Some notes on transferring proper names in “Ukrainian orthography” of 2019

Abstract

The article analyzes the state of codification of proper names in the latest edition of the “Ukrainian orthography” (2019). Our task was to identify and analyze the main changes in the spelling rules for personal and geographical names, as well as to pay attention to certain problems in their codification, answering primarily the following questions: what complex issues of the spelling of proper names are not fully resolved or are not reflected in the current spelling and what spelling points require correction or addition? The analysis revealed inconsistencies and sometimes contradictions in some of the recommendations on the spelling of proper names given in the analyzed section of the current “Ukrainian orthography”. In particular, one of the problematic issues is the transmission of non-Ukrainian proper names from Slavonic (primarily closely related) languages into Ukrainian. The issues that should have been reflected in the analyzed section also include the formation and spelling of detoponymic adjectives. In addition to these problematic issues, the study also revealed so-called formal shortcomings in the coverage and presentation of material in the section “Orthography of proper names”, namely: not always clear structure of the section, cumbersome wording of some rules, incorrect use of linguistic terms, etc. There are many comments about the illustrative material: the presence of irrelevant examples for the rules, cases of illustratin different rules with the same example, insufficient or absent examples for some spelling rules. The analysis made it possible to make certain corrections and additions to the current spelling rules, as well as to formulate a number of recommendations for spelling proper names that have not been covered by the spelling rules to date. The recommendations provided in the course of the study will hopefully expand the range of rules presented in the current “Ukrainian orthography” and will contribute to further improvement of the section Spelling of proper names” of the current spelling, which requires further careful study and discussion in a narrow circle of specialists in the theory and practice of teaching orthography. Keywords: orthography, orthography norm, proper names, personal names, geographical names, place names, toponymic adjectives.