ANTHROPONYMS AS THE BASIC CONSTITUENTS OF THE ONYME SYSTEM

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to summarize and supplement key information about anthroponyms as basic components of the onymic system by referring to English-language lexicographic works and terminology registers. The object of the study is anthroponyms as the basic components of the onymic system. The subject of the study is the specificity of terminological designation, definition and typology of anthroponyms in Ukrainian and foreign sources. Methods of research are predetermined by the purpose and tasks put in the article. The main ones are comparative analyses, observation method, analysis of the scientific literature, method of classification, descriptive, comparative, and historical methods as well as methods of generalization and abstraction. They make it possible to clarify the concept of anthroponym, to define the specificity of functioning in different resources, to draw conclusions on the typology of anthroponyms. The term «anthroponym» belongs to the category of international and is firmly established in scientific linguistic communication for proper names of people. The chronology of its appearance in foreign and domestic sources varies, but can be most generally described as the second half of the twentieth century. Presence in the most authoritative terminology registers and dictionaries has contributed to popularization of the term «anthroponym» among researches of different countries and has supported its relevance for many decades. The analysed English-speaking and Ukrainian lexicographic works are mostly unanimous in defining anthroponym as a name of a human being, but we find particularly valuable more informative definitions, which contain information on the function and peculiarities of anthroponyms or represent a typology of antroponyms. The anthroponym typologies proposed by the authors vary considerably in quantitative and qualitative parameters, making it difficult to compare them with the corresponding material in Englishlanguage sources. The results of the analyses validate the observations of scholars from different countries that terminological homogeneity does not exist at the international level, which makes translation of terms and comparative research difficult.