Age conditionality of self-nominations on the Internet (based on the German-speaking Internet-user nicknames)

The focus of the present article is the person's name (anthroponym) in the German-speaking Internet-space, in particular in such services as Facebook, Twitter, ICQ, Flickr, World of Tanks, World of Warcraft, chats. So-called nicknames fulfill the function of the informal Internet-anthroponyms. The data for the study is 5,000 nicknames of the German-speaking Internet-users of the above-mentioned services and their personal metadata obtained with the help of online and direct questioning among informants in Germany. Nickname-creating is a unique and difficult psycholinguistic phenomenon, because in this case we talk about the mechanism of self-nomination: unlike in real life, Internet-users give names to them by their own. Self-nomination in the Internet-space is performed using one type of nicknames: autonym-nickname (based on real anthroponyms of a communicant), pseudonym-nickname (formed from common nouns or "others'" proper names) or nickname of a transitional type (combines user's real name with appellative lexemes or "others'" proper names). Self-nominative models using one of nickname types have a number of specific features related to the characteristics of their motivation, formation, meanings, graphic design and degree of anonymity. Such a nickname is not only a unique unit of language, but also the projection and reflection of the human self-appraisal, social and territorial characteristics. The nickname is a significant carrier of extralinguistic information about its author. Extralinguistic analysis of nicknames has shown that different user's social and territorial attributes are reflected on both the level of self-nominative content and form. The aim of the article is to study nicknames from the age-conditioning position, which allows to reveal some typical self-nominative features of people of different stages of ontogenetic development. As of today, the author is not aware of similar anthroponymic research made in the age aspect. Thus, the age features of virtual self-nominations for the first time were the subject of a separate, independent study. Teenage nicknames (people aged 12-17) are typified easier than other usernames; they are emotional, sexocentric. Teenagers' self-nominations are based equally on autonym-nicknames and on pseudonym-nicknames. Their specific features include frequent changes of username, abundance of identical or similar nicknames, abuse of graphic means. A relevant feature of youth nicknaming (people aged 18-30) is the game character of the language use. People of this generation prefer to have pseudonym-nicknames or nicknames of a transitional type which are often humorous in nature or are provided with additional meanings. Many self-nominations of the young are created from colloquial and (or) English-language lexemes. Nicknames of mature (30-49 y.o.) and elderly (over 50 y.o.) people are the most deanonymized and are presented in various forms of real personal names. Thus, most of the nicknames in the German-speaking Internet-space allow making very reliable predictions and assumptions about the age of the virtual conversation partner even at the pre-communicative phase, which confirms the possibility and importance of age-related research within the framework of modern anthroponomy.

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