Onomastica

Proper names are a relatively stable part of the cultural landscape and cultural traditions that were shaped for decades and centuries. They reflect cultural and social development, the development of spiritual culture, ethnic conditions and relations, language and dialects. This study addresses proper names as psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic elements whose formation and behavior are connected to the onymic space as well as its users. The author presents some circumstances affecting the common cultural values of proper names from the developmental aspect. The cultural and historical value of proper names is evaluated in relation to the objects motivating the names, and their significance to the name-givers. The language competencies of the society, and the modus operandi of proper names are also taken into account in the evaluation. Such values are reflected even in the current use of proper names and the relations of the community to them. The proper name represents the human connection to the place where an individual lives, it is an expression of this relationship and thus presents a peculiar anthropological phenomenon. It is important from the bottom-up perspective of users of the proper name within a regional onymic system. This study addresses the types of changes in oykonyms influenced by political and social changes and their impact on the social value of a proper name, its functions, motivational and communication potential of unofficial historical names. The author understands the proper name as part of tradition, culture and universal human heritage.

The article explores the characteristics of the digital lexicographical processing of Slovak anoikonyms (minor place names). It also adresses the significance of the results of analytical research on anoikonymic lexis and its synthetic processing in the digital dictionary for linguistics, especially in the research of language development and dialectology, for the standardization of geographical names and for other scientific disciplines, as well as wider cultural and social use.

As part of a general lexical system, urbanonymy reflects cultural phenomena in a broad sense. Alongside often discussed and well-studied lexical units, there are other urbanonyms that have been neglected by researchers for various reasons. Intra-city names containing numbers and figures belong to this neglected category. The aim of the study is to define the role of numbers and figures in Slavic urbanonymic systems. The research material is comprised of the contemporary urbanonymy of cities in Belarus, Russia, Poland and Bulgaria; toponymic dictionaries, electronic resources, tourist guides, maps and atlases have been used. The author demonstrates the shared and specific features of the numbers and figures used in the Belarusian urbanonymic system, as compared to that of Russia, Poland and Bulgaria. The symbolic meaning of these figures in the Slavic urbanomasticon is also discussed. I n spite of the existing differences in the use of names with a numerical component, their composition can be treated as a universal onomastic process. Street names containing figures are part of national culture, as they call to mind important national events or facts, both past and present. This helps individuals cultivate a personal sense of belonging to their native land, thus contributing to the preservation of tradition.

The article aims to demonstrate the role of chrematonymy in a broadly understood contemporary (modern) world culture. The author identifies possible chrematonimic categories and subcategories, discusses their formal and functional properties, and the methods and conditions involved in their creation. The paralexical and communicational phenomena associated with this general class of onymy (e.g. the use of logotypes and extralinguistic signs as well as letter and numeric codes in chrematonymic function) is also discussed.

This article aims to present several gender theories related to linguistics which could be useful for contemporary onomastics. The author would also like to demonstrate their applicability (especially the theory by R. Connell) in particular onomastic and textological analyses. In the first part of the article, the author explains that there are numerous ways to define gender within the discipline of gender studies. The author focuses on constructivist and performative approaches, especially on those which understand gender as a discursive and normative category. In the second part, the author presents four gender theories by: J. Butler, R. Connell, J. Scott, and by French feminists (J. Kristeva, H. Cixous), paying attention to their methodological value: understanding gender as a linguistic/performative/semiotic/symbolic/discursive category, as a group of textual practices (games) existing in the dominant culture, and the maintenance or defiance of gender. All of those notions can be related to different groups of onyms and their associated communicative practices. In the third part, the author presents the directions of research conducted in post-1945 Polish anthroponomastics in the field of feminine names (she is particularly interested in lexical, systemic, and contextual (social, historical etc.) mechanisms). In the empirical section, the author formulates her most important assumption concerning research of gender onomastics in the media (Polish women’s magazines): femininities are constructs, primarily of a normative, model-creating function, they produce hierarchy and difference; proper names are important “notional nodes” in those constructs. The analysis claims that there are at least three different femininities: dominant (celebrity), banal (anonymous) and defiant (rebellious). Female proper names are an important part of each construct as their arrangement (name and surname, name alone, diminutive of the name or culturally-loaded name), along with the appropriate description of their bearers, can give an impression of the popularity and familiarity of certain people and of their high social status or of their anonymity, closeness or unreality.This article aims to present several gender theories related to linguistics which could be useful for contemporary onomastics. The author would also like to demonstrate their applicability (especially the theory by R. Connell) in particular onomastic and textological analyses. In the first part of the article, the author explains that there are numerous ways to define gender within the discipline of gender studies. The author focuses on constructivist and performative approaches, especially on those which understand gender as a discursive and normative category. In the second part, the author presents four gender theories by: J. Butler, R. Connell, J. Scott, and by French feminists (J. Kristeva, H. Cixous), paying attention to their methodological value: understanding gender as a linguistic/performative/semiotic/symbolic/discursive category, as a group of textual practices (games) existing in the dominant culture, and the maintenance or defiance of gender. All of those notions can be related to different groups of onyms and their associated communicative practices. In the third part, the author presents the directions of research conducted in post-1945 Polish anthroponomastics in the field of feminine names (she is particularly interested in lexical, systemic, and contextual (social, historical etc.) mechanisms). In the empirical section, the author formulates her most important assumption concerning research of gender onomastics in the media (Polish women’s magazines): femininities are constructs, primarily of a normative, model-creating function, they produce hierarchy and difference; proper names are important “notional nodes” in those constructs. The analysis claims that there are at least three different femininities: dominant (celebrity), banal (anonymous) and defiant (rebellious). Female proper names are an important part of each construct as their arrangement (name and surname, name alone, diminutive of the name or culturally-loaded name), along with the appropriate description of their bearers, can give an impression of the popularity and familiarity of certain people and of their high social status or of their anonymity, closeness or unreality.

This descriptive review presents proper names from the perspective of brain science. It contains the characteristics of individual groups of proper nouns (and common nouns for comparison) and takes account of their neurobiological background. This makes it possible to confirm many opinions on the status of proper names reported by linguists. The Baker and baker paradox and the so-called double dissociation in the search of proper names and common names are discussed in order to confirm (at least in part) the thesis that proper names and common nouns are searched for in the mental lexicon independently of each other. The author also presents the characteristics of proper names to make a thesis about the uniqueness of this class of lexemes. It becomes clear that they are more difficult to learn, especially in patients with neurological deficits, and it takes healthy individuals longer to recall them than to search for common names. Moreover, the recollection of names is associated with more phonological mistakes and is often accompanied by the tip-of-the-tongue syndrome (TOT syndrome), which becomes most evident in elderly patients. The article also presents individual adaptive compensation techniques in impaired naming of objects and faces (e.g. aphasia), which facilitate the recreation of categories within the mental proper name lexicon.

Semiotics is the study of how signs are interpreted as references, and names are an obvious type of sign. Semiotics may therefore be considered a useful approach to all types of name study — whether personal names, place names, commercial names, or literary names. As described by C. S. Peirce, an act of reference consists of a sign (e.g., a word, word part, road sign, emblem, or simply a finger) and a referent (e.g., an object, conceptual model, or analytic definition). Furthermore, all acts of reference reflect one or more of three basic types of relationships: 1) similarity, 2) one-to-one correspondence, and/or 3) arbitrary convention. If a sign is interpreted as similar to a referent, it functions iconically. If it is interpreted as a designation or as caused by the referent, it functions indexically. If it is interpreted as referring to two or more indexical referents, it evokes related qualities and thereby functions symbolically. The primary interpretation of names is indexical. However, the purpose of this paper is to show how names, as signs, are also interpreted iconically and symbolically, even at the same time. Different types of names will be used to illustrate these semiotic functions.

In the modern corpus of Croatian anthroponyms there are 30 personal names with the root bog (‛god’). An abundance of both published and unpublished historical sources used in this research allowed the authors to create a corpus of personal names suitable for the comparative analysis of frequency and incidence in historical sources. The continuity of the use of the root bog among Croats is presented through the analysis of historical anthroponymic records (from the oldest originating in the 11th century, to contemporary sources). The oldest available sources attest to the onset of interference and the blending of Slavic and Romanic ethnicities, foremost in coastal Dalmatian city communes. A limited frequency of these personal names was detected in the 16th century. The factors that led to this situation are not only connected to the decisions of the Council of Trent, which recommended general usage of Christian names, but can also be attributed to historical circumstances (incursion of Ottomans, subsequent migrations). Most of the 16th century attestations pertain to areas with a mixed Christian and Muslim population. In border areas, where Western states shared Eastern borders with the Ottoman Empire, the analysed attestations were quite rare. Due to constant migrations from the contact zones and the Ottoman Empire towards the interior of the Hungarian-Croatian Kingdom, these personal names were able to ”survive” the early modern period. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, usage of folk names was more frequent, most probably as a consequence of the process of Croatian national revival.

This article aims to discuss function words in surnames, such as vel, alias, de, in selected countries with European naming traditions, with particular reference to Poland. Despite the many centuries of surname evolution, such function words are still present in some contemporary surnames in Poland, and quite common in certain other regions (Spanish and Portuguese-speaking areas). In the article, surnames have been divided into two categories: the prepositional type (e.g. de, von, van, du, della), where the relationship between the conjoined name elements (usually the given name and the surname) is that of subordination, and the conjunctional type (e.g. y, e, sive, alias, vel) where the relationship between the conjoined elements (usually two surnames) is one of coordination, with the function word meaning „and” or „or”. From a grammatical perspective, however, not all function words are prepositions or conjunctions, as there are examples of closed or open compounds formed from prepositions and articles (French du, Dutch van der), as well as of participles (Latin dictus, German genannt). The paper addresses the various types of function words in surnames, outlining their genesis in some cases, as well as exploring issues that arise from their everyday use, especially in instances where two different naming cultures come into contact. Statistics on the frequency of Polish surnames (both past and present) containing function words are given. These data are also used to model the decline and eventual exctinction of function words in the Polish anthroponomasticon.

This paper discusses selected types of native, appellative-form surnames of the inhabitants of 19th-century Cieszyn Silesia and its surrounding areas. Such appellative-form surnames (without derivative indicators) reflect the regional culture and values characteristic to, and cultivated by, the inhabitants of the region. An overview of them confirms that Cieszyn Silesia, as an ethnic-cultural borderland, stands out with its sub-regional distinctness in onymic stock. The described surnames not only reflect the values acknowledged by the inhabitants of 19th-century Cieszyn Silesia, showing the immanence of this set in the regional context, but they also depict the material and spiritual culture of the inhabitants of this region. The researcher used the semantic field method to analyse the anthroponymic material, and the sociolinguistic aspect of naming was considered when describing the collected set of appellative-based surnames, with references made to statistical research.

The paper is devoted to the origin of a set of supposedly related Polish place names pointing to a Slavic proto-form *žьgъrʹь. Its main results can be summarized as follows: — The supposed topographic appellative is preserved in four to seven Polish, place or terrain names in Central and Northern Poland. Its precise meaning and etymology is not quite clear. — Nevertheless, it cannot be excluded that a derivative of this rare word was preserved in Montenegro as žàgrica ʽslope’, the exact proto-form of which, however, cannot be established with certainty for the moment. The Slovak place name Žehra could be related as well. — An etymology is considered which attaches *žьgъrʹь < *gigura- to the reduplicated root contained, e.g., in Old Indic jígāti. — The name of a ford on the Orzyc river (northeastern Poland), attested in the middle 14th century as Old Prussian Zingurbrast and Old Polish Żgierz should be considered rather as an originally Slavic (Proto- or Old Polish) toponym.

This paper is presents the research and analysis of rock climbing routes in Slovakia. It is concerned with a specific set of proper names which are known and used among rock climbers. In the Slovak onomastics J. Bauko has predominantly researched such proper names. Rock climbing has its own rules, morals, and ethics. The aim of the paper is to analyse proper names of rock climbing routes and to analysed the onymic processes used in the formation of these names. Proper names of rock climbing routes represent a specific set of names which reflect culture, language, and the social situation. In the paper, we present an overview of the names of rock climbing routes in Slovakia and a division of the names according to the type of motivation.

The goal of the article is to describe the new and progressive category of onyms in contemporary Polish: names of awards. The author proposes for this category the term lauronyms. Synchronic analysis of lauronyms reveals their typical structure and their meaning. There are special collections of lexical items which are used to create the onyms the most fit for particular type of awards. The creation of lauronyms in Polish mirrors these areas of life, which are nowadays especially important for society and which can be the field of competition.

The paper is concerned with the problem of proper name-functions in Polish reportages of the 20th century. The analysis is focused on diachronic changes. For the research, two periods of Polish history were chosen: soc-realism and post-socialism epochs. The observation of onomastic material proved that culture had a significant impact on proper name functions in reportage understood as a dynamic and polyphonic speech genre. Furthermore, the proper name as a specific language sign is undoubtedly an important element which informs of the cultural and social factors, customs and traditions of a particular period. The results of this study confirm the benefits of contextualizing onomastic research within a broadly understood cultural background.

In light of the publication of the last volume of the onomasticon “Polish Anthroponymy of 16th–18th Century”, the authors reflect on the inspiration for the dictionary. They highlight the role of Professor Aleksandra Cieślikowa in shaping the concept of the volume and present stages of its creation and publication, as well as indicating the importance of describing anthroponymic phenomena in a historical and sociocultural context. The authors discuss the structure of each entry and of the whole dictionary and the sources used. The uniqueness of the onomasticon, owing to the variety of textual data referred to in the dictionary, is emphasised. The authors believe that “Polish Anthroponymy” may be a good starting point for further syntheses for other researchers.

The aim of the article is to present selected Slavic compound names, including first names reconstructed from toponyms, which are the basis of the oldest place names (i.e. recorded in the Medieval documents). The paper announces a broader research project which aims to present an overall perspective of the anthroponymic motivation of geographical names from onomastic-linguistic, historical, demographic-migratory, geographical and frequency-based aspects. This study will focus upon a variety of topics, such as: chronology, frequency, geography of the name-based toponyms, their onomastic variants and morphological structure. Moreover, the following issues will be indicated: resources and the spread of the naming structures, the survivability and productivity of certain name groups in the toponymic nomination process. Cultural, ideological, religious and social causes which favor the production of certain types of names, including compound names, will be indicated.

This study is based on the manuscript of the doctoral dissertation “Hydronymy of the Ostravice River Basin”, which takes as its thematic and methodological starting-point a project by Slovak linguists entitled “Hydronymia Slovaciae”; this project aims to produce a complete description of Slovak hydronymy applying consistent methodology, and it forms part of the European “Hydronymia Europaea” project. Although Czech toponomastics has not yet officially joined this project (or declared an intention to join it), research in Czech hydronymy and hydronomastics nevertheless has a long tradition. This study offers a critical commented overview of Czech hydronomastic literature from the earliest attempts (naive texts or folk etymologies), through 19th-century studies, to more recent research which seeks to understand hydronyms in their broader context, especially in terms of their communicative functions. The study also mentions important (mainly historical) cartographic sources recording Czech hydronyms. One of the appendices to the above-mentioned dissertation is a complete bibliography of studies, articles, Master’s theses and other publications that are in some way relevant to Czech hydronymy.

This study is focused on scholarship on proper names within a sociolinguistic framework. The main aim of this study is to clarify the term socio-onomastics and its meaning and usage with regards to toponomastics. Special attention is paid to the genesis of socio-onomastics and to the relations between sociolinguistics, onomastics and socio-onomastics. The influence of social aspects on the act of naming and on the entire existence of names is also taken into consideration when discussing the use of socio-onomastics. The text discusses views and attitudes towards the topic presented in linguistic literature. The socio-onomastic aspects are predominantly studied in scholarship on personal names, e.g. name creation and choice. In the case of place names, they are studied more rarely and the research pays attention mostly to the usage of place names in communication. Available toponomastic and anthroponomastic works using the term socio-onomastics in their description have been analyzed, as well as theoretical onomastic literature, producing several findings of differences in the usage of this term. The main topics of socio-antroponomastic literature are anthroponymy of various social groups, social aspects of name choice, social aspects of the development of naming systems, popularity of names, nicknames, hypocorisms and slang naming. The socio-toponomastic works mainly deal with the toponymy of various social groups, toponymic competence (knowledge and usage of toponyms), non-standardized toponyms, slang toponyms, social-based toponyms (commemorative toponyms), social-based renaming, and the linguistic landscape.