South Prikamye name-giving tradition among Perm old believers and edinovertsy of the second half of the 19th - first third of the 20th centuries

The paper studies the name-giving tradition among Perm Old Believers and Edinovertsy of the second half of the 19th - first third of the 20th centuries living in the upper reaches of the Bui River and its tributaries (modern Kuedinsky District in the south of Perm Krai). The research material included birth records in the metric books from the Old Believer’s сhurch in Zemplyagash village and from Edinoverie churches in the villages of Verkh-Bui and Stary Shagirt. The analysis was aimed at identifying similarities and differences in these traditions. It has been established that both groups are characterized by early baptism on the 3rd/4th day with the giving of a name (performed by a person in clergy) and by the choice of a name based on the menologium (the child was named after the saint revered on the 8th day after the child’s birth). At the same time, the Old Believers of the Zemplyagash community practiced baptism with namegiving on the 8th day after birth, and they could give a name in honor of a saint whose name day was 7- 8 days before the child’s birthday, which was part of the Russian name-giving tradition since pre-schism times. The analysis of anthroponymy revealed that the Edinoverie priests also used the Nikonite calendar, as evidenced by the naming in honor of post-schism saints, by the choice of canonical forms of name from the Nikonite calendar, as well as by a small proportion of modified forms, since Old Believers of that time practiced variable recording of names in metric books. The proportion of modified name forms in the Zemplyagash community is much higher, and their origin is connected with the times ‘before the schism’, which is motivated by the idea of the connection of times, significant for the Old Believers. Cases of naming by popular names in the Soviet period without reference to the calendar show both the flexibility of the anthroponymic system and its stability, since all popular names were traditional agionyms from the menologium.