Antroponimia Białegostoku w XVII-XVIII wieku

Abstract

The lands on the banks of River Białystok (now called Białka) belonged in the 16ᵗʰ century to the Bakałarzewicz and the Jundziło families. Both families were descendants of Jakub Raczko Tabutowicz, the representative of a Lithuanian noble family, which prior to 1450 had been granted the lands on River Białystok by Zygmunt Kiejstutowicz or by Kazimierz Jagiellonczyk Grand Dukes of Lithuania. Raczko's two sons, Michno, ancestor of the Bakałarzewicz family, and Jundzilo, forefather of the Jundziło's, divided between themselves the lands inherited from Raczka. In consequence two separate management centres came into existence, called manors: Białystok on the lower section of River Białystok, and Dojlidy on its upper section. From 1569 on, the boundary line between these two parts of Raczko's former lands became the frontier between the crown-Iands of the Polish Kingdom and the Lithuanian Grand Duchy. In 1547 Katarzyna Wołłowicz, the widow of Mikołaj Bakałarzewicz, transferred the Białystok estate to her second husband, Piotr Wiesiołowski. Thanks to the owners from the family of Raczka and Wiesiołowski a mansion was built, to be transformed into a defence castle, and a Baroque church and a market of an unusual shape came into existence. In this property ethnic groups and religions were mixing, and settlers from the East and West would arrive, many Jews settled there and some time before 1717 they built in Białystok their synagogue. In 1764 the next big synagogue was built. In 1661 Stefan Czarniecki was granted, as reward for his splendid war record, the ownership of the Białystok estate. Through Stefan Czarniecki and his daughter Białystok was taken over by the Branicki family of Gryf coat-of arms. I side with the opinion that it was Stefan Mikołaj Branicki who, in 1692, obtained the city rights for his settlement. A great benefactor for Białystok was Jan Klemens Branicki, a pretender to the Polish throne. Under his supervision the town grew, a splendid palace was built. Branicki was accompanied by his wife Izabella, sister of the king Stanisław Poniatowski. Since 1796 Białystok became the capital of the region in the Prussian sector of the partitioned Poland, and since 1807 in the Russian one. The forming process of the proper names in the city of Bialystok was closely related to the development of the colonisation of the lands of Bialystok, the settling of the city and the socio-political historie changes. The anthroponyms extracted from historical sources reflect the mode of nomination in various social groups such as the aristocracy, the nobility, the middle-class, and the peasants as well as the various populations of servants. One part of names represents the different ethnical groups such as Poles, Jews, Germans as well as the population of Belorussian and Lithuanian origin. On the one hand, there is a tendency of unifying the means of identifying the inhabitants of Bialystok on the other there is a differentiation resulting from the hierarchy of state or the conditions of nationality. If we consider the three basic characteristics of the surname: heredity, family succession and linguistic stability we should assert that towards the end of the 18ᵗʰ century the surname existed already in the anthroponymic system of Bialystok. On the other hand this mode of nomination did not include all the social classes of Bialystok. It is completely clear that the process of formation and assimilation of the inherited proper names lasted a few centuries. In the pre-partitioned Poland heredity was not the result of acts of right but rather resulted from various social and custom causes. The first to be stabilise were the names of upper social strata owing to the fact of their existence in the legal sense of the public life of the country as for example the case of the Branicki family. In the 18 century the anthroponymy of Bialystok was characterised by the phenomenon of variability of the proper names resulting from the lack of regulation as well as legal instability. Generally the same name appeared in some graphic and phonetic alternatives such as Jezobik, Jezubik, Jozebik, Jozobik, Jozabik, Jozowik,Josobuk and Jasobeck. The Prussian authority introduced the legal regularisation with the Jewish population. In this ethnic group the lack of stability in the proper names was a very widespread phenomenon. In the anthroponymy of Bialystok the system of the double name (name and surname) was universalised, its formation in Poland was a process of long duration. It began in the middle of the 13ᵗʰ century, and entirely generalised in the 18ᵗʰ century dominating in the nobility and the middle-class and consolidating among the peasants and the city dwellers. Semantic and structural analysis showed that among the proper names in use in Bialystok of the 18ᵗʰ century, there was an obvious domination of Polish proper names. However, it is necessary to note the high frequency in the use of local surnames with suffix -ski//-cki. Most of the proper names have in their base the name of the Podlaski region villages the such as Boratyński, Hryniewicki, Kalinowski, Krupicki, Moszczyński, Nowodworski, Szpakowski, Terlikowski, Zawadzki. The local surnames became a symbol of a noble origin and constituted a pattern for townsmen and peasants which added suffix -ski to their appellative surnames. Names comprising in their Slavic structure the anthroponymic suffix -ewicz//-owicz (for example Aleksandrowicz, Borsukiewicz, Ignatowicz, Korbutowicz, Morozowicz, Szemetowicz) clearly affirms their characteristic presence in the Slavic frontier area. In the peasant's anthroponyms of the Podlaski area of the 18ᵗʰ century, the atypical productivity of the Eastern Slavic suffix -uk//-czuk did not play a great role for the anthroponymy of Bialystok. On the other hand according to analysed sources, the names possessed more than 100 examples (Andrzejczuk, Hawryluk, Korolczuk, Panasiuk, Waszczuk). In a concern of identification, the following professions' names such as Hajduk, Kowal, Krawiec, Kucharz, Slosarz, Snycerz, Stolarz, Stelmach Stangret, Szewc, and Tapisier were very often used. It proved the existence of professions really exerted by the inhabitants of Bialystok. These names were also popular among the various ethnic groups. While basing on the phonetic, structural and lexical criterion we had distinguished a rather significant names' group which was characteristic in the Eastern Slavic and especially Belarussian anthroponymy. The radicle of these names, especially of patronymic type, derived from first names of baptism in the Orthodox Church and their hypocoristics as well as Eastern Slavic appellatives (for example Harasimowicz, Kuryowicz, Ochrymowicz, Mikulicz, Hawrylik, Naumczyk, Niecierko, Morozowicz, Sołowiej). We also note the presence of anthroponimic Eastern Slavic suffixes like -ewicz//-owicz, -uk//-czuk, -ko//-enko, -enia. There is an unspecified number of names which classification in Polish or Eastern Slavic groups is impossible because of the reciprocal similarity of the languages, the adopted suffixes and the anthroponymic structures and the use of related sources of first names. The anthroponimic sources of Bialystok also show the presence of a Baltic component and especially Lithuanian. Functioning in a Slavic environment the lithuanism underwent Polish or Belorussian influence. The slavisation often led to phonetic or quite phonetico-structural adaptations as for the following names Gryguć, Gudaszewicz, Backiel and Kiejwiel. A great number of Jewish names constitute a specific group. The identification of people was generalised during the 18 century. The Jewish society took different forms. The most significant element was always the name. First of all, there was a resourceful use of Bible's names, names formed from Hebraic, Arameinian, Acadian languages and Yiddish first names. The derived forms of first names carried obvious traces of slavisation like an inevitable result of use. First of all, the patronym filled the function of name in which dominated typical structures of the Podlaski region with -ewicz//-owicz sufixes (Aronowicz, Boruchowicz, Gieszonowicz, Wolfowicz). In the Prussian registers, the patronymic was especially the first name. The names of professions also filled a significant role. Thus the elements of identification fulfilling the function of names did not show the characteristic of heredity and were unstable. The anthroponimic groups largely used by the inhabitants of Bialystok are German names adapted to the Polish anthroponimic system as for example Szulc, Szuman, Szwarc. The names of Prussian civil servants appearing in the tax registers during the partition period were especially foreign as for example Drescher, Langhammer, Schmidt and Schulenberg. In the female names, the andronymes and the patronymic forms appeared clearly as for example Andrejowa and Andrejowna, Czarniawska and Czarniawszczanka, Maciejczukowa and Maciejczukowna. Nevertheless the form with -ska was used as well for married women as for the unmarried ones. Moreover, a phenomenon of virilisation of women's names, especially the German ones was noticed. The presence of the hybrid forms was notified, which is a completely natural phenomenon near the borders' region characterised by the multi-ethnicity of the settlements. At the end of the 18ᵗʰ century surnames were not legalized but they already fixed in a spontaneous way in the anthroponymic system of Bialystok.