The Modern Name-Giving Tradition among the Old Believers of Perm and Ochyor in Prikamye

Abstract

The paper presents the results of a study of the current state of the Old Believers’ name-giving tradition in the communities of Perm and Ochyor, which belong to the Belokrinitskaya Hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Old-Ritualist Church. The name systems of the communities, the ritual side of naming and its basic principles are considered. The research material is interviews with Old Believer clergy and community registers with baptismal records (2021 — early 2024). The analysis of the modern data is carried out in comparison with data from the registers of the communities of Perm and Ochyor a century ago (1908–1918), as well as with data from other studies of Old Believers’ anthroponymy. It is established that the modern tradition is a direct continuation of the earlier Old Believers’ name-giving tradition in the region under study and, more broadly, a continuation of the pre-schism Old Russian name-giving tradition. Among its main features is its focus on the church calendar, which determines the homogeneity of the name system, consisting entirely of Orthodox hagioanthroponyms, as well as the choice of a name from the saint’s day eight days after the birth of the person being baptized, with the possibility of counting eight days back when naming girls. Modern trends have also been established: the choice of a name according to the calendar and the date of baptism are left to the parents and become more arbitrary; the Old Believers’ name system has become less variable. Modern registers record the conversion of people of other faiths to the Russian Orthodox Old-Ritualist Church according to common Christian church rules; if the name of the person joining the church is not from the Old Believer calendar, a new calendar name is chosen according to genetic, semantic or phonetic principles.