The Diversity of Slavic Surnames in the Odesa Region in the 19th Century

Proper names have always played a significant role in the history of language and culture of any nation. Besides, research on personal names in different epochs and in local regions are important both for history and onomastics. Surnames could reflect the history of a nation almost in every country because they are passed on from one generation to the next. Surnames are particularly interesting for studying traditions and they are strictly connected to the social and historical background in the analyzed region. The study of surnames can also be of benefit to other areas of onomastics such as toponomastics and socio-onomastics.Although the topic of surnames has been exploited in many countries and languages for a long period, there are still some new aspects that can be presented on this topic. This research examines the surnames in the mass media in the Odesa Region. Historically, the Odesa region was multicultural that is why we came across with both Slavic and non-Slavic surnames but the object of this investigation is Slavic surnames. The analyzed mass-media texts are drawn from the 19th-century newspapers Odessa Vestnik and Odessa Advertisement Sheet. About 2,000 surnames were taken for the analysis from announcements and advertisements in these newspapers. The study of the surnames has concentrated on the names of all levels of the society. The purpose of the paper is to make the typology of the surnames and present the quantity of surnames in each group. Some historical events that impact the name-giving process are mentioned and social factors which influence the name-giving process are described.The study has revealed that 19th-century surnames were created from anthroponyms, toponyms, ethnonyms, and appellatives. The last group contains occupational surnames, surnames with the semantics of fauna and flora as well as surnames derived from other concrete or abstract nouns. An additional complicating factor was that it was not always easy to interpret and identify the origin of some surnames. The results of this paper indicated that analyzed surnames from the 19th century in this region are part of culture. The surnames derived from appellatives represent a significant part of the studied surnames (56%), among them there are occupational surnames (13%); surnames with the semantics of flora and fauna (23%) as well as surnames having other concrete or abstract meanings (20%). Personal names make up 29%, toponyms are of 11%, and the least frequent category is surnames derived from ethnonyms (4%).From the perspective of further research, it would be interesting to compare the received results with the typology of the modern surnames in the same region.