THE FUNCTIONAL PECULIARITIES OF EPIC ONYMS

Abstract

The relationship between language and culture is diverse and stable. Ethnoculture manifests itself most clearly in language. In this regard of great interest is the onymic vocabulary found in folklore works and epic including. This layer of vocabulary reflects the folk mentality, history, culture, religious views of a nation, as well as its ethnic contacts.

Among the unique monuments of the national culture of the Buryats is the epic Geser, which appeared, according to most researchers, more than two thousand years ago. In the heroic epic, everything is symbolic: nature, time, space, personages, their actions and motifs. Geser's naming system, his antipodes’ names, various mythological names, toponyms are no exception in this respect. Epic proper names, which are sometimes the only witnesses of events of past years, reveal a great semantic potential. The semantic system of the language, which includes onymic vocabulary, contributes precisely to the recreation of the archaic picture of the world, to the identification of the features of the epic consciousness of people in the distant past. All this makes the study of epic onyms actual and appealing.

So the article focuses on the Buryat uligers about Geser which are characterized by numerous names of epic heroes. One of the peculiarities of the eponyms is that they are not one nominative unit, but a verbose hierarchically arranged group of words. The main characters, whose relationships determine the development of the uliger's epic plot, are the main character, his wife or bride (as a rule, there are three of them), his enemies (antipodes) represented by the monsters-Mangadhais, other heroes or khans. The epithetics of their names constitutes a single semantic complex.

The article considers the onyms of the Buryat epic Abai Geser Bogdo khaan written from a well-known Buryat folklore teller (uligershin) Alfor Vasilyev. Special attention is given to the semantics, structure and functional value of epic names – theonyms, the names of Geser, other personages, toponyms.

The ethnolinguistic analysis based on the structural-semantic, etymological methods allowed concluding that the acsiological content of the epic names is revealed in their ability to perform as unique concepts of the national world picture. No doubt proper names have great potential in revealing the value-aesthetic content of the Buryat epic. They represent spatial-temporal landmarks and symbols of historical, cultural, religious, social, interethnic relations of the Buryats with neighboring ethnic groups over the centuries.

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