Summary

Surname in the Context of Cultural Globalization: “Personal Brand” or Part of the Language Heritage

Under the pragmatic conditions of cultural globalization, a surname is considered the property of a person or even “personal brand” rather than of the language. Nevertheless, with regard to the main aspects of surname concept definition, a surname is not only considered a matter of law, but also a matter of language. For this essential reason, any change in its usage regulation must be justified by linguistic arguments as well. The purpose of this article is to review the recorded cases of Lithuanian female anthroponyms in the ancient manuscript sources of Lithuania Proper and Lithuania Minor and to provide linguistic arguments justifying or denying the validity of legalization of non-suffixed female surnames. Non-suffixed female surnames found in historical documents by researchers of Lithuania Proper are reviewed. The results of the study on Lithuania Minor acronyms carried out by the present author in 2017 (about 18600 records of persons, of which 6767 are female) are used for the purpose of reviewing female naming cases in the region of Lithuania Minor. On this basis the formation of the Lithuania Minor female anthroponyms is assessed.