Imiona męskie na pograniczu Mazowsza i Podlasia w inwentarzach z 1621 roku

Abstrakt

The study deals with townsmen’s and peasant’s first names registered in 1621
in the inventories of the estate situated in the borderland between south-eastern Mazovia
and southern Podlasie. A wide range of different ethnic groups and a consequent religious
diversity of the region are reflected in a multitude of Old-Testament and Christian
names linguistically assimilated in the Middle Ages and in the later centuries by the
Roman Catholic Church in Poland – with the phonetic and morphological characteristics
of the Polish language, and, in a different way, by the Orthodox Church – with the
features typical of East Slavonic phonetics and morphology. In the sources studied besides
these two linguistic aspects of names, the commonest first names are also recorded
of the Jewish people living in the region in the 17th century, including Hebrew, biblical
names rooted in onomastic tradition as well as their linguistic continuations in Yiddish.
The anthroponyms found in the manuscripts concern the inhabitants of two
towns, Sokołów and Węgrów, and thirteen villages of the estate. All the lexical material
analyzed includes a total of 122 men’s names given 1770 times, out of which 109 were
used in the towns 1111 times while only 56 were used in the country 659 times. Most
names appear in their basic forms, but all kinds off abbreviations, diminutives and hypocorisms
are abundant as well. Although the source material bears out the fact that
certain names were typpically used either in the towns or in the country, the majority of
them were equally common in both communities. Thus, the commonest men’s names in
the towns were: Jan (239), Matys (173), Stanisław (164), Wojciech (129) and Adam
(89), and in the villages: Jan (105), Maciej/Matys (87), Wojciech (69), Stanisław (62)
and Jędrzej (39).