Antroponimija potkalničkoga Prigorja
Authors:   , Puškar Krunoslav 
Published: November 2021

This thesis deals with the analysis and description of the historical and contemporary anthroponymy of the Kalnik area of the Prigorje region on the basis of both archival and field research carried out throughout a longer period of time. Since there has not been any extensive onomastic reasearch in the very area to date, our goal was to determine the influence of linguistic and extralinguistic changes in the reaserched onomastic categories. The introduction of this thesis provides the geographical, sociohistorical, demographical and linguistic context of the researched area, whereas the subsequent chapters provide a list and analysis of confirmed first names, personal and family nicknames, as well as family names of the reaserched area. First names were researched during nine time periods with a duration of five years, beginning from 1802 and ending in 2014. Because of a wide researched area, we limited our research on the anthroponymic repertoire of the city of Križevci, in which 3020 first names (1579 male and 1441 female names) were confirmed. In the 19th century, during five analysed time periods, 1519 first names were confirmed, out of which 814 male and 705 female names, which were mostly simple based on their structure (91.64%). Concerning the provenance of the first names, we established that almost all names were either Christian names or translated Christian names and that national names occur very rarely and sporadically, only in the second half of the 19th century. By comparison, in the 20th and 21st century, during the last four time periods, 1501 first names have been confirmed, out of which 765 were male and 736 female names. Concerning their structure, they turned out to be mostly compound first names in the 1946- 1950 time period (55.69%), whereas in the 2010-2014 time period they turned out to be predominantly single (97.02%). Concerning their provenance, in the 1946-1950 time period 48.39% of male and 57.58% of female national names were confirmed, whereas in the last time period male national names amount to 4.05%, and female national names to only 1.27%. Personal nicknames are a special anthroponymic category which has not been researched in the Kalnik area. Having limited our field research on 13 places throughout the area, we confirmed 288 real personal nicknames, 245 male and 43 female nicknames, of mostly simple structure (95.14%), which are still mostly used in oral and informal communication. The motivation behind the nicknames has faithfully shown us the extralinguistic reality of the researched area. The most frequent motivational group of nicknames is the one of unknown motivation (23.96%), while the other confirmed groups are nicknames motivated by a first name (12,15%), a physical characteristic of the owner (12.15%), another characteristic of the owner (11,81%), a specific word used by the owner (8.33%), an animal (6.94%), a family name (6.60%), an occupation (6.25%), an ethnonym or toponym (4.51%), a family or social role (2.78%), a professional designation (1.38%), food (1.04%), a name for a plant (1.04%), a subject (0.69%), and another nickname (0.35%). The high frequency of nicknames of unknown motivation shows us the importance of future research of this anthroponymic category because, due to the passage of time, it is difficult to determine the real motivation of every nickname. We came to the same conclusion during our research of family nicknames, another specific anthroponymic category, still quite present in the Kalnik area. Having limited our field research on 12 places throughout the wide researched area, we managed to confirm 173 real family nicknames, whose designated motivational groups provided us with important sociolinguistic pieces of information. Concerning their structure, the majority of family nicknames turned out to be simple (N = 129), whereas concerning their motivation, the majority of family nicknames were of unknown motivation (N = 33). Other motivational groups were the following: a first name (N = 27), an occupation (N = 27), a family name (N = 25), a personal nickname (N = 22), a certain characteristic (N = 13), an ethnonym (N = 10), a toponym (N = 6), a certain subject (N = 6), and an animal (N = 4). All these mentioned different anthroponymic categories (first names, personal and family nicknames) can be confirmed profusely in the last anthroponymic category researched and analysed in this thesis – family names. Having employed the criterion of their minimum continuity of 100 years in the researched area, we have managed to confirm 1360 family names with centuries old continuity, since the 14th century to this very day. With this criterion we also managed to reduce a significant number of over 3000 family names with mostly no continuity, as well as to confirm those last names which had left their trace in the researched area. Of course, not all family names confirmed by this criterion are necessarily connected to the researched area, but are only detected in it. Out of 1360 confirmed family names, we succeeded in determining 189 family names which occur exclusively or mostly in the researched area, 100 family names which do not occur in contemporary anthroponymy of the area, and 97 family names which could also become extinguished in near future. Concerning their structure, the majority of all family names occur without a suffix (N = 681). All the confirmed family names were analysed according to their structure and motivation and listed in our Lexicon of family names at the end of this very thesis.