Semiotic Aspect of the Proper Name: On the Interest of Paisius Ligarides in the Etymology of the Name

The purpose of the article is to explain the way in which the Metropolitan of Gaza Paisius Ligarides interpreted the meaning of the name Aleksei. In the dedication to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, which opens the first part of the book about the ecclesiastical trial of Patriarch Nicon, addressing the Russian ruler, the metropolitan used the metaphors “savior”, “deliverer”, “liberator”, “lover of God” and “lover of Christ” instead of a name. This rhetorical figure, well known in Russian written culture since ancient times, goes back to the Byzantine methods of decorating speech. In an effort to reveal the content of new connotations in the name Aleksei, which arose in the middle of the 17th century in connection with the idea of the liberation mission of Alexei Mikhailovich in the Christian East, actively exploited by the Greeks, Ligarides broke the name into letters, “building up” each to a word. The content of the resulting phrase corresponded to the prophetic moods of our time. This method, outwardly similar to the alphabetic acrostic, was not familiar to Russian baroque culture, which knew many “games” with letters and words. This principle of revealing the hidden meaning of a word did not take root in the Orthodox tradition, where a proper name determined the fate of a person and had a sacred meaning that did not need to be deciphered element by element and understood as a whole, in contrast to the many meanings obtained by manipulating letters and juggling words.