Anthroponyms in the Novel “Svetoslavich: The Devil’s Foster Child”: A Historical-Linguistic Analysis

The article is devoted to the study of the personal names of the characters in the novel “Svetoslavich: The Devil’s Foster Child” (1835) by the well-known Russian writer of the 19th century Alexander Veltman: Svetoslav, Vladimir and Mokosh. Having noted the writer’s deep interest in history, linguistics, etymology and passion for linguistic experiments, the author of the article formulates the following questions: 1) “Is the use of the anthroponym Svetoslav (Свѣтославъ) with the letter yat (Ѣ) instead of ya (Я) an example of Veltman’s word play or a reflection of the Russian language history fact known to the author?”; 2) “What could be the reason for the spelling of the name Vladimir (Владимиръ) in the novel with the letter i (И) instead of dotted i (I), which contradicts the requirements of the grammars of N. Grech (1827) and A. Vostokov (1831)?”; 3) “Could the use of the word Mokosh (Мокошъ) as a masculine anthroponym be related to the facts of the history of the Russian language, or is this word a neologism invented by Veltman?” The historical-linguistic analysis of anthroponyms is performed using material from various works by the writer, including non-fiction, as well as the texts by other authors, created from ancient times to the year of the novel’s publication. The study uses the data from the Old East Slavic, the Middle Russian and the Main Corpora of the Russian National Corpus. When the Corpus data proves unreliable, the author consults the original printed editions or manuscripts.