Geography of peasant surnames in the Vileysky uyezd according to the 1795 revision lists

Abstract

The study of geography of surnames reveals the historical-spatial features of word formation in different territories. The article presents the results of the geoinformation mapping of surnames in the Vileysky uyezd of the Minsk Governorate based on the 1795 revision lists and a family (yard) as a minimal research unit. The author created a geodatabase with vector layers in the ArcGIS 10.3 software package: yards (surnames) were added to their local settlements; after digitization, peasant secondary surnames with the most common formants were divided into layers with the attribute selection operation. Thus, the most common formants of surnames in the Vileysky uyezd were -ovich, -evich, -ich, -its, -sky, and -tsky. There were many surnames with formants -onok, -yonok and -ik, -chik, the former were localized mainly in the northern and eastern parts of the uyezd, and the latter were relatively evenly distributed. The Simpson index adapted for anthroponymic research allowed to identify the types of settlements with greater (Vileyka town, miasteczki) and lesser (villages) diversity of formants of peasant surnames. Of all the population groups, peasant surnames have the largest number of identified formants, which testifies to their arbitrary choice and freedom of word formation, not limited by the social status as the surnames of gentry and clergy.