IVASHKA FROM THE 17th CENTURY: REFLECTION OF A PERSON's APPEARANCE IN RUSSIAN BUSINESS WRITTEN RECORDS AND IN THE SYSTEM OF ANTHROPONYMS

Abstract

This article considers the reflection of an outer image of a person in a speech (a text) and in the language system based on material of comparing the data from the Russian business written records of XVI-XVII centuries and the historical processes of anthroponymization. Such characteristics as the color of hair, eyes and a face, the size and the shape of a face and its parts, the body features and other ones have been identified and described. In the group of coloratives we have found a transfer of color adjectives from the sphere of zoonyms characterized as facts of discursive metonymy ( ryzhyi [red], karii [brown], sivyi [gray], etc.), as well as the use of multi-structural adjectival nominations to designate different color shades ( rus [light-brown], belorus [tow-haired], vcherni rus [dark-haired]). This paper studies semantic oppositions in describing the shape of a face ( krugloye [round], prodolgovatoye [long], ploskolitseye [flat-faced]), the shape of a nose ( dolgovat [rather lengthy], korotkonos [short-nosed], ploskonos [flat-nosed]), etc. Lack of some human attributes ( bezborodyi [beardless], goloborodyi [bare-bearded], golousyi [bare-mustached], beznosyi [noseless], bespalyi [fingerless]) also turned out to be expressed in various linguistic units. This comparative analysis of the facts characterizing a person's appearance both in business written records of XVI-XVII centuries and in nicknames’ nominations of the same time period, on the one hand, has demonstrated the use of the same source which is the adjective vocabulary of the Russian language as well as the presence of a common goal expressed in the identification of a person by his appearance. On the other hand, we have found out a noticeable difference in the choice of characteristic features and the linguistic patterns being created: if in the written records the distinctive-feature characteristics of a person are presented by components of predicative combinations ( usom bel [the moustache is white]), then there is an attributive phrase at the beginning of a chain that goes to a surname by passing a nickname phase ( belyi us [white moustache] > belous [white-mustached] > Belous [White-Mustached {a nickname}] > syn Belousov [son of the White-Mustached] > Belousov [Belousov {a surname}]). The discrepancy is in the function of a message (predication) and the function of naming (nomination) which is generally conditional upon different discursive spheres: a business-related sphere and an everyday one.