Identifying the role of proper names in folk tales

3. Proper names contrived as a result of casual circumstances and also for having luck (Shirin means “Sweet”, Taptih means “Found”). In the families of different nations, where babies often used to die, the parents hid their children out of the house in order to deceive the “devilry”, and after they “found” them putting on a show as if the child they had found was not theirs, but somebody else's. That's why, the proper names “Found” and “Not ours” were common and they exist in Armenian folk tales, too.

4. Proper names associated with Christian belief (Armenian proper names and the ones translated into Armenian (Mary-Mariam, Aleksey/Alexis-Aleksan, John-Hovhannes, Astvatsatur-meaning “Given by God”, etc.).

In the Armenian folk tales the naming of proper names is connected with various ceremonies, which sometimes hide in them traits revealing much of the unknown past life, formation and beliefs of the nation.

During our folk tale studies we have found out various peculiarities typical of this genre. Analyzing ways of naming characters in folk tales it became obvious that there exist numerous folk tales the heroes of which are left nameless.

Marie-Louise von Franz famous folklorist considers the scarcity of names as a necessary peculiarity of folk tale genre, which allows transform ancient folk talks into folk tales. Folk tales with nameless characters are remembered and transferred more easily; they are more attractive for people.

Thus we can draw conclusion that this is not accidental there is something hidden under it: it is peculiar feature of folk tale genre. Below we are going to bring examples which will prove the above mentioned point of view.

Thus in the English folk tale “The Black Bull of Norroway” the main character is a lady and she is just called by the corresponding common noun “the lady”:

«Long ago in Norroway there lived a lady who had three daughters. Now they were all pretty, and one night they fell talking of whom they meant to marry».

Turning to the principle of distinguishing heroes according to social state we can mention the folk tale “Pokotn” («??????»). In this folk tale the hero greets an old man in the forest, the latter responds: “Hello, King's son”. Here the boy thinks that perhaps the old man recognized his father that was why he knew his name. According to the boy the stressed word “king” pronounced before the word “boy” was his name which was connected with his origin and social state.

But afterwards the attitude towards the name King's son is changed. A girl of common origin said that son of king should know any art if he really wanted to marry her:

“The girl asks whether the king's son knew any art. The answer was the following: as he was the King's son it was not necessary for him to know any art. Hearing this she answers that won't marry him”.

As we see in the folk tale the personality and name become more important than social state. And the name begins to obtain the functions of authority, job-skills, respect, and certain moral values, which will be criteria both for all the members of society and for the King's son.

In connection with the case when the name represents the characters social state we can mention another English folk tale where one of the main heroes is a widow and she is called by the appropriate common noun “the widow”. This is the folk tale about a girl and a paddo (frog). The title of the folk tale is “The Paddo”:

“A poor widow was one day baking bannocks, and sent her dochter wi' a dish to the well to bring water. The dochter gaed, and better gaed, till she came to the well, but it was dry. Now, what to do she didna ken, for she couldna gang back to her mother without water; sae she sat down by the side o' the well, and fell a-greeting.

A paddo (frog) then came loup-loup-louping out o' the well, and asked the lassie what she was greeting for; and she said she was greeting because there was nae water in the well”.

This method of leaving the folk tale character nameless is found in various layers of society, as an example we can bring the English folk tale The Three Heads in the Well. Here the main character is a king who has no name in the tale, because it is not important who the king is. In folklore it is important to portray him a character, a hero who is common for this kind of text:

Long ago there reigned in the eastern part of England a king who kept his court at Colchester. He was witty, strong, and valiant, and subdued enemies abroad and secured peace among his subjects at home, but not all on his own. Hundreds helped him.

The tradition of leaving the child nameless or hiding the name was associated with trying to keep him away from devils. Namelessness as a means of escaping death or diseases is found in Russian folklore also. Thus, considering the name as an essential part of one's identity the Russians chose to keep it in secret for the evil sorcerer not to “take” it. The real name of a person was known only to the parents and a few close relatives. Often unusual, unflattering names were given to people like Nekras (ugly) or Nezhelan (Unwanted). According to folk tradition in order to prevent children from an evil eye, or devil there were cases of false losing and again finding their own children and thus naming them Nenash and Naydenish. According to ancient believes the right of naming was given to mythical powers, in this case to dervish.

In Armenian folk tales the heroes grow up nameless since the arrival of dervish. The period of dervish's arrival is from 14 days to 10 years or the age of maturity.

Here is a folk tale proving this view. In the folk tale ''Ahmat and Mahmat'' («????? ? ??????») the King's sons were already going hunting, but they still had no names. The viziers decided to name the boys and to hide it from dervish. When the King's viziers gathered and announced that the King's sons could not be left nameless the dervish appeared and got angry that they had tried to name the boys during his absence. ''The King tried to calm down dervish saying that he did not want to name his sons, he added that it was the dervish's right to give names to his sons. The dervish calmed down and said that the boy's names would be Ahmat and Mahmat''. In this folk tale namelessness is a means of escaping death or diseases.

In folk tales a character's name represents just a few words out of a hundred thousand. A character's name represents that character. It's arbitrary, but at the same time immensely important.

In English fantastic folklore the special seat is borrowed to the folk tales deriding nonsense. The moral of such folk tales is “All misfortunes in human life occur from nonsense” under which, from the point of view of the British mentality and impracticality to the certain vital conditions is meant.

From this point of view the husband and the wife from a folk tale “The Vinegars” are presented. Giving the heroes name-antroponyms “Vinegar”, the national storyteller wishes to emphasize the fact that spouses live in this world with taste of bitterness. In direct meaning vinegar is “a sour-tasting liquid made from malt or wine that is used to improve the taste of food or to preserve it”.

But there is also a transferred meaning of this word: “like vinegar” - refers to the person, who is “sour-tempered”, that is passive, impractical. The house falls, crashes, from time to time it is filled with garbage, and spouses do nothing. Why is it so?

They simply have no desire to do something, they have got used to live their lazy, measured life, to live, as they say, “for one day”, not caring about the present and not thinking about the future. And even when the happiness has turned up, they (to be exact - Mr. Vinegar himself, made, from the point of view of reason, a number of silly purchases), have not managed to take advantage of it. Even the parrot which Mr. Vinegar has met in a wood, laughs at him:

“Mr. Vinegar, you foolish man, you blockhead, you simpleton; you went to the fair, and laid out all your money in buying a cow. Not content with that, you changed it for bagpipes, on which you could not play, and which were not worth one-tenth of the money.

You fool, you - you had no sooner got the bagpipes than you changed them (or the gloves, which were not worth one-quarter of the money; and when you had got the gloves, you changed them for a poor miserable stick; and now for your forty guineas, cow, bag-pipes, and gloves, you have nothing to show but that poor miserable stick, which you might have cut in any hedge”.

Hero of the folk tale comes back home without anything, with empty hands - even without the stick which he has left in branches of a tree which he has thrown in a bird who laughed at him. And the life for a married couple again became sad and bitter - as if vinegar in honor of which this family of "fools" is named. Thus, once more it becomes obvious that the characters' names in folk tales are not accidental; each of them has unique function that is it reflects the qualities, characteristics of name bearer.

Another peculiarity of proper names in folk tales is connected with those of toponyms that are place names. The poetics of folk tale depends on a choice of toponyms which in one case can be connected with a context of a folk tale or with its heroes, and in other - can only distant to adjoin to art structure of folklore work or in general not to adjoin in any way.

Thus the toponym Spindleston Heugh is perceived only in a context of the folk tale “The Laidly Worm of Spindlestone Heugh” in which it is spoken about the bewitched princess Margaret transformed by a malicious witch into an ugly dragon, who received nickname The Laidly Worm of Spindlestone Heugh (Jacobs 1984: 115).

The toponym Spindlestone Heugh is a part of precedent name. It is a describing component of the given character, naming its seat of residing.

We can judge the reason for accession of the given component to a name by the following context:

“And when her maidens came in to dress her in the morning they found coiled up on the bed a dreadful dragon, which uncoiled itself and came towards them. But they ran away shrieking, and the Laidly Worm crawled and crept, and crept and crawled till it reached the Heugh or rock of the Spindlestone, round which it coiled itself, and lay there basking with its terrible snout in the air. Soon the country roundabout had reason to know of the Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh”.

The toponym Spindlestone Heugh which can tell much about where the princess lived while she was in shape of a dragon will consist of two components Spindlestone and Heugh. Heugh is a narrow valley among steep rocks. And on this valley a rock named Spindleston towers, which also we learn from a context: “… It reached … rock of the Spindlestone”. The name Spindlestone was formed as a result of a composition: Spindle + stone on the basis of metaphorical carry.

It is most likely, that this stone rock stood in a valley, reminding a needle that is to say it was such narrow, that the Dragon reminding a worm could only creep through it. Thus, the toponym Spindlestone Heugh can tell us much about a constant solitude of princess-dragon in the middle of rocks who suffered lonely her grief.

There are folk tales were the proper names are connected with semantics of the folk tale separately. We can meet such example in the English folk tale “Child Rowland”. The toponym Elfland is connected with semantics of the folk tale separately: it is only the marker of the magic world in which everything should be surprising, unpredictable, mysteriously.

The sister of a young man named Child Rowland has disappeared unexpectedly. The despair led him to the wizard Merlinu who helped him to find coordinates of the girl: “The fair Burd Ellen,” said the Warlock Merlin, is now in the Dark Tower of the King of Elfland …”.

The country of elves which governs the magic king who even has not a real name - King of Elfland, is somewhere outside a terrestrial reality. The country of elves, Elfland, is a surprising world, where “were rough arches made of a transparent rock, incrusted with sheep silver and rock spar, and other bright stones. But though it was rock, the air was quite warm, as it always is in Elfland”.

The name Rowland in the rhythmical context of the verse is enough in itself to suggest the ancient heroic values and follies of the Rowland epic. The word “Child”, so surprising here, also registers a value-laden sense of the past. It is archaic yet it connects with modern striving.

The ambiguous clash of meaning within the word of the outmoded sense of “child” as “warrior” with the modern sense of “infant” startles the consciousness and provokes our further imaginative participation in the action; for we always in some portion of our psyches remain children, and as such we easily respond to the feelings of ancient desolation yet determination which the line evokes.

If the toponym “Elfland” represents the magic space possessing a fantastic reality, the toponyms of the folk tale “The Alderley Legend” are not connected with semantics of a folk tale in general. Rich onomastical space of this folk tale bears in itself not the meaning of forming, but poetic-aesthetic function. The core toponym of the folk tales is the toponym “Alderley Edge”.

It is necessary to note, that it is real toponym - the village in a county Cheshire (Northwest England) is named so. However in the context of the folk tale this name gets poetic character. Semantics of the name is connected with the word “alder”. Probably, in district where this village is located, many alder trees once grew, that is why the settlement has received this name - Alderley Edge. Judging from the name, the history has happened there - in edge of alder trees. Alderley Edge - is the unique really existing toponym in the onomastical space of this folk tale. The other toponyms are invented. To the look of the farmer a fine landscape appears.

The farmer stands on a rock named Castle Rock. Near it there is a hill named Winter Hill: “To the west the land glided off to the grey sea, to the north gathered the distant outline of Winter Hill and to the East the Pennines, stretching north to south like a great giant sleeping beneath a blanket of forest, field and moor”.

In the text Thieves' Hole is mentioned twice: when the farmer goes on the market and when he comes back from the market: “He was lost in his tune when the road passed Thieves' Hole”. “The sun was laying its head in the west as the farmer once more passed Thieves' Hole”. In the way to the house of the wizard who is going to buy from him a horse, the toponyms play a key role in the organization of fantastic space: “And they went from Thieves' Hole to Seven Firs, from Seven Firs to Golden Stone, from Golden Stone to Stormy Point and Saddlebole and there they came to a hard face of rock”. Names of these toponyms are not motivated by anything; the history of their origin is unclear. But the folk teller uses toponyms in the given folk tale not for disclosing sense of work. Due to these toponyms, the unknown author enters the reader into another world existing parallel with our actual world. And if the world is unreal, fantastic, therefore names of objects of this world should also be fantastic.

While analyzing the peculiarities of proper names in folk tales we meet also such folk tales where the characters' names have natural origin. In the Armenian folklore there is a folk tale where God hearing the demands of the old couple gifted them a son who came out of the chuck:

''The hewer hit the chuck with an ax: The chuck broke and a little boy came out of it. Three pigeons ordered the hewer strictly to leave the son nameless since their return. After fifteen days the pigeons came and named the son with the name of a tree` Darchin- (Cinnamon).

As we see the hewer's son is a part of nature born from the chuck. The pigeons gave him name of a tree Cinnamon. According to Greek fable the laurel was the saint tree of Apollo, and the cinnamon is representative of the same group. Besides naming the boy, the pigeons predicted the great power of Cinnamon which was given to him from the nature.

It is interesting to notice that in this folk tale the name of the hewer's wife was Piruz (turquoise) which also has natural origin. The hewer's name was Hovhanness (John) which is connected with Christian doctrine of later periods. It is obvious that in the same folk tale there exist various layers of naming: Christian and pagan.

In English folklore we have found the folk tale ''Gold-tree and Silver-tree'' where also the characters' names have natural origin:

''Once upon a time there was a king who had a wife, whose name was Silver-tree, and a daughter, whose name was Gold-tree''.

Another English folk tale where the name of character has natural origin and meaning is the folk tale ''The Lady of the Lake and the Physicians of Myddfai''. In this folk tale a vivid example of natural beliefs is obvious; here the main character came out of lake that is why she is called so Lady of the Lake.

In connection with folk tale characters having natural names we find once more folk tale in Armenian folklore. The folk tale is “Nardan” («??????») where we find ancient Armenian ethno-cultural traditions referring to the natural totem of the pomegranate, as well as traces to the ancient understandings about the incest. The heroine of the folk tale became pregnant of the grain of pomegranate which she had found in her brother's pocket. She got birth to a girl, naming him “Nardan”, that is “grain of pomegranate”. The words “Nranhndik”, “Nrana” found in folk tales prove that they were widely used in middle ages, mostly referring to female names.

While analyzing linguistic peculiarities of proper names in folk tales we have revealed another tradition of naming the characters. These are cases when the character of the folk tale is named after the name of his business. We meet such example in the folk tale “Jack the Buttermilk”.

In this folk tale the main hero is Jack who sells buttermilk, therefore he is named Jack the Buttermilk:

“Jack was a boy who sold buttermilk. One day as he was going his rounds he met a witch. She asked him to give her some of his buttermilk for free, and said that if he refused to give it, she would put him into a bag that she carried over her shoulders”.

A similar example of naming the folk tale hero after the name of his business is that of Armenian folk tale ''The Hunter and the Partridge'' («??????? ?? ??????»). Here the main character is a hunter and as it is obvious he is called so; he has no real name:

''One day the hunter goes to the forest for hunting. Here he meets a partridge, who speaks to him: ''I know that you should bring home the hunt in order to feed your children. Please take me as your hunt but do not shoot my child”.

In an Armenian folk tale “The King's Wife” we see another tradition of naming. The King's family was shipwrecked all the members were found except for the King's wife. He was found by a shepherd. The latter took care of the woman, soon they got married. From the beginning the woman said that if they had children she wanted to name them herself instead of the priest. She promised her mother-in-law that she would not change her shepherd man with 100 Kings. Afterwards they had 3 sons. The woman named them: What we were? What we became? What we will become?

Once the King visited them and demanded to tell him the reason of giving the children such names. Children's mother told him her story and explained how she had named her children: ''The shepherd has found me, looked after me, and the names of children are given according to my fortune''.

Apart from these ways of naming the characters in folk tales there is still another means of giving particular name to the character that is names based on characteristic features of the characters which describe that person; such as the wise, the lazy, the stupid, the shrewd, the miser, etc. In the following folk tale we come across such example, this folk tale is ''The Miser and His Wife''. As we have already noticed one of the main characters is named Miser, thus we can conclude that he is given such name because of being greedy, miser; we see it in the folk tale:

“Once on a time there was an old man who lived with his wife near a great town, He used to put by every bit of money he could lay his hands on. His wife was a simple woman and they lived together without quarrelling, but she had to put up with a very frugal fare. Sometimes, where there was a sixpence she thought might be spared for a comfortable dinner or supper, she used to ask her miser husband for it, but he would say, "No, wife, it must be put by for Good Fortune."

It was the same with every penny he could get hold of, and in spite of all she could say, almost every coin that came into the house was put by "for Good Fortune." The miser said this so often that some of his neighbors heard him, and one of them thought of a trick to get the money from him. The first day that the old chuff was away from home, the neighbor dressed himself like a wayfaring man and knocked at the door.

"Who are you?" said the wife. He answered, "I am Good Fortune, and I have come for the money that your husband has laid by for me. "The simple woman did not suspect any trickery and readily gave it to him. And when her husband came home, she told him very pleasantly that Good Fortune had called for the money that had been kept so long for him.

Thus we saw that the main hero lost his money because of being greedy and miser. We can notice once more that naming the character Miser was not accidental; this name described vividly the qualities of the name bearer.

Another example of naming the hero by the qualities describing him is that of the folk tale “Lazy Jack”. In the first paragraph we learn the reason of calling the boy Lazy Jack:

“Once upon a time there was a boy whose name was Jack, and he lived with his mother on a common.

They were very poor, and the old woman got her living by spinning, but Jack was so lazy that he would do nothing but bask in the sun in the hot weather, and sit by the corner of the hearth in the wintertime. So they called him Lazy Jack”.

In this connection in Armenian folklore we can point out the folk tale ''Lazy Huri'' «????? ?????». The main character is a young girl, whose name was Huri. This girl passed her days idly without doing any work or helping her mother. The neighbors seeing this named her ''Lazy Huri''. As for her mother, the latter praised her daughter all day long. She announced everywhere that she had brilliant daughter who did any work.

During our research we have met also such folk tales where the heroes are recognized just by the names of their parents; such as: that King's son, the sailor's daughter, etc.

There is an English folk tale where the above mentioned idea is obvious; this folk tale is “The Baker's Daughter”:

“A long time ago there lived in a town in Herefordshire a baker who used to sell bread to all the folk around. He was a mean, greedy man, who sought in every way to put money by, and who did not scruple to cheat such people as he was able when they came to his shop. He had a daughter who helped him in his business, being unmarried and living with him, and seeing how her father treated the people, and how he succeeded in getting money by his bad practices, she, too, in time came to do the like”.

We meet a similar folk tale in Armenian folklore. In the folk tale “Butcher's Son” the heroes got acquainted by mentioning their fathers' names; the one was the son of the King, the other the son of the butcher. Here also instead of names heroes are being recognized due to social state. “I am the guardsman of these fields; I am being called the Butcher's Son”.

It turned out that the butcher's son was guarding the meadow; the entry to this meadow by any animal was forbidden. The King's son was unaware of it; he has left his horse there. The guardian tried to find out the identity of the illegal man: “As I see you are not a local man, tell me who you are and what your business is?”

“I am the son of the King”. The response was sufficient for the guardian, it told him everything about the foreigner; both about his personality and about his occupation, that is to say about his name.

The name belongs to its bearer, but first of all the name is social, cultural indicator.

The vivid evidence of it are in English such phrases like “Somebody's name is `mud”, “Take somebody's name in vain” in Armenian «?????? ???», «??????? ????», «?????? ??????? ???», «?????? ????? ?????». Though everyone has name, it is not accidental that the person's authority, fame are confirmed through these formulas.

Summarizing we can say that the members of society in different historical periods used to have their particular names, which contain important peculiarities of the development of society. The main means of transferring these are folk tales.

Conclusion

Our work was devoted to the study of proper names in folk tales. The main aim of our research was to reveal the peculiarities of toponyms and antroponyms in Armenian and English folk tale material.

In our work we have presented various theories and views suggested bat scholars at different periods of history. After speaking of the science dealing with the study of proper names onomastics, we have turned to the features of proper names in language and speech. The central idea in our work was touching the role of proper names in folklore and particularly in folk tale;

Thus after deep analysis we have found out different peculiarities and manifestations of proper names in English and Armenian folk tales. Based on our research we can draw the following conclusions: proper names contain a great layer of information. The analysis of etymological word formation, semantic data of proper names, existing in folk tales, throws a new light on the process of ethno-cultural and historical development of the nation. Folk tales occupies a special position the in system of folklore genres; possess certain figurative-poetic structure in which the leading seat belongs to the proper names, capable to assess any situation and to give the figurative characteristics to any character. Besides, proper names enrich contextual semantics of a folk tale, causing a number of associative communications concerning mentality of the nation.

We consider that a proper name and functions of the hero in a folk tale can be interconnected.

During our research we have revealed various characteristics of proper names in folk tales. Thus the names created for certain heroes, characterize them from various sides. In magic folk tale proper names steal up depending on the actions of the hero, from its social status, the origin, the role in the given specific folk tale. We can conclude that a proper name and functions, qualities of the hero in a folk tale are interconnected.

The name belongs to its bearer, but first of all the name is social, cultural indicator. English and Armenian folktales are vivid examples of this. Besides, popular sayings existing in different cultures indicate the importance of the name for the name bearer. Though everyone has a name, it is not accidental that the person's authority and fame are confirmed through these formulas.

Summarizing we can say that the members of society in different historical periods used to have their particular names, which contain important peculiarities of the development of the society. The main means of transferring these are folk tales.

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