PERSONAL NAMES IN SLAVONIC ANTHROPONYMIC SYSTEMS, DERIVED FROM A LATIN NAME THAT DENOTES AN ANIMAL.

Abstract

abstractIntroduction. There are two major periods of foreign names invasion. The first influence may be dated back to the 9th-10th c. AD when Christianity became the official religion for the Slavonic people and mostly Greek, Latin, and Hebrew names were introduced. Later on, at the end of the 20th century AD, West-European names became – and still are, popular and fashionable.The purpose of the article is to present a full list of Slavonic personal names derived from a Latin anthroponym that denotes an animal as well as their initial meaning.Background and motivations. Some totemic animals, like a wolf, bear, lion, and an eagle are part of the mythology and folklore of lots of European countries. The main reason for choosing to research personal names derived from an appellative for an animal is to follow the traces left from old beliefs and traditions and to study the influence of Christianity on them.  Methodology. The main methods used are lexicographical excerption and etymological analysis. The researched anthroponyms are divided into three major groups according to: 1) the meaning of the appellative (i. e. a thematic classification); 2) the type of the basic word (i. e. if the researched anthroponym is derived directly from an appellative or via another anthroponym (be it a Roman mythological name, a Roman phenomena, a Roman gentile name, a Roman cognomen, or a Neolatin name)); 3) their canonization.All personal names included in this research are part of the modern anthroponymicons, even though they represent a small group with relatively infrequent usage.The expected results are to prevent those old Slavonic names from disappearing by making the name etymology more obvious for the common people and revealing the hidden symbolic meaning of the totem animal.All the researched anthroponyms have been saved in the Slavonic names pools due to two very strong traditions – according to the first one, the child, especially a boy, was given a totemic name, and the second one was for the child to be named after one of the paternal or maternal grandparents.