GENERIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BULGARIAN ANTHROPONYMICON AND THE NAME SYSTEM OF ANCIENT ROME OR THE LINK EXISTING BETWEEN BULGARIAN PERSONAL NAMES AND ROMAN GENTILE NAMES

Introduction. The fact that almost all contemporary European countries used to be part of the Roman Empire in the ancient past the question at what extend the culture and the way of living have affected the peoples in the different Provinces arises. Traces are observed in many layers – even in the field of onomastics and the patterns of naming. The purpose of the present paper is to establish the list of Bulgarian personal names derived from a Roman gentile name as well as to classify them in accordance with the basic lexeme, being it an appellative or another onym, used in their formation. An extralinguistic additional classification including information about the excerpted onyms canonization is also prepared. Background and motivations. Most of the Latin names became extremely popular throughout the centuries due to the fact that they became canonized by the Church. As names of saints and martyrs and because of Christianity gaining popularity as a religion a lot of onyms, part of the Roman personal name system, enter other anthroponymicons. But being foreign their meaning in most of the cases remains unclear to the common people even today. Methodology. The main methods used are onomastic data excerption and comparative analysis. The expected results are related to describing the appearance and etymology of the roman gentile names and their equivalents found in contemporary Bulgarian onomastycon.