhymes and oral paremiae in XVII–XVIII centuries. The interplay between the literature and oral genres bases on the unity of motifs, characters and topoi as well as folk beliefs and stereotypes.