Özet:

Abstract This article presents Lithuanian naming trends specific to residents of Kėdainiai in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, underlining characteristic cases of Polonisation of their personal names and the most significant factors that affected the recording of anthroponyms in town books. Historical records from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (24 Kėdainiai register books from 1623–1799) were used to extract 505 cases of names of Kėdainiai residents. For comparison, the study also considers examples from the 1752–1799 register of christenings kept by St George’s Church of Kėdainiai Parish. The sources under consideration mostly relied on the binary nomination model (using a name and a surname or a personal name that performed the function of the latter), where the first component was a Christian name written in Polish or Latin. In seventeenth-century records, surnames were Polonised: obvious cases of phonetic alterations were noted, some surnames had no endings, some Lithuanian patronymic and diminutive suffixes were replaced with Slavic suffixes, and Slavic patronymic suffixes -evič, -ovič were added to names without suffixes. However, the Slavicisation of anthroponyms particular to Kėdainiai residents in the seventeenth century was not very intense due to extralinguistic and historical circumstances. In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the town of Kėdainiai was a Reformist centre of Lithuanianness, and the Lithuanian language was used in the public life of the town. This element of Lithuanianness can also be noticed in the analysed historical sources. Anthroponyms were mostly Polonised in Kėdainiai register books from the eighteenth century. Slavic patronymic suffixes -evič, -ovič were predominant in this period.

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