Spanish and Ukrainian ethnonyms in comparison with other European languages: ethnolinguistic and culturological aspects

Abstract

This article proposes to analyse, interprete and qualify, from historical (including, to some extent, etymological in certain cases, since many Slavic etnonyms, just as those, which are Romance, Germanic etc., have another origin), semantic, stylistic, functional and sociolinguistic points of view, certain ethnonymic names, word-combinations, derivatives, and phraseologisms in Spanish (by way of tertium comparationis), Ukrainian and other languages (Slavic, Germanic, Romance), as well as demonyms of an expressive nature, in particular nicknames, derogatory denominations, and  ethnophaulisms, which reflect, by means of their lingual (origin, formation etc.) and extralingual (perception at a psychological level), a range of ethnocultural features and, in a nutshell, the so called national or ethnic stereotypes. Secondary (mainly metonymic) meanings of many ethnic names are illustrative samples of deonymization. There is also a great number of colloquial peoples’ names and phraseological units with ethnonymic components, which refer to peculiar features of ethnic mentality (closely related to the linguistic picture of the world) and are manifested in a particularly significant way when comparing material of various and different languages serving as a technically essential method for this study. The comparison mentioned demonstrate also various consequences of language contacts, historical and modern, that have become rather intensive at present.