Kognitív történeti névtan? A családnevek kialakulásának kérdése kognitív szemantikai keretben

The article deals with the question how historical personal names can be examined in the framework of cognitive semantics and whether the results of this research are compatible with those of traditional onomastics. To exemplify the complexity of the question the author treats the problems of the development of Hungarian family names. Distinctive name components functioned as bases for later family names can be divided into four groups: (i) names with filius, (ii) de + place name, (iii) names with dictus, (iv) patronymics (de genere). Onomastics claims that a distinctive name component becomes a true family name when it becomes steady: when Kovács (‘smith’) is not a smith by profes-sion any more, when all members of a family bear the same distinctive name, etc. Adapting the framework of cognitive semantics we must accept that giving a name is a cognitive act: out of the attributes (landmarks) of a person to be named the most characteristic feature (trajector) is chosen to form a name. When the feature disappears (a person called Kovács is not a smith any longer), the relation also dissolves and the distinctive name compo-nent becomes a family name. The author examines what factors are re-sponsible for this change in case of each above name type and detects why a given distinctive name becomes a family name out of the wide choice of possible name forms. The author claims that both traditional and cognitive considerations, al-though their approach and methods are different, reach the same conclu-sion. Furthermore, in the framework of cognitive semantics many prob-lems disregarded by traditional onomastics can easily be explained.