Obiteljski nadimci u Držimurcu i Strelcu: motivacija, tvorba i pragmatika

Family nicknames are informal anthroponymic units used in many Croatian rural communities. Although considered to be products of a bygone traditional naming process, even today they are used in Drzimurec and Strelec more often in everyday communication than surnames and still have greater recognizability in the community among older and younger generations alike. This paper examines the position of family nicknames in the unofficial nominal formula in Drzimurec and Strelec, two villages in southeastern Medimurje. A corpus of 219 original family nicknames is presented and analysed from several viewpoints: word-formation, motivation and pragmatics. Taking different semantic motivational patterns into account, it can be claimed that family nicknames can function as identity markers which reflect how the community perceives a family, or a group of people within the community, as well as community customs and values. Several motivational patterns reveal an active function of family nicknames as pejorative or deprecatory terms. Therefore, authors argue that investigating such naming phenomena and the actual use of family nicknames can not only be interesting from an anthroponomastic viewpoint, but can also provide valuable insight into the dynamics and sociocognitive principles of the formation of discursive practices in small rural communities.