LINGOCULTUROLOGICAL ASPECT OF RESEARCHING OIKONYMS OF UKRAINE

INTRODUCTION The issue of interaction of language and culture is one of the central ones in linguistics, since language does not only form the culture but also develops itself in it. “The division of mankind into peoples and tribes, the difference between its languages and dialects are closely related, but at the same time, both are directly dependent on the third phenomenon, of much higher level – on the action of human spiritual power. The display of this power, which has been happening on the earth for millennia, is a supreme purpose of the whole movement of the spirit, an ultimate idea arising from the world-historical process, for exaltation and expansion of the inner being is the only thing that an individual has the right to regard as an imperishable property, and the nation is a true guaranty of the future development of new great personalities <...> Language is an organ of inner being, which with all the subtlest threads of its roots has accreted with the power of the national spirit, and the stronger the influence of the spirit on language is, the richer its development is” 1 . This idea of William von Humboldt became one of the foundations of modern linguoculturology, and the latter became related to onomastics. In addition to performing their direct functions, certain environmental objects also acquire a sign function, and are capable of carrying some additional meanings. The names calling these objects form interconnected secondary semiotic systems, which we call the codes of national culture 2 . Code is a versatile way of displaying information during its storage, transmitting and processing in the form of a system of correspondences between message elements and signals that help to fix these elements 3 . Cultural code is a collection of signs and a system of rules with the help of which cultural information can be represented as a set of relevant symbols.