Russian surnames as an object of linguistic culturography

The article considers Russian surnames as an object of linguistic culturography, which is a linguoculturological branch of modern lexicography. This branch supposes a combination of the linguistic data with the information about cultural realia which are represented by language units. The linguoculturological potential of surname dictionaries is confirmed by their focus on the recreation of the underlying, prototypal notions and images connected with one anthroponym or another. Herewith, arguments are given for the need in the elaboration of specific methods which will allow revealing and representing historical and cultural data translated by surnames. The reason of the difficulty of the linguistic culturographic description of surnames is connected with the diversity of types and ways of explicating extralinguistic information in the surname structure. Among them, the motivating basis of surnames, their inner form, is acknowledged to be the most valuable source of historical and cultural data. In modern linguistics this inner form is considered to be the expression of the language national specificity, certain view of the world characteristic for a nation. The article describes one of the methods of explication of historical and cultural data which are translated via different semantic components of surname stems - the semantic-motivational analysis of anthroponyms. Its theoretical and methodological basis is the idea that there is a system of derivative relations in the language and there is a connection between the repeated use of one and the same sign in nomination and the sphere of ethno-cultural values. The conclusions made with this method are taken into account when writing dictionary entries for The Linguoculturological Dictionary of Russian Surnames which is designed on the basis of the formal written language of the Kolyvan-Voskresensk mining district of the end of the 18th century. A special poly-aspect structure was created in order to most fully reflect the extralinguistic potential of the surnames studied. Aside from the headword, a dictionary entry contains: - a historical regional information block which allows revealing the socio-cultural background of the surname being; - an etymological block which introduces ethnographic and historical information; - a linguoculturological block which contains conclusions about the productivity, axiological significance, hypothetical ethno-cultural reasons of the vocabulary usage with one meaning or another in surname nomination. The article presents samples of certain dictionary entries as an example of linguistic culturography description of Russian surnames of the Kolyvan-Voskresensk mining district residents of the end of the 18th century.

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