NOMEN EST OMEN

Abstract

The problem of naming tradition in cross-cultural situations, caused by extensions of international matrimonies, is quite a new phenomenon. Earlier, it was prohibited due to cultural norms, cultural patterns, which controlled everything. It makes us realize, that our life, thanks to the process of globalization, is full of borderline's phenomena, which become not an exception, but a rule, because the clash of cultures is happening every second and makes us to think comprehensively. We endeavour to rethink all notions about the world and reality, this leads us in turn to use interdisciplinary methods, and bring together knowledge from different fields - in the case of this article, from linguistics, anthropology and philosophy. To observe the name, the anthroponym as a cultural code, people build up new ways of communication, overcoming their customs, traditions, national cultures for finding a path to the Other, and establishing meaningful relationships. That's the only one guarantee for saving our world.

Headnote

Abstract: The problem of naming tradition in cross-cultural situations, caused by extensions of international matrimonies, is quite a new phenomenon. Earlier, it was prohibited due to cultural norms, cultural patterns, which controlled everything. It makes us realize, that our life, thanks to the process of globalization, is full of borderline's phenomena, which become not an exception, but a rule, because the clash of cultures is happening every second and makes us to think comprehensively. We endeavour to rethink all notions about the world and reality, this leads us in turn to use interdisciplinary methods, and bring together knowledge from different fields - in the case of this article, from linguistics, anthropology and philosophy. To observe the name, the anthroponym as a cultural code, people build up new ways of communication, overcoming their customs, traditions, national cultures for finding a path to the Other, and establishing meaningful relationships. That's the only one guarantee for saving our world.

Keywords: tradition, international matrimonies, cultural code, identity, onomastics, communication, national culture, Other.

«And what is the name?

The name - is an appellation. A person. A distinction»1

Merab Mamardashvili

Introduction

Cultural phenomena, their conditions and crises, were deeply analyzed by J. Ortega y Gasset:

Culture grows from the subjects' life roots and it is - I repeat it again intentionally - a life sensu stricto, it is spontaneity, „subjectivity". Little by little sciences, ethics, arts, religion, juridical norms lost contact with the subject and gained their own solidity, independent signification, reputation, authority. That moment is coming, when the all-creating life itself bows down before its creations, obeys and serves them. The culture is objectified, it has put itself against that subjectivity, which gave it a life. Object - objectum, Gegen-stand - means exactly standing-against, that is confirmed independently and standing before the subject as his law, rule, which drives him. In this point of movement culture triumphs. But this life confrontation, this distance to the subject, must be kept within certain limits. Culture is alive while getting an influx of life from the subject. When an influx is broken, culture becomes estranged, and dry, just becoming a religious rite. Culture has its own birth hour and priesthood time, a lyrical hour and an hour when ossification begins, the hour of completion. In the era of reform, we need to deny our confidence in a completed culture and we need to promote a nascent culture. It means that imperatives of culture are put off, and imperatives of life become dominant. Fidelity, spontaneity, vitality - against culture2.

At the beginning of the XXIth century, the distance between person and culture becomes on one hand much shorter, and on the other hand much longer than it ever was, thanks to technological circumstances. Shorter - due to information, which is available from everywhere, and according to semiotic theories about cultures, all of them are built up from it. Longer - because of people, who lose a lot of knowledge parts in this «information torrent». We are also living in the era of reforms. That causes the birth of a new outlook toward everything in our life and new attempts to interpret our customs. During this action we can notice a lot of borderline phenomena that need new approaches for understanding.

The phenomenon of cultural code

The notion of «cultural code» was invented by Roland Barthes, who was a French literary theorist, philosopher and semiotician, in his work «S/Z». He defined cultural code as a citation from any kind of knowledge's type, like a «voice of knowledge»3, it has an authority, because it was "created" by a collective awareness and represented the universal human wisdom. Cultural code is a piece of ideology, which was produced by social group, and became a stereotype, a determined fact.

It represented a will, the demands of society towards the individual. Its base is a typical opinion of others, like a standard. And anybody is sure that it is an absolute truth, without which he is not able to live: «All cultural code is composed from a numerous citations, totality formed a small, oddly cut out code of encyclopedic knowledge, a kind of mixture: this mixture is forming an ordinary 'reality', to which an individual is adapted to. Imperfection of this encyclopedia, a hole in this cultural material, can make somebody to die»4.

What will be the fate of cultural code in a nearby future? R. Barthes described it not so optimistic. He thought that they will die out, or moving to another text at any rate. That is his absolute conclusion.

But in this case we have some questions: What will happen if differing cultural codes be crossing? Will it be a reorganization of them or a new essence of cultural code will be born? For finding answers to these questions, firstly we will turn to analyze can we recognize anthroponyms as a cultural codes, and secondly what kind of characteristics will have a new cultural code, that will be born on the crossroads of different cultures?

Antroponym as a cultural code

At the beginning, we need to understand «What it means to be proper names?», because anthroponyms (names of people) are just the subgroup of them, equally, for example, with geographical names (geonym, toponym), etc.

Proper names exactly outline the object, because these are given just for things which human being interested in. It is a unique lexical category, which is noted for enclosed volume of information. These have a direct connection with the object, in nominative-identify function. Proper names represent an individual action of name giving, in order to select an object from the class, as opposed to commons, which are given to the whole class.

The philosophical and culturological proper names overthinking, realized by Y.M. Lotman, a prominent literary scholar, semiotician and cultural historian, gave us that they indicate to the manifestation of human nature, as they are associated with «highlighting the individuality, identity of an individual as the basis of its value for the 'Other' and 'Others'»5. This highlighting means a conscious behavior, which is implemented only with the possibility of choice. Proper names turn out to be «catalysts» of tension between an individual (they separate from the team) and a common one (each having a proper name, being a human, has a nominal name too). The human consciousness itself and its existence are based on this dialectic. Without this relationship, the aspiration of man to knowledge, and the entire culture created by him, is impossible.

Culture has different functions, for example esthetics, cognitive, religious, technical and ethnic function. Communicative function is one type of technical functions. It is based on the symbolic nature of culture that guarantees communication between people.

The presence of such specific cultural information is described in some of her works by A.V. Superanskaya6, onomastics classic, in anthroponyms. Anthroponyms are proper names, that naming only people. These are connected with the history of culture, traditions, features of psychology. Personal names include the following forms7:

* Official (full) name form.

* Home (short) name form.

* Diminutive form.

* Magnifying form.

* Last name.

* The second names.

* Nicknames.

* Patronymic.

A.V. Superanskaya thinks that the name, being a subject of spiritual culture, has a cultural component. It means that the name reflects the epoch. We can it synonymously correlate to the cultural and historical tradition of people. This feature can explain the renaissance of almost forgotten, ancient names of our times. Like Bogumil (= mil bogu = nice to god), Mstislav (= let it be glorified by revenge over enemies) among male names, or Zlata (= gold), Miroslava (= glorifying the world) among female names. This is a kind of attempt to strengthen the national consciousness through the awakening of its mythological layer, turning to the past in order to oppose it to the objective processes of globalization, the coming future. In this case, ancient names becoming not so much an instrument for the preservation of national, cultural specifics of the people, as a tool for manipulating people, who allow themselves to be turned into an infinite mythologized past, miss their own present, and deprive themselves of the future, but an instrument for the well thought-out violence.

There is an anachronism that can lead to an existential crisis, a state of anxiety in which a person decides the question of the meaning of his own existence - for the cultural component, which reinforces the identity of a person, belongs to the past, while the person himself acts in the present, thus creating the future. The future, reliable knowledge about, which he simply in any form, by definition, cannot be available.

Identity was defined firstly by E. Ericson, a developmental psychologist: «A subjective inspired sense of identity and integrity, which I would call a sense of identity [,..]»8. The cultural and the personal identity form unity, thanks to common beginning - the past of the people. Therefore, one of the main tasks for the older generation is to offer a young people strong ideals on the basis of which they could form. The individual always feels support in the form of cultural unity. It, according to Ericson, «confirms the authenticity of being»9.

These facts contribute to the awakening of the limitless creative abilities of a person, and not to his desire to immure himself in the past, no matter how great or distressful it is. For complete appeal only to the past, rather not even to itself, but to its idealized models, since real knowledge of it to person is also not fully available - this is the tragic funeral of the future.

The contemporary researchers of onomastics, G.B. Madieva and V. I. Suprun, who are doctors in philology, say that anthroponyms, like proper names, are historical and deeply national: «Those ideas (signs, symbols, myths, etc.) that a person puts on them, are in his mind, they are determined by thinking and those social circumstances in which he lives»10. It means that they reflect the unity of the worldview, the world perception of the people, with all the features of its spiritual, social and material culture.

The possibility of studying the name in the cultural aspect has already paid attention to V.N. Toporov, philologist, linguist, considering the name as a cultural factor. It secures free will for a person, because it can be like a conventional sign, i.e. created artificially, by agreement, and the carrier of higher meaning. It depends entirely on the person that the name will become a tool for sense-building or will be meaningless. But only with respect to the name as an instrument of sense-building is possible a life in the spirit that is born through an onomathetic act, given a name, and therefore its creation, which is culture: «The name is the impulse of culture, because it introduces man into sign space, but it is the result of it, because its meanings grow in the space of culture, it keeps and is controlled by it (these particular features make the name one of the most important indicators of the type of culture)»11.

All these facts give us an opportunity to conclude that anthroponyms may be considered as a cultural code. Because, thanks to the cultural component, it is ideologically loaded, and the naming tradition is a determined fact.

Border cultural code: choosing name for bilingual - a child born in international family

In the current situation of globalization, when there is a desire for unity, multiculturalism becomes a reality, establishing equality of values of different cultures, and diversity of participants. Of particular interest is the modification to which established traditions of naming are exposed. What determines the choice of the name today?

This will allow us to see what are the features of the emerging new naming tradition, mainly in the situation of bilingualism, which may be characteristic of the society of the future, and become an organic part of emerging global culture.

According to V.A. Nikonov12, the choice of a name is limited by such cultural and historical factors as:

* custom (the usual way of human behavior);

* fashion;

* language norms;

* public assessment of the carrier name, which is transferred and assigned to the name (historically specific);

* etymology (the substantive meaning, which was preanthroponymic).

We can consider these factors as universal. However, what happens in international families, which are now becoming the rule and not the exception? What should parents do? What to focus on? Or not look for landmarks at all, but to practice name-creativity?

Thus, today there is a risk situation, a clash of at least two, and maybe more, national cultures, which unites different ethnic cultures, forming a single cultural, communicative, informational, semantic, value, symbolic, semiotic, mental space based on compromise, cultural diversity, and cooperation13, if one of the parents is from a multi-ethnic family: «A certain set of names has always been a characteristic socio-ethnographic feature. What are the names of children in families, where the husband and wife belong to nations that in the past differed sharply in the composition of personal names?»14 We have to give a more exact definition for notion of «national culture». Referring to the initial definition of national culture and its features, to V.M. Mezhuev, whose research interests are following: culture, civilization, history, identity, freedom, dialog and etc.:

1. «National culture exists only in relation to other national culture, in comparison with them, that is, it realizes itself not in the singular, but in the plural form. If there were no other cultures, there would not be it»15.

2. The principle of the existence of national cultures is, therefore, a personality free in its self-expression and spiritual choice. If a nation can be defined as a collective person (here, as it were, one person for all), then a nation is a group of personalities, each of which has its own unique face16.

3. «You cannot change your ethnicity given by your parents, but nationality is possible: the first is not dependent on us, is not our personal merit, the second is the result of our choice and the culture we have learned»17.

There is a historical resolution to these problems, but how relevant are these solutions today? If we assume that cultures cannot be summed up, then the newborn should certainly be included in one of the proposed cultures, which, as a rule, occurs along the line of the father. But parents have another opportunity. They can show family tact - the desire for equality, respect, and oppose themselves to the centuries-old past, sometimes prohibiting their union altogether. As a result, there is a new type of nominal system - neutral. There is a huge weight of unusual names, as the naming traditions are overcome on both sides. By this, it reflects the complex process of restructuring of consciousness.

And during this process a new cultural code - a borderlined one - is born.

Conclusion

The following paragraphs are concluded that we can consider name as a cultural code, and precisely it is caused some difficulties in international matrimonies.

The first, name, thanks to the cultural component, is ideologically loaded. Beliefs, ideas, historical aspects were saved in the cultural component. That is why, the naming tradition in one hand is a determined fact by culture and its history, and other hand, at the same time itself is the strongest impulse of culture.

The second, the choice of a name in an international, multicultural family is the situation of the code's birth on cultural border. Cultural border is a place, where people strive for compromise in the form of dialogue, because it is the guarantee of their existence.

The third, people have to tend to overcome their own traditions, and synthetize them with other traditions. That is why borders of culture are a place for creativity and freedom.

In this situation, a live search and construction of meanings is carried out. And in this new, emerging tradition, a person is given the opportunity to form his own independent identity.

Footnote

1 Mamardashvili, Merab, How do I understand philosophy?, Moscow(Russia), «Progress» «Culture» Publishing Group, (in Russian), 1992, pp.356-364.

2 Ortega y Gasset, Jose, El tema de nuestro tempo, Madrid (Spain) translated by Rutkevich A.M. to Russian and published by Nauka Publishers in 1991, (in Russian), 1955, p.25.

3 Barthes, Roland, S/Z, Paris (France), Editions du Seuil translated by Kosikova G.K. and Murat V.P. to Russian and published by Academic Project Publishers in Moscow, 2009, (in Russian), 1970, p. 67.

4 Ibidem, p. 273.

5 Lotman, Yuri, Brain-text-culture-artificial intelligence, Tallinn (Estonia), Aleksandra Publishers, (in Russian), 1992, p. 30.

6 Superanskaja, Alexandra, 1973, The general proper name theory, Moscow (Russia), Nauka Publishers, (in Russian).

7 Madieva, Gulmira and Suprun, Vasiliy, „Anthroponyms as a means of national culture expressing", Volgograd (Russia), Volgograd State Pedagogical University, -6, Vo.50., 2010, pp.96-102, (in Russian).

8 Erikson, Erik, Identity: Youth and Crisis, Moscow (Russia), Flinta and Progress Publishers, (in Russian), 2006, p.28.

9 Ibidem, p.40.

10 Madieva, Gulmira and Suprun, Vasiliy, "Anthroponyms as a means of national culture expressing", Volgograd (Russia), Volgograd State Pedagogical University, -6, Vo.50, 2010, pp.96-102, (in Russian).

11 Toporov, Vladimir, Research of etymology and semantic, V.1.: Theory and some of its private application, Moscow (Russia), LRC Publishing House, (in Russian), 2004, p.382.

12 Nikonov, Vladimir, The name and the society, Moscow (Russia), Nauka Publishers, (in Russian), 1974.

13 Team of authors, Culture at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries: globalization processes, Saint-Petersburg(Russia), Nestor-History Publishers, (in Russian), 2009.

14 Nikonov, Vladimir, The name and the society, Moscow (Russia), Nauka Publishers, (in Russian), 1974, p.155.

15 Mezhuev, Vadim, History, Civilization, Culture: the Experience of Philosophical Interpretation, St. Petersburg(Russia), (in Russian), 2011, p.182.

16 Ibidem, p.186.

17 Ibidem, p.187.

References

References

Mamardashvili, Merab, (1992), How do I understand philosophy?, Moscow (Russia), «Progress» «Culture» Publishing Group, (in russian).

Ortega y Gasset, Jose, (1955), El tema de nuestro tempo, Madrid (Spain) translated by Rutkevich A.M. to Russian and published by Nauka Publishers in 1991, (in russian).

Barthes, Roland, (1970), S/Z, Paris (France), Editions du Seuil translated by Kosikova G.K. and Murat V.P. to Russian and published by Academic Project Publishers in Moscow,2009, (in russian).

Lotman, Yuri, (1992), Brain-text-culture-artificial intelligence, Tallinn (Estonia), Aleksandra Publishers, (in russian).

Superanskaja, Alexandra, (1973), The general proper name theory, Moscow (Russia), Nauka Publishers, (in russian).

Madieva, Gulmira and Suprun, Vasiliy, (2010), Anthroponyms as a means of national culture expressing, Volgograd (Russia), Volgograd State Pedagogical University, -6,Vo.50, pp.96-102, (in russian).

Erikson, Erik, (2006), Identity: Youth and Crisis, Moscow (Russia), Flinta and Progress Publishers, (in russian).

Toporov, Vladimir, (2004), Research of etymology and semantic, V.1.: Theory and some of its private application, Moscow (Russia), LRC Publishing House, (in russian).

Nikonov, Vladimir, (1974), The name and the society, Moscow (Russia), Nauka Publishers, (in russian).

Team of authors, (2009), Culture at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries: globalization processes, Saint-Petersburg (Russia), Nestor-History Publishers, (in russian).

Mezhuev, Vadim, (2011), History, Civilization, Culture: the Experience of Philosophical Interpretation, St. Petersburg (Russia), (in russian).