This article will try to answer the question of what is onomastics. Here we will consider it general definition in terms of linguistics. Attention will also be paid to defining the directions of this section. Historical onomastics will be studied in more detail.
Introduction
Onomastics - what is it?
This term means one of the sections of linguistics that studies any issues related to proper names (s. and.), As well as the history of their occurrence or transformation due to long-term use in the language from which they were borrowed. In a narrower sense, this concept can be defined as a set for the study of proper names that came from another source language. The subject for study is and.
Synonymous sections are: onomastics, onomasiology and onomatology.
More about art and its analysis
Onomastics as the science of one's own name appeared a very long time ago. The translation from Greek defines it as "the art of naming". talking scientific language, we can say that this section of linguistics specializes in proper names and historical evidence revealing their essence and meaning.
This section includes several subsections, among which are: toponymy, anthroponymy, astronomy, zoonymy, cosmonymy, chrematonymy, pragmonymy, carabonymy and theonymy. Below we will focus on them. general description.
Directions
Onomastics is a science that includes the following sections:
- Anthroponymy - a section on the study of the proper names and surnames of people, as well as their origin and transformation that occurred as a result of their long-term exploitation, geographical distribution, change social function etc.
- Astronomy - a section that analyzes the names of any celestial objects, as in total number, and individual units (the Sun or the Moon, many stars and comets, etc.)
- Cosmonymy is the study of the names of objects that reside exclusively in outer space.
- Toponymy - a section occupied with the analysis of p. and. objects of geography, and its formations. An example is: the Nile River, Egypt, Mount Chomolungma, etc.
- Zoonymy refers to the section that studies p. and. and animal names.
- Chrematonymy is a section about objects related to human culture.
- Karabonymics is a section about proper names, which are called boats, ships and other vessels.
- Theonymy refers to the section on the proper names of gods and various deities.
- Pragmonimics is a subsection of onomastics that studies the name of products and goods. An example is the concept of "chokonyms" - a type of chocolate product.
purpose
All the above sections of onomastics create a common basis for the study of one's own name. The studies of this section allow a person to trace the migration path and the places where various peoples settled. This is possible due to the analysis of linguistic and cultural contacts traced in languages, as well as the determination of the specifics of the patterns of storage and transmission of proper names.
The presence of a certain social function - to be an individualizing means of defining and highlighting objects and subjects, as well as cities, phenomena, etc. - allows the proper name to also retain its etymological meaning, which is very often overlooked and / or obscured for certain reasons. It is important to be able to track such information and use it correctly. S. i. have great stability, which is maintained even with significant revolutionary events.
Historical facts
What is onomastics? The definition of this word came to us from the Greek language. Onomastics gives us valuable information about history by establishing settlement sites, migration routes (especially important for studying peoples that have disappeared), analyzing local myths, etc. The total amount of data allows a person to get an idea of the type of settlement, its social and family structure as well as relationships.
An example of onomastics, namely its activities, is the analysis of a geographer. names, the southern section of the East European Plain. It allows you to positively resolve the issue of the contribution of the Scythians to the development state language RF. Analyzing the names of cities located on waterways (for example, "Vyshny Volochek"), you can get a conclusion about the features of transport used on the water. It also helps to recognize the era of exploitation and much more.
The essence of onomastics
What is onomastics, and what is its essence?
The main task of onomastic research, as mentioned earlier, is to identify and understand the migration route various peoples. Also, this section of linguistics pays a lot of attention to the study of the cultural series of contacts that occurred during the mixing of languages.
Onomastic studies are focused on ancient dialects and the original structure and state of the language. Most important place anthroponymy occupies among the subsections of onomastics.
The studied section of linguistics includes some aspects, among which are: descriptive (analysis of philological and linguistic issues and problems), theoretical (derivation of laws and principles of functioning of any onomastic system), historical (history of names), artistic and ethnic.
Historical section
What does onomastics study, namely its historical section?
The history aspect deals with the analysis of onomastic data. S. i. are part of the language and, therefore, are part of linguistics. However, the presence of patterns that are traced in the development of proper names differs from the "evolution", for example, appellatives.
The emergence of and. and their change is subject not only to the phonetic and morphological code of laws and rules, but is also determined by the progress of society or special phenomena in it. An example is the possession of the throne by three different Alexanders and two Nicholas, which in the future led to a trend towards the spread of these names among Russian nobles. Based on foreign policy plans, Catherine II named her grandson Konstantin, which corresponds to the name of the emperor Byzantine Empire. Also, for similar reasons, names were given to cities, such as: Odessa, Nikopol, Sevastopol, etc. In this case, the orientation of the name comes from the geographical location of the city, its population, etc.
Thus, historians can say in response to the question: “what does onomastics study?” What does it analyze proper names, through the application historical facts and uses s. and. as a valuable source of information that can serve additional material for the researcher or scientist.
About patterns
What does onomastics mean for a historian, in in general terms we already know. However, it is important to understand that this section of science includes patterns that divide it into sections. Deetymologization is one of the reasons for such a distinction by subtypes. In the process of using one's own name, the etymological meaning and origin disappear from it. For example, when mentioning Lyubov Lvovna, the subjects do not think about the feeling of falling in love or a dangerous predatory animal. Also when we are talking about Pushkin, we do not remember artillery pieces. A person most often feels etymology when meeting unfamiliar names.
Separation of historical function
In the historical aspect of onomastics, there is a division into two layers. One of them is preonomastic. Taki calls him one of the largest scientists in the onomastic field of research V. A. Nikonov. An example is the name of the city of Paris, the meaning of which indicates that the territory belongs to the Parisian tribe. As you can see, given with. and. serves as a valuable source of information, but it can be extremely difficult or impossible to determine this.
The 2nd value of the layer is onomastic. This "platform" is extremely simple. Consider an example: Beijing is the capital of China, Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark. Davydov Nikolai Alekseevich - my neighbor, a laboratory assistant in one of my brother's laboratories.
Answering the question of what onomastics is in historical practice, it is also important to know about the dual purpose of all names.
First, it is necessary to distinguish some geographical objects, people, etc. from others. That is, to single out someone or something from the general series. In this case, the name introduces a unit of speech within the boundaries of a certain topic (cities, animal names, people's names, etc.). Conclusions about names are made using various additional means, for example, when studying a person's name, formants are used.
Popularizers of physics often draw terrible picture world where there is no friction. Well, if proper names disappeared in the world - the names of people, peoples, pets, names of streets, houses, cities, rivers, stars, planets, books, steamships, brand names and trademarks, scientific articles and monographs, musical works, paintings, sculptures, museums, sports societies, holidays, institutions, etc. etc.?
Already from this far from complete list it is clear how diverse proper names are, how many living beings and inanimate objects they have been assigned. And it is also clear from this list that chaos would reign on our planet no less than the one that should reign if the forces of friction disappeared.
A special science, onomastics, is engaged in the study, systematization, and explanation of this myriad of proper names. So,
Onomastics is the science that studies...
proper names in all their diversity.
Onomastics how science that studies proper names is a rich branch of linguistics. Onomastics studies the history of the emergence of proper names, their types, transformation as a result of their long use.
Names are all around us. We all have a first name, a patronymic, a surname - these are our own names. The name of the nationality is another proper name. Place of birth - republic, region, district, city or village - a few more proper names. Our address - more names.
There are many more proper names than there are stars in the sky. After all, every star has a name - and besides the stars? In Switzerland alone, it is estimated that there are about 12,000,000 place names - all over the world there are at least a thousand times more! What about the titles of books, paintings, symphonies, articles, poems?
What do the sections of onomastics study?
- Ethnonymy: Each people, tribe, nation, clan, have their own names - ethnonyms. For a long time, people have been interested in why they are called this way and not otherwise, what the word Slav, Russian, Evenk, Tuvan, etc. means. serious research gave rise to attempts to explain the origin of ethnonyms. At present, they are dealt with by a special section of onomastics - ethnonymy.
- Theonymy studies the names of gods, demons, spirits, characters of myths and legends about the creation of the world, people, things, animals. It shows how common nouns - the names of wind, fire, thunderstorms, thunder and other natural phenomena - turned into proper names.
- Chrematonyms- this is how some scientists propose to name the names of a wide variety of objects and phenomena, to which, for whatever reason, people assign their own names. We know that such names have stadiums and sports societies, chess debuts and even individual parties (“Eternal Green Party”, “Immortal Party”), holidays (May Day, Geologist’s Day), military units and individual battles (Battle of Borodino, Battle of Kulikovo ). Businesses designate, mark their goods or services with the help of trademarks. These are proper names, and their number is very large. Proper names are also the names of works of art, books, individual poems. Chrematonymy not only of purely academic interest. For example, in Western countries every now and then there are lawsuits related to the fact that the name of a trademark of one company is like the name of a product manufactured by a competing company. The decision as to whether such names are really similar can only be made with the help of scientific analysis.
Yes, and all other sections of onomastics are directly related to practice: one has only to name the fixation of names and surnames in the registry office, the transcription of geographical names, the names of new objects on Earth and the newly discovered relief of other planets. That's why the science of names - onomastics- this is not the occupation of individual scientists "eccentrics", but a science that is most closely connected with life.
ONOMASTICS, the science of proper names of all types, the laws of their development and functioning. Linguistic at its core, onomastics includes historical, geographical, ethnographic, cultural, sociological, literary components that help to identify the specifics of named objects and the traditions associated with their names, which takes onomastics beyond the scope of linguistics itself and makes it an autonomous discipline that uses mainly linguistic methods, closely related to the complex humanities, as well as earth and universe sciences.
Proper names react vividly to the changes taking place in nature and society, therefore proper names can serve as chronologists of texts, as well as historical and archaeological sites. Due to the special conservatism of proper names, they survive the era in which they were created, preserving evidence of an older state of the language, and contain a large amount of linguistic and extralinguistic information that can only be obtained by linguistic methods.
All the diversity of the world of things (real, hypothetical and invented by human fantasy) is the primary basis for names – common nouns as summarizing similar facts and own as highlighting individual objects in a series named with the help of common nouns.
Just as named things are located in the earthly (and unearthly) space, the words that name them in the mind of the speaker also have a spatial distribution, similar for residents of the same locality, different for residents of distant territories. It may not look like the actual placement of named objects, but it exists and serves as a framework that supports the denotations of names. Onomastic space- this is a nominal continuum that exists in the representation of people different cultures and in different eras filled in different ways. In the minds of every person, the onomastic space is present in fragments. It is revealed quite fully only with a special study.
According to the Book of Genesis, the first to receive proper names were the people themselves, the places they knew on earth, animals (domestic and wild), and visible heavenly bodies. These objects and their names filled the onomastic space ancient man. Over time, this space expanded, new types of objects received names.
The onomastic space of the modern inhabitants of Russia includes: the names of people - anthroponyms(Ivan,Marya,Anton Pavlovich Chekhov,Rurikovichi); place names - toponyms(mountain Elbrus, city Petushki, mowing Behind the swamp, White House ), including the names of water bodies - hydronyms(river Volga, Lake Ritsa, Black Sea); animal names - zoonyms(dog Blot, horse Loud Success, goose Ivan Ivanovich); proper names of individual plants - phytonyms (Wood crying, pine Airplane); names of zones and parts of the universe - cosmonyms(constellation Capricorn, nebula Andromedae, galaxy big Magellanic Cloud); titles celestial bodies – astronyms(star Vega, planet Mars, asteroid Ceres, comet Galea); names of points and time intervals - chrononyms (Petrovskaya era, Varfolomeevskaya night, era Renaissance, New year); holiday names ( Christmas, Day victories, Day geologist, Day teachers, Trinity); names of events, campaigns, wars (festival " Russian winter», Russian-Japanese war, Brusilovsky breakthrough, operation " Steel helmet»); names of enterprises, institutions, societies, parties, etc. business associations of people Russian state library, Small theatre, factory " Sickle and hammer»); names of churches, monasteries ( trinity-Sergius Lavra, temple Trinity in sheets, church Introductions under pines); names of communication routes ( The way from the Varangians to the Greeks,Vladimirsky tract,Minsk highway); names of vehicles (aircraft « Motherland», ship « Cosmonaut Gagarin», express « Yaroslavl»); names of works of art (painting by V.M. Vasnetsov Three hero, sculpture Let's reforge swords on the plowed, symphony Winter dreams P.I. Tchaikovsky, opera Troubadour G. Verdi); titles periodicals(newspaper " News", magazine " Science and life»); document names ( land law,Treaty of Friendship,Peace Decree,Helsinki Agreement); titles of books, stories, poems, articles ( Monument A.S. Pushkin, novel by A.N. Tolstoy Bread); proper names of individual, especially valuable items material culture(gold nuggets " Camel», « Bunny ears", diamond " Shah", bells" Goat», « Ram», « Sysoi" In Rostov); names of orders, medals (order " Badge of honor", medal " Mother glory»); titles natural Disasters(Hurricane " Flora»); names of varieties of manufactured products and selected plants (car " Volga", cheese " Poshekhonsky", soap " Tar", cologne" Lilac", cherry " Beauty of the North", lilac " Lights of Moscow»); trademarks - signs marking goods and service marks, specially preserved and kept from moving into a common vocabulary (shampoo " Blue Wave", candies " Gold key»); names of deities Zeus,Perun); names of various spirits (genie Maimun, Demon, Anchutka); names of various mythological realities (river Summer); character names and place names in literature and folklore ( Eugene Onegin,Sobakevich,Blue Beard, village Dyryavino, city Skotoprogonievsk); names of hypothetical geographic features ( Sannikov Land,Beringia), etc. Depending on the type of names studied, onomastics as a science is divided into private areas, among which the most studied are anthroponymy, toponymy, hydronymy and some. others (see ANTHROPONYMICS; TOPONIMICS).
The names of long-dead people and settlements that have ceased to exist fill the depth of the onomastic space; however, their place may be different depending on the significance of the denotation. Names Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Nero, Napoleon relevant today. Less famous names are significant only for that chronological slice when the named person lived. The names of uninhabited cities become archeonyms, i.e. names of objects of archeology. Only good knowledge history and geography allows us to establish that Antarctica, Tauris, Tasmania are the names of real objects, and Atlantis, pacifida, Beringia- hypothetical. In all such cases, the images of named objects, which are formed in the representation of the members of the linguistic community, become a kind of denotations, substitutes for objects that do not really exist.
Aspects of onomastic studies are diverse. Stand out: descriptive onomastics, which is the objective foundation of onomastic research, giving a general philological analysis and linguistic interpretation collected material; theoretical onomastics, which studies the general patterns of development and functioning of onomastic systems; applied onomastics associated with the practice of naming, with the functioning of names in living speech and the problems of naming and renaming, giving practical advice cartographers, biographers, bibliographers, lawyers; onomastics works of art , constituting the section of poetics; historical onomastics, which studies the history of the appearance of names, and their reflection in the names of realities different eras; ethnic onomastics, which studies the emergence of the names of ethnic groups and their parts in connection with the history of ethnic groups, the relationship of ethnonyms with names of other types, the evolution of ethnonyms, leading to the creation of toponyms, anthroponyms, zoonyms, the connection of ethnonyms with names of languages (linguonyms).
Modern onomastics is a complex scientific linguistic discipline with its own range of problems and methods. Onomastic research helps to study the migration routes of individual ethnic groups, identify their former habitats, establish the more ancient state of individual languages, and determine the linguistic and cultural contacts of different ethnic groups.
Word onomastics came from Greek word, which means "name". How does the science of onomastics study proper names, i.e. names of people, names of animals, peoples, geographical objects. That part of onomastics, which is devoted to the study of the names of rivers, mountains, settlements, and other things, stands out as a separate science - toponymy.
Proper names cover a significant part of our lives. Names are given not only to everything that a person creates, but also to geographical objects, including those that are outside the globe. The origin of names is considered in a complex, both from the point of view of etymology and from the point of view of logic.
Among proper names one can trace specific features their preservation and transmission. That is why their research is important with scientific point vision. The origin of the names may be completely forgotten, and the name itself may not be connected in any way with other words of the same language. However, with all this, the proper name retains its social significance, i.e. serves as a clear indication of a specific subject.
Proper names can be very stable. Often they are not affected either by revolutionary changes in the language, or even by the complete replacement of one language by another. For example, in Russian there are still names like the names of the Volga or Don rivers, which from the point of view of the Russian language do not have any meaning. However, after etymological clarifications, one can trace their Scythian origin. Thanks to such research, it becomes possible to restore the character of the language that prevailed at the time of the creation of a name, as well as to clarify many other aspects.
Thus, onomastics collects the most valuable material for history, making it possible to trace the migration paths of peoples and giving an idea of the contribution made to the building of culture not only by the peoples who now exist, but also by the peoples who have already disappeared. As an example, we can say that the analysis of the origin of the names of Russian cities (for example, Vyshny Volochek) makes it possible to judge the transport routes that existed in that era, and studies of the names of various geographical objects on the East European Plain show the influence of the Scythian culture on the Russian language.
Thus, onomastic research is more focused on identifying migration routes and places of settlement of peoples in old days, as well as to determine the then existing contacts between cultures and the study of ancient languages. Often, only onomastic studies can be used to judge the disappeared languages and people.
However, the field of activity of onomastics does not end there. AT literary works contains a very rich material for the study of proper names, aimed at reflecting different styles and creative methods. Suffice it to mention a whole set of "speaking" names and titles, such as Skotinin, Sobakevich or Chichikov, names
In modern Russian there are hundreds of thousands common nouns denoting objects and their properties, natural phenomena and other realities of our life. In addition to them, there is another, special world of words that perform the function of highlighting, individualization and representing a variety of names and titles.
Today, proper names are studied by representatives of a wide variety of sciences (linguists, geographers, historians, ethnographers, psychologists, literary critics). However, first of all, proper names are closely studied by linguists.
Onomastics(from the Greek "onomastikus" - the art of giving names) - a branch of linguistics that studies proper names, the history of their occurrence and transformation as a result of prolonged use in the source language or in connection with borrowing from other languages of communication.
In a narrower sense, onomastics are proper names of various types (onomastic vocabulary).
Directions of onomastics
Toponymy- studies the proper names of geographical objects (Russia, the Red Sea, Kyiv, Nevsky Prospekt, the Iset River, Lake Baikal, Kulikovo Field).
Anthroponymy- explores the proper names of people (Nikolaevich Yeltsin, Kalita). Anthroponymy distinguishes between folk and canonical personal names, as well as various forms one name: literary and dialect, official and unofficial. Each ethnic group in each era has its own anthroponymicon - a register of personal names. The set of anthroponyms is called anthroponymy.
Cosmonymics– parses zone names outer space- constellations, galaxies, both accepted in science and folk ( Milky Way, Pleiades, Andromeda Galaxy)
astronomy- studies the names of space objects, or individual celestial bodies (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Halley's comet, dwarf planet Ceres, the star Sirius).
Zoonymy– deals with proper names and nicknames of animals (Sharik, Murka, Britney, Besya, Arnold, Buckingham).
Chrematonymy- studies the proper names of objects of material culture (the Orlov diamond, the Durandal sword, the Gamayun cannon).
Theonymy- studies the proper names of gods and deities of any pantheon (Stribog, Zeus).
Karabonymics- studies the proper names of ships, vessels and boats (Aurora, Varyag, Borodino, Memory of Mercury). The term was proposed by Aleksushin instead of the previously proposed terms "natonymy" and "caronymy".
ergonomics– studies the names of business associations of people. For example, emporonyms are the names of shops, firmonyms are the names of firms. This also includes the names of bars, cafes, hairdressers, billiard clubs, trade unions, etc.
Pragmony- learns names various kinds goods. For example, perfume names are the names of perfume products, fragrances ("Chanel", " J"adore","Lauren"), chokonyms - the names of chocolate products ("Kara-Kum", "Metelitsa")
Functions of onomastics
Onomastic research helps to identify the migration routes and places of former settlement of various peoples, linguistic and cultural contacts, the more ancient state of languages and the ratio of their dialects. The study of proper names is of great importance due to the specific patterns of their transmission and preservation. Due to its social function - to serve as a simple individualizing indication of a certain object - a proper name is able to retain its main significance while completely obscuring its etymological meaning, that is, with the complete impossibility of connecting it with any other words of the same language (cf., for example, such names of rivers in Russian, like Scythian "Don", Finno-Ugric "Moscow", "Volga", etc.).
Hence the enormous stability of proper names, which are preserved not only during revolutionary shifts in history specific language, but even when full shift language from one system to another. This establishes the possibility, through an etymological explanation of certain names, to establish the nature of the language in which the corresponding name was first created.
Historical onomastics
In general, onomastics provides the most valuable material for history, establishing the places of settlements and migration routes of often disappeared peoples, characterizing local myths, giving ideas about the type of settlements, about social and family relationships. An analysis of the geographical names of the southern part of the East European Plain leads to a positive solution to the question of the Scythian contribution to the Russian language. An analysis of the names of Russian cities along the Great Waterway (such as "Vyshny Volochek") makes it possible to establish the features of river transport of the corresponding era, etc.
Toponymy (especially hydronymy) is often the only source of information about disappeared languages and peoples.
