ВОПРОСЫ ОНОМАСТИКИ | PROBLEMS OF ONOMASTICS

Tatyana A. Agapkina
Institute of Slavic Studies of the RAS
Moscow, Russia

Names of Demons in the South Slavic Versions of St Sisinnius’s Apocryphal Prayer

Voprosy onomastiki, 2016, Volume 13, Issue 2, pp. 126–145 (in Russian)
DOI: 10.15826/vopr_onom.2016.13.2.021

Received 10 April 2016

Abstract: The paper represents the first full-scale research on the names of demons encountered in the apocryphal prayers of St Sisinnius and Archangel Michael known from the South Slavic manuscript tradition. The chronological framework of the studied manuscripts and, thus, of the names spans from the 11th to the 19th centuries. Mythological names are present in the apocryphal prayers in form of numbered lists (each containing most often 12 names). The article considers 23 such lists (with more than 220 singular names in total) and involves a wide range of linguistic, mythological and folklore data. The author analyses the composition of the mythological “vocabulary” and the character of its units (proper nouns, characterizing attributes, descriptive verbal constructions, etc.). The study focuses on the correlation between mythological names and the functions of corresponding characters; the semantic classification of words constituting the “vocabulary” under consideration; the structure of the “vocabulary” in various versions of the apocryphal prayer; the proportion of names and characters; grammatical “inertia” as the basis of word-formation patterns, and some other issues. In conclusion, the author discusses the historical evolution of the “vocabulary” (obviously influenced by the folk tradition and by the vernacular speech) considering it in the context of the historical evolution of the Slavic verbal magic’s mythological vocabulary.

Key words: apocryphal prayer, folklore, mythology, Southern Slavs, names of demons, word formation, spells and charms

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