The project of ''The Dictionary of Tomsk Region Surnames of 17th - early 18th Centuries (based on Siberian business letters)''

The paper describes the project of ''The Dictionary of Tomsk Region Surnames of 17th - early 18th Centuries'' which is being compiled from the data of business letters of Western Siberia. The main aim of the paper is to describe the principles of compiling such a dictionary, and to present an extract from it. This dictionary will contribute to the development of historical anthroponymy with its global aim to study the history of all Russian surnames, which is only achievable provided that all regional anthroponym systems of different periods are described. Lexicography of anthroponyms is complicated because there are no unified criteria of compiling onomasticons. Therefore, the main purpose of the paper is to elaborate these criteria relying on the existing dictionaries of this kind. A dictionary entry contains eight elements: the surname, the given name, the patronymic, the profession or social status reference, ancestry information, the context, the name of the burg and the date when this anthroponym was recorded, the surname's etymology. Whether these elements are present or not, depends on the source type. The surnames are given alphabetically with account of modern spelling. Variants of surnames as well as identical surnames with different names are given in separate entries since ancestry data are included in the dictionary. The surname etymology is represented in the first dictionary entry. The purpose of the dictionary is to arrange the full list of surnames (family soubriquets) of Tomsk Region inhabitants in the 17th - early 18th centuries and to demonstrate the peculiarities of Russian surnames in the region under study in the period of their formation. These peculiarities are of a linguistic kind, but they belong to the historical and cultural sphere, too: profession, occupation, place of previous residence, person himself, evaluation of his physical and moral state, etc. To define surname etymology it is necessary to specify whether it derives from a name or a nickname. Those based on names could derive from Christian names in their official or spoken forms. Nickname-based surnames could originate from Old Russian names or nicknames formed from appellatives. Depending on a surname stem, different types of dictionaries have been used: the etymology of name-based surnames has been defined by using Russian personal names dictionaries; the etymology of nickname-based surnames has been identified with the help of defining or dialect dictionaries. For example, surnames Alexandrov, Lavrov derive from Greek names Alexander, Lavr (Lauros); surnames Argunov, Baborykin, Serebrenik derive from nicknames Argun (a dialect word meaning ''carpenter''), Baboryka (a word which sometimes meant ''a fish with a big head''), Serebrenik (a word meaning 'silversmith'') and their corresponding appellatives. Surnames Barabanov, Bobylev, Bolsheninov derived from Old Russian personal names Baraban, Bobyl, Bolshoy. The paper totals 22 dictionary entries as examples.

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