"Exciting Onomastics": Abstract of presentation in the 6th Baltic student conference "Bridges in the Baltic", Tartu University

The presentation introduces not so much with the traditional onomastics which deals mostly with etymology, primary semantics and derivation of place names and personal names, but mainly with recent socio-onomastic studies. The paper relies on recent Latvian onomastic studies, comparing it with analogical research in other Baltic countries. Some of interesting overview in contemporary anthroponymy: study of rare, only once registered personal names in Latvia, as well as new trends and tendencies, choosing the new-born’s name. Socio-anthroponymy nowadays is particularly focused on the phenomenon of name change (fresh research in this field is based on the list of name change cases during 2004–2016, more than 12,616 individual cases in total). Speaking about toponymy, an interest has increased especially in the field of informal or slang urbanonymy – especially in motivation of coining them and usage in youth language. Rather untouched area of contemporary onomastics in the Baltic countries – research on ergonys (names of institutions, companies, firms, enterprises, and other businesses), as well as increasing interest during last decades is causing a quite new area of economonyms (names of commercial products). In the last few years one of the favourite objects of research – special names in the virtual environment (selection of nicknames, names and place names in electronic games, etc.).
Without a doubt, contemporary onomastics includes not only traditional studies of onomastics, but also the research in less known, but not less exciting socio-onomastic fields, i.e., the pragmatics of names.