Русский Иван и его «ьратья»: польск. Jan и фр. Jean (К вопросу о этнокультурной специфике личного имени)
Russian Ivan and His “Brothers”: Polish Jan and French Jean (On Ethno-Cultural Meaning of Personal Names)

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the Russian personal name Ivan in comparison with Polish Jan and French Jean. Based on an analysis of secondary appellative derivatives of these names in the Russian, Polish (including Kashubian) and French (including Occitan) dialects and colloquial languages, the authors reconstruct the ethno-cultural portraits of prototypical bearers of these names in corresponding languages. The analysis shows that the Russian Ivan, whose name often serves as a symbol of “russianess”, has very few specific features as compared to his French and Polish “brothers”. This conclusion leads to the question on ethnolinguistic mechanisms of derivation from personal names which, in the perspective of the contrastive study of deonyms, seem to be relatively universal.

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