EXPLORING ANTHROPONYMS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS IN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Maqolada onomastika, xususan, antroponimlar — madaniy qadriyatlar va ijtimoiy tuzilmalarni aks ettiruvchi shaxsiy nomlar o‘rganiladi. Unda turli madaniyatlardagi nomlash an‘analari va ularning shaxsni shakllantirishdagi roli tahlil qilinadi. Nomlash tizimlarini madaniy merosning asosiy elementi sifatida tushunishning muhimligi ta‘kidlangan.

EXPLORING ANTHROPONYMS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS IN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Ismailov Usarjon Usubjonovich PhD, Namangan State Technical University usarjoni@gmail.com

Abstract: The article explores onomastics, particularly anthroponyms—personal names that reflect cultural values and social structures. It analyzes naming traditions across different cultures and their role in identity formation. The importance of understanding naming systems as a key element of cultural heritage is emphasized. Keywords: Onomastics, anthroponyms, toponyms, linguistics, ethnonyms, name, naming, language.

ИЗУЧЕНИЕ АНТРОПОНИМОВ И ИХ ФУНКЦИЙ В ЯЗЫКЕ И КУЛЬТУРЕ

Исмаилов Усаржон Усубжонович PhD, Наманганский государственный технический университет usarjoni@gmail.com

Аннотация: В статье исследуется ономастика, в частности антропонимы — личные имена, отражающие культурные ценности и социальные структуры. Анализируются традиции именования в разных культурах и их роль в формировании идентичности. Подчеркивается важность понимания систем именования как ключевого элемента культурного наследия. Ключевые слова: ономастика, антропонимы, топонимы, лингвистика, этнонимы, имя, имянаречение, язык.

ANTROPONIMLAR VA ULARNING TIL VA MADANIYATDAGI FUNKSIYALARINI O’RGANISH

Ismailov Usarjon Usubjonovich PhD, Namangan davlat texnika universiteti usarjoni@gmail.com

Annotatsiya: Maqolada onomastika, xususan antroponimlar — ijtimoiy va madaniy qadriyatlarni aks ettiruvchi shaxsiy ismlar o‘rganiladi. Turli madaniyatlarda nom berish an’analari va ularning shaxsni shakllantirishidagi roli tahlil qilinadi. Nom berish tizimlarini madaniy merosning muhim elementi sifatida tushunish zarurligi ta'kidlanadi. Kalit so‘zlar: onomastika, antroponimlar, toponimlar, lingvistika, etnonimlar, nom, nomlash, til.

“What is your name?” — This is a question we have asked hundreds of times, often without considering what a name truly means. Why should we think about it if we have a familiar, everyday name? This is why we have grown accustomed to hearing these common names in our daily lives. And what if we got unusual name of a man like names of Native Americans? (Zonta: Sioux: “trusted”, Zitkala: Dakota: “bird”, Yona: Cherokee: “bear”.) That would really make you think. In this case we should focus on onomastics.

The term onomastics derived from Greek “onoma” and it means name. Onomastics is the study of proper names. Also onomastics has several subdivisions such as; anthroponyms referring to personal names, toponyms for place names, ethnonyms referring to nationalities and ethnic groups and glottonyms, referring to languages.

George Redmonds defines names as “…special words that we use to identify a person, an animal, a place or a thing, and they all have a meaning. In many cases that meaning will lie concealed in the name’s his- tory, but in others it will still be transparent.” [6, 2007: IX] Since I am going to talk about names, let’s have a look at anthroponyms. Anthroponomy is derived from Greek “anthropos” — human and “ónyma” – name — branch of onomastics studying anthroponyms. Anthroponyms are personal names, surnames, family names, patronymics, nicknames and alias that one can have. Every nation has its own list of personal names and naming formulas. Every human being has a personal name and as far as the list of names is limited, names come repeatedly and it requires another name to add. Every society has its own touchstone of naming. Permanent formula of naming existed as far back as in ancient Rome, praenomen personal name + nomen generic name+ cognomen nickname later family name +sometimes agnomen additional name, for example: Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus major. In India this formula consists of three or more components, the first for horoscope, second indicates the sex or religion and the third is to indicate caste or nickname. For example the name Rabindranath Tagore has components as follows: Rabindra- God of the Sun, Nath- male and Tagore- the caste of landowners. As you see every society in every time has had its own naming criterion.

Anthroponomy studies the function of anthroponyms in discourse and the information that the personal name can carry. Anthroponyms can change according to the differentiation in bearer’s age, habitat, family status, life style, when the bearer changes his or her religion or joins secret societies et cetera. In a word anthroponyms should have meaning and carry information about the bearer. On the other hand, there could happen contradictions between information and meaning of the name.

William Bright states: “A person may be called by different names at different periods of life, or by different people under changing conditions. Use of certain names under particular circumstances may be forbidden by religious taboo; or then again, such names may be replaced by descriptive nicknames. Because of these factors, it may be difficult for the outside investigator of such a society to determine what a person’s “real” name is, or even what name is commonly used in the community; taboos are likely to be especially strict when one is talking to outsiders.”

Also William Bright states on: “In European societies, as well as China and Japan, every person is assigned a public, legal name, in written form, around the time of birth; part of this usually reflects the child’s father’s name. The individual normally has that same legal name through life—with exceptions, e.g., where married women take on their husband’s family names. In addition, a person may have informal “nicknames” during different parts of life. Sometimes these are used only by close relatives or intimates; in any case, they do not replace the public and legal names.” [1, 2003] But Cecily Clark says that proper names are words without meaning; they make no sense because they have lost their meaning. They are words without connotation and are typically used to refer to individuals. She continues with the explanation that, before a descriptive formation becomes a ‘name’, it must be separated from its etymological meaning “in such a way that the sound-sequence, no matter how complex its structure or plain its surface-meaning, becomes a simple pointer” [4, 2005: 452]. Further examples that Clark mentions are that no one expects to find oxen by the Oxford or that a person named ‘Ginger’ does not necessarily have the hair of the relevant color.

“There is a piece of folklore current among anthropologists regarding the question of whether personal names exist in all societies. So far I have not been able to trace this to a printed source, but it is somewhat as follows: Somewhere in the world there is a society where people live in very small, isolated communities. In such a community, people have no personal names; i.e., individuals have no name which other people use to refer specifically to them. Instead, they are referred to by descriptive expressions, e.g.,’ the blacksmith’ or ‘the man who lives by the stream’. A woman will be referred to as, e.g., ‘the blacksmith’s wife’. Children will be referred to by expressions such as ‘the blacksmith’s elder daughter’; when this daughter gets married, she may be referred to as, e.g., ‘the wife of the man who lives by the stream’. The question arises: Is there such a society? Or more to the point: Is such a society possible?” [2, 2003] William Bright suggests that the apocryphal community he mentioned in which nobody has a personal name and people are referred to only by ad-hoc descriptions does not exist. He suggests that any anthropologist who might have reported such a community was misled by the operation of taboos on uttering personal names. Also he suggests, in fact, that the use of personal names, having varying levels of descriptiveness, is a sociolinguistic universal of the human species. Further he says: “Of course, I will be glad if any colleague can provide evidence to prove me wrong. However, the concept of “descriptiveness” must itself be discussed, and I will do this in the following section, in relation to place names.” [3,2003] Concerning to place names and their descriptiveness Bright says that in many parts of the world, some place names have no etymologies that we can discover, e.g., European names like Rome, Paris, and London. It is possible that these were once descriptive expressions in European languages, but they became eroded, phonetically and semantically, so that their origins were no longer apparent. It is also possible that these names were borrowed in ancient times from other languages, of which we have imperfect knowledge, such as Etruscan in Italy or Gaulish in France, and this is why we do not understand their original meaning. Other American place names do not have clear etymologies in English, but this is because they were borrowed from American Indian languages, in which they were descriptive formations. Examples are Massachusetts, meaning‘big hill’, and Connecticut, meaning‘Long River’, both from an Algonquian language.

As to Uzbek names I could say that they are fully descriptive except for those which were borrowed from Arabic. For example: Oygul- female name, which means, Oy-moon and gul- flower, meaning – Moon flower or Gulchehra –female name, which means, Gul- flower and chehra- face, meaning - Flower face(d), Guzal –beautiful, Yulduz –star, Malika –princess. Bakhtiyor- male name, meaning happy, Kahramon - hero, Jasur – brave, Aziz – dear and so on. Uzbek names have endings like: - jon, - bek, - khon and – ali. For example: Azizjon, Azizbek or Azizkhon. And these endings depend not on how the name sounds, but on common ancestry. There are some categories of Uzbek names which are depend on the moral state of a family at the moment of naming. For example: Ozodbek – male name, Ozod – free, bek – denotes the ancestry, meaning – free (man). Why does a family choose this name for a child? It is because at around the moment of birth one of the parents or relatives was sent to a jail. Yodgor – male name that means a memory of some- body, Umid – male and Umida – female name that mean hope of something and so on. I think that the naming of a child depends on a family environment. Some families name a child after their ancestor, some families after famous people in history and some families just after movie stars.

There are lots of Arabic names in the list of Uzbek names, for example: Muhammad, Mohammed – The name of the last Islamic Prophet. Ahmed, Abdulla, Karim, Sharif, Umar, Malik thus we can count on a huge number of Arabic names. So that sometimes we need to look through the dictionary to define the meaning of the name. There are also international names in the list of Uzbek names like Ibrahim (arabic) – Abraham(eng) – Авраам(rus).

And what about surnames we live by? The socialistic régime brought to Uzbekistan a new formula of naming with Russian endings in patronymics and surnames, for example in Russian: masculine, Ivanov (surname) Sergey (name) Petrovich (patronymic). Feminine, Ivanova (surname) Olga (name) Petrovna (patronymic). In Uzbek: masculine, Umarov (surname) Bakhtiyor (name) Karimovich (patronymic). Feminine, Umarova (surname) Umida (name) Karimovna (patronymic). In Arabic, Ahmed ibn Abdallah.

As you see there is no difference between Russian and Uzbek endings. So what these endings really mean? The endings – ov, -ova mean belongingness and answer the question “Whose?” “Ivan’s”. The endings – vich and – vna mean a name derived from the name of a father, typically by the addition of a suffix. For example: Tsar (king or monarch), and the son of tsar is tsareevich, Sergey Petrovich means Sergey the son of Petr and of course in Russian only not in Uzbek. In Uzbek these endings don’t make a sense.

Hereby I would like to restate Cecily Clark. She says that proper names are words without meaning; they make no sense because they have lost their meaning. They are words without connotation and are typically used to refer to individuals. She continues with the explanation that, before a descriptive formation becomes a ‘name’, it must be separated from its etymological meaning “in such a way that the sound sequence, no matter how complex its structure or plain its surface-meaning, becomes a simple pointer” [5, 2005: p.452].

After gaining the independence there occurred just partly changing in Uzbek naming. The Russian endings – vich and – ovna in patronymic were changed to – o’g’li (the son of) for male and – qizi (the daughter of) for female, but the endings – ov and – ova in surnames are still remaining.

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that when a country has its own official language and alphabet, it must also establish its own naming rules. Names are integral elements of any language, reflecting not only the literary and cultural wealth of a nation, but also being evidence of its historical heritage for the whole world. Therefore, the creation of a unique and consistent naming system is a vital step in preserving and demonstrating the identity of the nation.