Folia onomastica Croatica, No. 8, 1999.
Review article
Russian personal names
Alexandra Superanskaya
Abstract
Many slavists are sure that first Slavonic personal names formed a system consisting
of only one name for a person. Later on a system of two names was
developed. So far as Russian anthroponymies is concerned this theory is not
correct. There is but little information before the 900-th and 1000-th. The earliest
material shows that our ancestors had two names for each person, a given
name and a concealed one. Given names were widely used while concealed
names were known only by a few close relatives of a nominee. There was a
belief that one could cause harm to a person by repeating his name because a
name was regarded as an alter ego of the nominee. At the earliest time both
names, given and hidden, were heathen. After christening one of the names
became Christian the other remaining heathen. Then both names became
Christian.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
180313
URI
Publication date:
26.6.2000.
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