Name Day in Bulgaria in the Light of Ecclesiastical and Secular Practice

Abstract

This article presents an ethnolinguistic analysis of the phenomenon of Bulgarian name days, which are experiencing a remarkable boom in the twenty-first century, supported by the mass media and the Internet. The article examines the origins of this holiday (family and ancestral ritual complexes dedicated to the patron saint, personal vows), characterises the ritualism of name days, timed to the dates of the church calendar in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The author also considers their modern state. The peculiarities of the Bulgarian name days and their differences from the Russian ones are described in detail: Bulgarians celebrate the name itself, there is no notion of an angel’s day, name days are celebrated not only on saints’ days, but also on major and minor church feasts. The peculiarities of the name day in Bulgaria are closely connected with the practice of naming, baptism and the specifity of the system of personal names. The transmission of the ancestral link through the repetition (“renewal”) of the name of older relatives (or its letter, syllable) for the name of grandchildren supports the idea of a family celebration and often dictates the choice of the name day. However, since a grandfather’s or grandmother’s name is changed according to fashion, parental preferences and other circumstances, there are variants of a different name day. In addition, the Bulgarian list of names is an open system, constantly replenished with neo-anthroponyms and loans, most of which are not represented in the church calendar but are used as baptismal names. The principles of the “selection” of the name day include the restoration of the original canonical name, the translation of borrowed names into Bulgarian, the interpretation of the semantics of the holiday, its epithets and the folk chrononym in order to find a connection with the anthroponym. The religious component of the name day is gradually receding into the background, leaving behind a predominantly secular celebration.

Keywords

• антропоним
• имянаречение
• именослов
• народная религиозность
• крестины
• церковные праздники
• болгарская традиционная культура