Linguosemiotics of Proper Names in Novel ‘Night Watch’ by S. Lukyanenko

This article addresses the issue of linguosemiotic interpretation of proper names functioning in a literary text. The research aims to identify the linguosemiotic specificity of onyms through which the fantastic world of the work in the urban fantasy genre is constructed. The primary source of the study is S. Lukyanenko’s novel “Night Watch,” which served as the basis for the creation of the “Watch Universe” literary cycle. For the first time, a comprehensive analysis of the onomastic continuum (over 300 words) denoting the real and unreal world is conducted. A classification of the material forming the onomastic space of the text is proposed. The names of the characters in the work are examined: anthroponyms, mythoanthroponyms, neomythonyms. Contextual, componential, corpus-based, linguostylistic, and structurally-semiotic analysis methods are applied to establish the role of onyms in shaping artistic images, spatial organization of the work, and authorial idiolect. The decoding procedure of the ‘hidden meanings’ of onyms is carried out by utilizing techniques of etymological data semanticization. It is demonstrated that onomastic world modeling is implemented in the novel: character names serve as image-centric signs, anthropogroups categorize the Light and Dark as an East-West confrontation. Among the main functions of onyms are metatextual, allusive, and axiological.

Sergey Lukyanenko, Night Watch, proper name, onomastics, mythonym, linguosemiotics, fantasy