The Name as Immortality: Ibero-Romance Anthroponymy in the Focus of Contemporary Onomastic Studies

The diversity and heterogeneity of onomastic concepts is a driving force behind research into anthroponymy, one of the most important areas of scientific knowledge. The art of studying and describing linguistic and extralinguistic characteristics by systematizing proper names, deserves the attention of linguists, ethnologists, culturologists, cognitive scientists, sociologists and other specialists. The anthroponym is a phenomenal component of the onym, a symbolic and unique construction, which is inextricably linked to a person’s outlook and ethnocultural world view. The proper name, whose functions include identification and differentiation, is a tool for self-understanding and recognizing one’s individuality. Anthroponymy, in turn, has an anthropological, historical, sociological and linguistic dimension and plays an important role in people’s understanding of their past and present. Until early eighties of the 20th century, onomastics was terra incognita for Ibero-Romance researchers, although the concept of anthroponymy was introduced in 1911 by the Portuguese ethnographer J. Leite de Vasconcelos Pereira de Melo, who pointed out that it was essential to study the multifaceted semantic content of Ibero-Romance personal names, patronymics and surnames. The semantics of the anthroponymic model involves cultural and historical characteristics typical of the current period, pinpoints telltale signs that the name bearer belongs to a certain social class, and contains information about local traditions or ideology. With that in mind, Russian and foreign researchers of the 21st century maintain that anthroponymy expands the boundaries of linguistics and has the potential to unite many humanities, as it provides a starting point to analyze particular aspects of various disciplines.