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This article addresses the issue of linguosemiotic interpretation of proper names functioning in a literary text. The research aims to identify the linguosemiotic specificity of onyms through which the fantastic world of the work in the urban fantasy genre is constructed. The primary source of the study is S. Lukyanenko’s novel “Night Watch,” which served as the basis for the creation of the “Watch Universe” literary cycle. For the first time, a comprehensive analysis of the onomastic continuum (over 300 words) denoting the real and unreal world is conducted. A classification of the material forming the onomastic space of the text is proposed. The names of the characters in the work are examined: anthroponyms, mythoanthroponyms, neomythonyms. Contextual, componential, corpus-based, linguostylistic, and structurally-semiotic analysis methods are applied to establish the role of onyms in shaping artistic images, spatial organization of the work, and authorial idiolect. The decoding procedure of the ‘hidden meanings’ of onyms is carried out by utilizing techniques of etymological data semanticization. It is demonstrated that onomastic world modeling is implemented in the novel: character names serve as image-centric signs, anthropogroups categorize the Light and Dark as an East-West confrontation. Among the main functions of onyms are metatextual, allusive, and axiological.

The article examines the lexical and semantic features of fictonyms and mythonyms in the linguistic space of Saratov, in particular, the influence of literary and mythological characters on the ergonymic portrait of the city. The purpose of this article was to identify the pragmatic potential of ergonyms that arose on the basis of literary and mythological proper names as well as to consider how this lexical layer affects the creation of a linguistic personality of citizens. The processes of transonymization in the nomination of urban objects largely reflect the peculiarities of the functioning of the Russian language in the onomasticon and indicate the linguistic and cultural potential of this layer of vocabulary in the linguistic space of the city. The author concludes that ergonymy expressing the cultural basis of nominees in the field of literary proper names performs a pragmatic function to emphasize the prestige and specificity of the institution.

The article aims to identify and interpret the onomastic material collected in the course of linguistic and general field research in the Tamyan-Katai and Argayash cantons of Bashkiria, carried out by the Academic Center of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the BASSR together with the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1920s–1930s. The source materials were the documents, reports, and texts collected from the population during the expeditions of 1928–1929, now stored in the Scientific Archives of the Ural Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. These sources were found to include much data on the onomastics of the Bashkir language: personal names and surnames, collective and individual nicknames, geographical names, ethnic names of clans and tribes, tribal divisions and ethnic groups living on the territory of the republic. This also includes the names of mythical characters, placenames, and cosmic objects registered both is documents (reports, route sheets, lists of informants, indexes of tribal names and attributes of Bashkir clans, etc.) and first-person records from informants (regarding the history of the clan, village, family, customs, beliefs, fairy tales, legends, etc.) These documents are of great value, since they contain archaic material relating not only to onomastics, but also to the views and beliefs of the Bashkirs. A good example would be the mention of names and nicknames of the Bashkir healer-spirits (baksy), which evidences that the forest Bashkirs still retained relics of shamanism at the beginning of the 20th century.

The results of the analysis of semantic groups of mythonyms of the poetic heritage of I. A. Bunin as means of explication of various historical-informational and cultural-symbolic worldview meanings are presented in the article. The relevance of the work is due to the interest of literary onomastics in identifying units of the onomastic code of artistic and aesthetic systems of various domestic and foreign writers. The novelty of the work is associated with the inclusion of lexical units with different ratios of the nominated image and denotation into the Bunin mythonymicon, with the synthesis of linguistic and literary-cultural approaches in characterizing each of the selected lexical units. The twelve described semantic groups of mythological names are organized in the form of a field with a core and peripheral parts. For each group, the features of contextual use are noted. The authors come to the conclusion that in the Bunin picture of the world, mythonyms of various semantics perform text-forming and meaning-forming functions. They not only represent archetypal images (Fire, Bottom, Feminine, Garden, etc.), axiological oppositions (light — darkness, good — evil, etc.), key ideas, themes and motives (the idea of being still, themes of love, death, motives of temptation, resurrection, dreams, etc.), historiosophical concepts (moral choice and fortitude), but also participate in the creation of an individual author’s myth.

The article is devoted to one of the problems of literary onomastics — an inventory of onomastic units of literary texts as an integral part of the vocabulary of the language of a particular writer. The relevance of the chosen topic is due to the poorly studied issue of the mythonymicon of poetry and prose by I. A. Bunin. The novelty of the work is associated with the description of the mythological names of Bunin the poet as an integral system. The classification of mythonyms is based on five principles: the source from which the name was used (there were three such sources: etiological, anthropogonic, heroic, cult and other types of myths; religious and philosophical literature; multi-genre works of Slavic folklore); the nominated image of a fantastic object (eleven semantic groups are recorded: mythoanthroponyms, theonyms, demononyms, mythotonyms, mythohydronyms, mythoornithonyms, etc.); etymology (otonymic, otapellative and special contextual mythological names are marked); structural type (simple or oneword mythonyms, complex, represented by a bilexeme, and compound mythonyms, two-word and three-word ones are fixed); the presence of connotations in semantics (names with negative and positive connotative backgrounds were found). The author comes to the conclusion that mythonyms in I.A.Bunin's poetry become those stable linguistic signs that carry a huge amount of historical and cultural information and have a rich associative potential, accumulating the specifics of the writer's worldview, they contribute to the modeling of the text space.

The article is devoted to studying the types of modifications of phraseological units with mythological allusions. The functions performed by them in the English discourse are characterized. The relevance of the study is due to the insufficient knowledge of intentionally modified precedent units - phraseological units with a mythological component - and the specifics of their functioning in the discursive space of the English language. The novelty of the study is seen in the explicitation of the modifications (transformations) classification of precedent units in relation to phraseological units containing mythonyms that refer to ancient Greek myths. The author identifies three main modification types of the precedent units of phraseological units with a mythonym component: semantic, structural-lexical and syntactic. Particular attention is paid to identifying the functions of modified phraseological units in multi-discourse English texts. It is shown that the modification of the considered precedent units allows the author of the statement to originally identify the situations and events illuminated by him (the qualifying function of the modified phraseological units), give the text expressiveness and brightness (expressive-decorative function), convincingly express his point of view (persuasive function), convey irony or create humorous effect through a language game (human function), identify their group affiliation (password function).

The results of a comparative analysis of female demonic characters that exist in the myths and folklore of the peoples of Western Siberia are presented. It is noted that the total assimilation and leveling of the peculiarities of distinctive cultures did not occur, despite the fact that the rituals and myths of the West Siberian peoples were subjected to processes of mutual influence, flow and adaptation for centuries. The relevance of the study is due to the need to study the existing picture both in its integrity and in individual fragments. It is reported that the image of a female witch, a malicious old woman, is found in the myths and tales of most of the peoples living in Western Siberia. The article analyzes the etymology of the names and attributes of female demonic characters: Porne in Khanty mythology, Parne in Nenets mythology, Forest old woman and Albasty among Siberian Tatars, Baba Yaga among Slavs. The authors pay special attention to the commonality of mythological motifs, the similar structure of fairy tales, arising on the basis of demonic images of the feminine type. The possible relationship of these images with totemic representations, common in ancient cultures, is indicated. The question of the correlation of the folklore plot “the boy and the witch” with the ritualism of the West Siberian peoples, in particular, with the rites of birth, initiation, and fire worship, is examined. By comparing the traditions of neighboring cultures, the archetypal nature of the initiation scenario while maintaining its ethnospatial specificity is proved.

It has been carried out an analysis of the author neomythonyms ans mythappelatives. It is given examples of Russian and foreign onyms and appellatives and also enumerated some mythonyms in literature of the 20th century. The material for this work are fiction genres, namely: novel by D.A. Emets “Methodius Buslaev. Magician of the midnight”, novel by S. Antonov “Dark tunnels”, novel by A.D. Glukhovsky “Metro 2033” and a collection of Max Frei “Russian foreign fairy tale – 1”. Language units were selected by continuous sampling. The paper also considers such notions as neologisms, potebtial words and occasionalisms. Differences between neomythonyms and author neomythonyms, as well as between appellatives and mythappelatives are distinguished. The language of national fantasy and science fiction of 2021 centuries is marked by the criteria for determining author neomythonyms and mythappelatives: by the method of formation and functioning. According to the analysis of new lexical units it has been found an active expand of the vocabulary of the Russian language due to the appearance of new and onyms and appellatives that went beyond the occasional units and are widely used among fans of fantasy and science fiction. The emergence of such a large number of author units is due to the great creative potential of contemporary writers, and the active development of Russian science fiction and fantasy of 20-21 centuries.

The author suggests a new etymology for the mythonym Čugaĭster known in the folklore of the Carpathian Ukrainians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]