Diversity of Names for Tver Inhabitants in the Local Press (Late 20th and Early 21st Centuries)

Abstract

The paper deals with names with which the local press referred to Tver inhabitants as a whole at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21th centuries. The author analyzes the dynamic of their use from the 1990s, when the historical name Tver was restored, to the 2010s (studying statistical data for the use of these katoikonyms in Tver press, as well as some texts in local media which contain the local community’s reflections about the names for Tver inhabitants). The study reveals both preferences of different local media, and the influence of philological recommendations on the language of media. In 1990, when the city Tver was given back its original name, one of the local newspapers published an article by professor R. D. Kuznetsova (Tver State University), where the katoikonym tverityane pl. (tverityanin sing., tverityanka sing. f.) was declared to be the most appropriate due to its appearance in the historical period of forming “all-Russian national norms of language” and its usage in the Russian literature of the 19th century. This variant was not very characteristic for the local usage of the 20th century (unlike the others), but due to the linguistic recommendations it gained normative status and asserted itself in almost half of the local media. In the rest of the media other variants were used: tveritchi pl. (tverich sing., tverichanka sing. f.) or tverichane pl. (tverichanin sing., tverichanka sing. f.). The recommendations mentioned above also furthered the marginalization of the variant tveryaki pl. (tveryak sing., tveryachka sing. f.), which was almost wholly forced out from the local newspapers. The author considers the success of the intentional reactualization of the least popular onym to be caused by the long period (almost 60 years) when the city Tver carried the name of Kalinin, and any derivates from the name Tver were thus forced out to the periphery of usage.