Volumen 72 (2021): Heft 1 (June 2021)

The article summarizes the basic principles of Blanár’s conception of the theoretical study of the nature of proper names. The principles are as follows: functionality, structure of the system, applications of the dimensions of location, time and extension, creation based on nomination models. Propria exist to support and facilitate communication. Theoretical studies reflect this fact through a strong social perspective.

The subject of the author’s analysis is the German version of Blanár’s monograph Teória vlastného mena (Theory of proper name), published under the same German title Theorie des Eigennamens by the renowned Georg Olms Verlag in 2001. Against the background of Vincent Blanár’s comprehensive scholarly profile, the author presents the overall characteristics of the German version of the work and pays special attention to the analysis of differences between the original and the translated form of the text. With these changes, Vincent Blanár purposefully adapted the translated text to the German reader.

The author asked the question of how the vertical and horizontal orientation of man manifests itself in his linguistic world. He follows the interpretations of the philosopher P. Sloterdijk and accepts the thesis that man’s activities are governed by his vertical and horizontal needs. He emphasizes that one experiences a vertical need as a need to have access to objective truth as well as a paradigmatic need, that is, the need to discover a pattern for one’s own behavior and action. In contrast, horizontal needs motivate him to concentrate on his own self-realization potential. He then develops the idea that a person also in the language modality has both horizontal and vertical needs and demonstrates how these needs manifest themselves in language communication and then in naming units with special regard to proper names. The interpretation of language communication and naming units from the perspective of these needs led the author to conclude that the fundamental governing factor of language use is the truth.

Up to now, proper names are mainly seen as linguistic signs with some special systemic features. This paper wants to show that there are other possibilities to approach the theory of names. They can be seen as symbols used in a speech act, which means that every utterance of a name represents a single speech act of namegiving, even with those names, which are already known by the partners of communication. A name is what is accepted as a name in a language community. This tautology is not just a word game, but situates a proper name in the system of speech acts at the moment of communication.

The aim of this paper is to draw attention to some current trends in the world, which researchers studying the theory of proper name and the concept of the proprial sphere of language deal with, and thus encourage their greater resonance in Slavic onomastic discourse. The works and concepts of Willy Van Langendonck, Richard Coates, Grant Smith, Kerstin Jonasson, Yolanda Guillermina López Franco, Klaas Willems, Ernst Hansack, Erika Windberger-Heidenkummer and Silvio Brendler are presented. The article thus follows on Blanár’s text Poznámky k onomastickým koncepciám [Notes on Onomastic Concepts] (Blanár, 2009a), in which the author gives an overview of several current onomastic theories.

Greater consideration of the findings of both the scholars mentioned in this paper and other representatives of theoretically oriented onomastics, general linguistics and philosophy of language can significantly stimulate the further development of Slavic onomastics and, at the same time, contribute to the elimination of some inappropriate approaches that are currently encountered and that are mentioned at the end of the article.

According to the principles of standardization of anoikonyms (minor place-names) and following the rules of Slovak orthography, the appellative expressing the type of a certain object is written with a small initial letter if it is not part of the name and stands before the name. This rule generally applies to all proper names. However, in some cases this appellative is understood as part of the name and it therefore tends to be written also with a capital initial letter. The paper deals with explanation of differences between the appellative member, the appellative component of a proper name, which is part of a proper name, and the information about a proper name in the form of an appellative, which is part of the onymic content of a proper name, but which is not part of a proper name. The author explains this problem on the basis of V. Blanár’s theory, which is based on the content understanding (designation) of proper names and on the interrelatedness of linguistic and onomastic status of the proper name and on the using of proper names in communication. In Czech onomastics, R. Šrámek holds similar theoretical bases.

The paper explores deonymic nomination, i.e. the formation of appellatives (eponyms) from proper names. By an eponym, any type of non-onymic unit formed from proper name is understood. The analysis is conducted using a database of 1,250 eponyms from Slovník slovenských eponym (Dictionary of Slovak Eponyms; Ološtiak et al., 2018) and a theory of lexical motivation as a methodological background is applied. From this viewpoint, formation of eponyms can be characterized as the loss of onymic motivation (onymic demotivation) and at the same time the acquisition of another type of motivation depending on the type of word-formation process (in a broader sense). In this regard, a word-formation process is understood as any way of coining a new lexeme (one-word unit, multiword expression, new meaning, abbreviation, borrowing etc.). Eponyms are frequently coined by derivation (word-formation motivation, e.g. Albert ‘Albert County (Canada)’ → albertit ‘albertite’, Heine → heineovský ‘of or relating to H. Heine’) and by semantic shift with no part-of-speech change (semantic motivation, e.g. Pascal → pascal). Other processes are rare: part-of-speech change with no shift in morphemics (morphological motivation, e.g. Ježiš (noun) ‘Jesus’→ ježiš (interjection) ‘Jesus, an expression of emotion – surprise, anger, shock etc.’), abbreviation (abbreviation motivation, e.g. Mikojan + Gurevič → mig ‘a military aircraft’). In Slovak, most of the eponyms are loanwords (97.4%), thus, a special position is occupied by interlingual motivation.

In our article, we present a few discussion notes on the current processing and standardization of Slovak onomastic terminology. In our opinion, proprialization is not only a word-formation process, but primarily the functional one. The function of the word, that is seen as the first within the process of proprialization, is being changed too. Due to this fact, the formal part of the proper name is recognized as secondary. Furthermore, we think that even the process of transonymization – from functional, not formal approach – can be accepted in its wider understanding. It can be defined as transfer of proper name motivation from one object to another regardless of any formal criterion. What is more, this transfer is possible even within the same onymic class. The transfer could be accompanied with a change in the formal structure or grammatical meaning of the new proper name; because not just the form of the proper name (or the part of the form) is transferred to another object, but also its function, ability to be an “individual and specific name” for another object. But the process of transonymization itself requires transfer of the proper name from one denotatum to another. Thatʼs why we do not recognise any formation of the name variants for the same object as the process of transonymization.

The contribution focuses on the use and collocation analysis of basic notions linked to the field of onomastics, including those that are specialized (e.g., “proprium”, “anthroponym”, “toponym”, “chrematonym”, etc.) and the ones that are commonly used (e.g., “proper name/naming”). In the latter case, attention will be paid to whether these terms are connected to onomastic contexts. In general, the research analyses sources where the lemmata are used, including their typical surroundings. The goal of the paper is to show how the public perceives onomastics, whether it is familiar with its key terms. The analysis is based on the data of the Czech National Corpus, version 8, opinion-journalism texts.

The paper deals with the visual representation of official and non-official proper names in a bilingual onymic landscape. The onymic landscape consists of official and non-official proper names located on nameplates, inscriptions in public spaces, various areas and extralingual signs that point to their names. Research into the visual representation of proper names is a relatively new area of socioonomastics. The onymic landscape changes dynamically depending on the time, region and socio-cultural dimension; the state, local governments, business and civil spheres participate in its creation. The state regulates the use of official proper names through language policy and also influences their visualization. In addition to official forms, non-official forms of proper names appear in the onymic landscape. In a bilingual onymic landscape, proper names are visualized not only in the state language but also in the language of the minority, resp. another foreign language. The author examines the bilingual anthroponymic, toponymic and chrematonymic landscape of Slovak-Hungarian bilingual municipalities in Southern Slovakia.

The study follows the development of naming women with names used in public during the period before surnames were introduced by law (i.e. before 1786). The analysis of anthroponyms proved that naming women reflects their social status. Daughters were most frequently identified by their first names and by their relations to their fathers, as well as wives and widows were most frequently identified by their first names and by their relations to their husbands. Naming units of a descriptive nature have originated in this way, with a tendency towards simplification during further development, e.g., Anna manželka Matěje Jírova … Anna Matěje Jíry … Anna Jírova (these are several stages of naming a person referred to as “Ann, the wife of Matěj Jíra”). Wealthy widows or wives of a more prominent social status than their husbands had the same complementary anthroponyms as men (Anna mlynářka skalická – “Ann, the miller of Skalice”) and their children or husbands were often referred to in the way the particular women were, e.g., Martin Evka (derived from Eva), Ondřejovi, Kateřininému synu (“to Andrew, the son of Catherine”). These facts prove that the way of naming women with names used in public was primarily determined by their social status, rather than by the gender.

The aim of this paper is to extend the model theory and the modeling of onymic signs by V. Blanár by a new pragmatic-communicative dimension. The central motive of the paper is the possibilities and limits of use of personal names in dialogic communication from the perspective of the speaker, and taking into account the addressee who, being a semantic-pragmatic and communication partner/interlocutor of the speaker, receives the locutionary and illocutionary components of discourse, addresses the meaning the speaker attributed to the generated oral discourse, and analyzes the pragmatically charged knowledge that has been transmitted/received during the interaction processes. The author will focus on the functional availability of anthroponyms in the locutionary and non-locutionary intersubjectivity. Both happen on the speaker – addressee axis, with the anthroponyms (i) identifying the speaker and/or (ii) identifying or contacting the addressee in the locutionary intersubjectivity, and indicating another bearer in the non-locutionary intersubjectivity. The identity of the bearer is either confirmed or contradicted by the speaker. Through the using of his/her proper name, the speaker also signals whether or not the bearer of the name belongs to his/her personal sphere. Using concrete language material, the author intends to verify the applicability of anthroponyms with regard to the communication flexibility of the speaker, respect for the rules of cultural partnership in communication and some leeway in the knowledge requirements and expectations toward the addressee, since cooperation and courtesy involving empathy, respect, tactfulness and solidarity are the presumed components of verbal behaviour of both interlocutors.

This work explores the possibility of first names as a complex phenomenon in which not only language, but society and culture are involved. Given names are a category of the natural languages in which different facets of human beings as sociocultural subjects are intertwined. Not only do such names belong to the language they are expressed in but also, they integrate their bearers into the social and cultural structure of their communities. By understanding speakers as ongoing members of different groups within the community and by integrating their interaction as well as the symbolic constructions that emerge from such interaction, the category can be conceived as the result of a dynamic relation between a set of inseparable heterogeneous elements. Hence, language in use, society and culture cannot be isolated or considered separately as they all become the category. Because of this, both the process of name-giving (which first names come to be used by) and the changing repertory resulting from such a process becomes of great relevance to this endeavour. Taking these into consideration, a model of a complex adaptive system will be presented to propose the category of first name as its emergent property.

The issue of transcribing proper names from foreign languages into Slovak has received constant attention in Slovak linguistics. The article brings the opposite view. It is devoted to the issue of transcribing surnames from Slovak into English. The starting point of the analysis is the Database of surnames in the United States of America. The article focuses mainly on the adaptation and variability of transcription of surnames with accented letters.

In my paper I would like to analyze two sections of space: natural and cultural landscape (in terms of historical geography) and their reflection in the toponymic landscape. The greater focus will be on those elements of the natural landscape (the shape of the surface, soil, flora, fauna) and cultural landscape (forms and types of settlements, defense system, administrative divisions and borders, economic organization and trade, ownership, communication and roads), which were most often recorded and most frequently used in Polish oikonymy over the centuries.

The article is an attempt to employ the lexical-semantic reconstruction by Professor Vincent Blanár, whose 100th birthday the authors commemorate, to help us understand the cultural legacy of the past. The core of the text is a retrospective view of the names of areas with occurrence of Pre-Slavic material culture and an attempt to identify the motivating lexical units of the oronyms Háj and their derivatives from the territory of today’s Slovakia by means of interconnected knowledge from the fields of linguistics and archaeology. Proper names such as Háj/Háje occurred as late as in Slavic cultural and linguistic environment; however, material evidence at places with such names suggests presence of an older culture, i. e., settlement by population of a different cultural, social or linguistic provenance. In this study, the lexical-semantic reconstruction of the common noun háj in its original meaning as the motivating linguistic unit for oronyms such as Háj and their derivatives is reflected in the mirror of archaeological research. In connection with the sites named Háj/Háje in the regions of Gemer, Malohont, Novohrad or Hont in the south of Central Slovakia, the authors state that from the aspect of archaeology, they are at least remarkable places of the cultural landscape in which we can expect finds from various stages of prehistory and protohistory. The authors also emphasize that in the studied cases, this is not an absolute rule; it is rather a distinct signal of occurrence of archaeological finds.

Today, Žitný ostrov is a bilingual Slovak-Hungarian territory along the river Danube and the Little Danube, and since the 10^th century it has been formed as a multi-ethnic space. The recently completed diachronic research on hydronymy in this area has created the conditions for a more comprehensive study of the dynamics of ethnic relations in the oikonymy of the region. The article presents an analysis of medieval oikonyms, documented from the beginning of the 12^th century. It brings a linguistic reconstruction of originally Slavic names, adopted and adapted by the Hungarian and occasionally also by the German ethnic population, and an analysis of original Hungarian and German oikonyms. The presented results specify i) the knowledge of the development of demographics of the area, ii) the extent of foreign ethnic interventions in the onymic system, iii) ethnic and interlingual relations, iv) the mode of interlingual adaptation of older oikonyms (Slovak – Hungarian, Slovak – German, Hungarian – German, German – Slovak, and finally Hungarian – Slovak), and v) the extent and forms of coexistence of Slovak, Hungarian and German oikonyms in the Middle Ages with an overlap to the present.

The characteristics of linguistic landscape are significantly impacted by the legal status of a language in question. Not all Slovak settlements in Hungary equally exploit the opportunities provided by law. Public space is a constantly transforming phenomenon which is in continuous motion; therefore, research in linguistic landscape always reflects a certain state or moment. Signboards and street signs appearing in the public space, the objects of our study, reveal a great deal of the linguistic dominance of a particular milieu, Piliscsév in this case. In case of bilingual street names, the most dominant practice is the Hungarian-Slovak bilingualism; thus, in most cases Hungarian signs are determining. Concerning the visual representation of street signs in Piliscsév, we have observed an interesting phenomenon which is unique and untraditional in the Slovak community in Hungary. The visual presence of Slovak language in street names indicates not only the representation of the ethnic language but also the local and ethnic bonds of the town.

The names in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost present a delightful linguistic mix. The names of major characters are Anglicized names of actual French nobles, which emphasizes the thematic parallelism of historical and fictive events. Other names broaden the international landscape, including Nathaniel, a biblical association, Forester (which is French as well as English), and Armado, a Spanish tag. The length of this paper does not allow room to describe many names in detail. However, the cross-cultural puns make this play especially interesting; e.g., Moth has at least two meanings in English, but pronounced mot in French means ‘word,’ ‘remark,’ ‘cue,’ or ‘answer to a riddle’ – which points most clearly to a thematic meaning. A full analysis of this play will appear soon in my book Names as Metaphors in Shakespeare’s Comedies (Vernon Press).

The study, dedicated to the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Vincent Blanár, offers a comparative Czech-Slovak view of the lexeme brother (Czech bratr – Slovak brat) in its paradigmatic relations. The analysis is based on a specific textual basis, the novel Bratrstvo (Brotherhood) by the Czech writer Alois Jirásek. The starting point of the comparison is the Czech original and two Slovak translations of this literary text, which shows a remarkably wide range of semantic concretizations of the polysemic word brother. In the Czech-Slovak comparison, various morphosyntactic, lexical-semantic, derivational and collocational differences appear. In a comparative view, the sphere of addressing is particularly interesting.

The paper aims to explain the origin of the long é in the Slovak word dcéra ‘daughter’, which is the only word of the original lexical layer that has a long é in its root. Its length is difficult to explain by comparative Slavic accentology since relevant languages generally show a short vowel in this position. Another peculiarity of this word is the fact that é did not undergo the Central Slovak diphthongization that otherwise regularly occurs after c. The author offers a solution in the cultural influence of Czech, which Slovaks had been using as a written language for centuries. It is argued that the original Common Slavic word *dъťi had been lost in Slovak and replaced by a word *děvъka, while dcera was introduced into the Slovak vernacular through Czech religious texts. The initial Czech graphic cluster dc- had been realized as a geminated [cː] by Slovak priests, the pronunciation of which was interpreted as compensatory lengthening of the following vowel, and this length was subsequently phonologized. The lengthening of e and consequent phonologization could be linked to the spread of Czech printed books, so it must be posterior to the Central Slovak diphthongization.