Collective Nicknames of the Perm Region Residents

Abstract

The article is the first part of the collaborative work studying Russian collective nicknames of the modern Perm Region. It aims to systematize the materials, analyze regional historiographical heritage and the sources of the studied units, explore the semantic features of collective nicknames in the region. The history of collection, publication, and research of collective nicknames of the Kama River area started in the 19th century when they were first mentioned in ethnographic descriptions. The first list of collective nicknames of more than forty units was published in 1927 by a famous Perm folklorist Valentin N. Serebrennikov. In the late 20th — early 21st centuries, intensive fieldwork of dialectologists, ethnographers and folklorists of Perm universities resulted in collecting a rich scope of materials on local nicknames which paved the way for their scholarly interpretation. The study of collective nicknames of the Kama River area showed their uneven distribution in the region. That was caused by both the specificity of field studies and the peculiarities of the region’s settlement by the Russians. Nowadays, the most numerous data on collective nicknames of the Kama River area are collected on the territory of the old-timers’ subdialects historically linked to the Russian North and in southern territories of later settlement. The authors substantiate that collective nicknames are a valuable source for the study of ethno-cultural specificity of the region. These units reflect different features of territorial groups among the local population: traits of character and behavior, specificity of Perm dialect speech, food preferences, cooking styles and the specificity of traditional costume, occupations, crafts, social status of the residents of various settlements, geographical and climate characteristics of the place, and migration history. Thus, the article shows that the studied anthroponymic units reflect the specificity of local identity and create the unique ethno-linguistic landscape of the Perm Region.