Female names of Brańsk residents in the 17th-18th centuries

Abstract

The subject of this article is female names of Brańsk residents in the Podlasie region in the 17th and 18th centuries. The conducted anthroponymic analysis is based on material extracted from two types of sources. These are the record books of the Catholic parish in Brańsk and the local town books that have survived to our times. Female names excerpted from the examined material base were presented in the form of a dictionary. The preserved record of the local Catholic parish was also used to investigate the frequency of giving names to newborn girls in the two-century period of examination. On the basis of the anthroponymic analysis it was established that in the studied town there was a process of gradual impoverishment of the name stock associated with the Byzantine culture in favor of expanding and enriching the repertoire of names characteristic of the Latin cultural tradition. In many respects, the names of Brańsk residents in the 17th and 18th centuries show typical features of the name system of the Polish-East Slavic ethnic and linguistic borderland.