SINGULARIA TANTUM PLACE-NAMES OF CHERKASY OBLAST

Abstract

The article continues the author's series of publications on Ukrainian regional onomastics. It analyzes the names of settlements in the Cherkasy oblast, which are used in the nominative singular form, traced the formation of place-names from the moment of the first fixation in documents to the present day. The studied material is grouped according to lexical and semantic features, both internal and external, which form the basis of the place-names nomination, where for each class of source propriatives there are their own principles and methods of naming. It is established that this model of place-names is distinctly new and, first of all, is characteristic of administratively independent settlements (small villages, hamlets, etc.). The highest regularity among well-known derivatives is occupied by nominations, motivated by surnames in -sk- / -tsk-. In most cases, these are anthroponyms that indicate a male possessor. A large group consists of place-names, the creative lexical tokens of which are actually Ukrainian anthroponyms with the formant -enk-o, and names of settlements derived from Slavic autochthonous personal names with suffixal morphemes on the consonant -k-. Slavic autochthonous personal names, first of all surnames, generally do not go beyond the standard corpus of personal names and are fixed in anthroponymic dictionaries and historical and statistical sources. Such formations contain an indication both of the direct relation of the delineated microterritory to a specific owner, and of the indirect belonging to a subject (or group of subjects) of a certain denotation. It is proved that the semantic characteristics of appellation and proprial vocabulary differ significantly. It has been found that there are different criteria for semantic analysis for different classes of onyms. The practical value of the article is that the isolated proper names of people from the archaic types of geographical names of Cherkasy oblast added to the all-Slavic anthroponymicon of the studied region. As a result of exploration, the peculiarities of anthroponymy, which was distinguished from archaic place-names types, were established. The declining trend can be traced among the names of settlements that arose as a result of the onimization of female names and surnames.