Gender ratio in the mirror of the urbanonymy of Vitebsk and Bialystok at the beginning of the 21st century: a comparative aspect

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the comprehension and description of urbanonymous vocabulary in connection with the phenomenon of gender. Specific features of the representation of the gender component in the urbanonymicons of the eastern Belarusian city of Vitebsk and Рolish Bialystok are determined. The report shows general and specific aspects in the sets of “female” and “male” names of the linear objects of the Vitebsk urbanonym system in comparison with theof Bialystok. The presence of specific gender features is stated both at the level of qualitative content and the statistical structure of the system of names of intracity objects. In particular, information about the proportion of the manifestation of the presence of people of different sex in it is of a significant nature, with assessments attributed to men and women. In the body of memorial names of streets, squares, squares, the priority of the masculine principle is manifested: “feminine” is correlated with “masculine” in Vitebsk as 1 to 8.5; in Bialystok — 1 to 8.3. The absence in the Vitebsk list of the spheres of the activity of men, whose names served as the basis for naming the linear and territorial objects such as categories as church and religious figures and saints, kings, princes, representatives of a noble family, literary characters and the names of literary works serves as proof of the existing differences in the use of male names to create urbanonyms and their connection with the historical and cultural differences between the Belarusian and Polish societies, in particular, the disappearance of the privileged class of nobles and the titles of rulers as a result of the establishment of Soviet power in Belarus, as well as the greater attention of Poles to their national culture and literature. It is emphasized that a consideration of urbanonymous picture of the world in the gender paradigm can contribute to the disclosure of gender stereotypes that exist in modern culture, as well as the establishment of a specific cultural and historical content, one invested in jointly by Belarusians and Poles in understanding reality.