UKRAINIAN ONOMASTICON: CULTURAL POLYPHONY.

Abstract

The article reveals the complex and contradictory process of formation of Ukrainian onomasticon in the common East Slavic space since most of the nations made their way from the non-linear (the mythological period) to linear (period of familiarizing with world religions) development and eventually came to the period of globalization, period of pluralistic awareness of reality. Each of the aforementioned periods was determined with radical changes in the onomasticon creation. In order to describe the process of establishment of the Ukrainian anthroponymiconfrom the pre-Christian period until the present day the article provides analysis of pre-Christian names and defines semantic and structural models of onyms and their influence on the formation of modern personal names. In the scientific exploration the etymology of Christian personal names, methods of their adaptation and transformation on the Ukrainian ground are determined. The article traces the Old Ruthenian period with identical Slavic names itself and the period of borrowing names from the Orthodox calendar and church calendar, mainly Greek and Hebrew, Latin. The emphasis is put on the period of formation of Ukrainian names system, known as the period of “anthroponymical scissors” as well as on issues of borrowed names transforming in the Ukrainian language system, their correlation of content and form (phonetic, derivational, morphological). The article deals with polyphonic image of the current state of Ukrainian onomasticon. The conclusions assert that the peculiar ethnic colouring is established through semantic, lexical and grammatical transformation of borrowed anthroponyms in the Ukrainian-language names system.