Croatian and Ukrainian Anthroponymy

Abstract

In this paper, the Croatian and Ukrainian anthroponymic corpus are compared based on the twenty most common male and female names and surnames. The linguistic and cultural similarities between the Croatian and Ukrainian first name corpus are evidenced in the two most common Croatian and Ukrainian female names are Marija and Ana (Ukrainian Gana). Besides many homonymic or similar sounding modern Croatian and Ukrainian first names, the Croatian and Ukrainian first name corpora also include cognate local and historical forms for the Christian names Josip (Ukr. Osip) and Nikola (Cro. dial. Mikula and Ukr. Mikola). Smaller differences arise from the fact that Croatians are, for the most part, Catholic, while Ukrainians are, for the most part, Orthodox Christian, resulting in a portion of the Christian names used by Ukrainians having been directly borrowed from Greek (e.g., Grigorij), while they entered Croatian through Latin as an intermediary (e.g., Grgur). The most significant differences between the Croatians and Ukrainians lie in the surname corpus in which Croatian surnames originating from first names dominate, while in Ukraine surnames derived from terms for occupations dominate.