ONOMASTIC CODE IN DYSTOPIAN NOVELS BY RUSSIAN WRITERS

Abstract

We present the history of the emergence and development of literary onomastics, the relevance of which is currently not in doubt due to the involvement of its data for the analysis of the artistic world of different authors as linguists and literary critics. The aim of the study is to acquaint readers with those works in which reflections on the function of the proper noun in fiction can be considered as prerequisites for the emergence of onomastics. An important role in the development of science about the proper noun not only scientists, but also critics, writers and journalists, for example, V.G. Belinsky, N.S. Leskov, O.I. Senkovsky. Despite the initial interest of researchers to the etymological meaning of a literary name, in onomastic works middle of 20th century lighting find such problems, as reflected in the anthroponyms of the essential characteristics of the literary character, stylistic conformity onomastic units, social conditionality of name, etc. We point out the primary importance in the problems development of the new branch of linguistics for the 1950s of the works of such scientists as V.N. Mikhailov, R.P. Shaginyan, E.P. Magazanik, D.S. Likhachev. In conclusion we note the modern Voronezh onomastic school research specificity, founded by G.F. Kovalev, the successor of the already classical traditions of Russian onomastics. Surnames came late in human history to the world at large. They did not exist before the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Russia is no exception. In fact the very word for “surname” in Russian, familija, was borrowed from the West only in the seventeenth century, and a lot of Russian peasants did not have surnames right up to the day of the emancipation of serfs in 1861.[i] As you would expect, the upper aristocracy was the first social class to adopt surnames. They were based, for the most part on toponyms (place names). In other words, a prince whose domain encompassed the Vjaz’ma area became Prince Vjazemskij (most of these earliest surnames have adjectival type endings in -skij or –skoj). Among other names in this category are Obolenskij, Volkonskij, Trubetskoj, Meshcherskij, Kurbskij (Unbegaun intro, p. 20). To this very day Russians recognize these names as indicative of the origins of a person at the highest levels of the aristocracy in pre-Soviet Russia. It is noteworthy that two members of the Decembrists, who, in 1825, mounted an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government and introduce liberal reforms inspired by the West, were Prince Evgenij Obolenskij and Prince S.P. Trubetskoj.