Anthroponyms in L. N. Tolstoy’s Povest’ “Hadji Murad”

This article considers the anthroponyms and the ways of naming characters in Tolstoy’s povest’ “Hadji Murad” and proved that onyms, patronymics and poetonyms fulfil an anticipative or foreshadowing function. Describing simple life of people in “Hadji Murad”, Tolstoy resorts to the generic naming of people by their age, family status and description of clothing. Mentioning the ambitious and faceless high-ranking people the author uses their titles or a military rank that often replace their surnames. Sometimes Tolstoy refers to the multidimensional representation of the characters and combines the indication of their social status, brief biographical information and portrait description. Showing his disfavour to Nikolas I, Tolstoy does not use the title “tsar” while describing him but refers to him by his name Nikolas or his name and patronymic when the latter becomes an object of worship or gives an order to kill people. In “Hadji Murad” Pyotr Mikhailovich Avdeev is a righteous man by Tolstoy. His three-part poetonym bears a powerful moral and religious implication. Tolstoy modifies some of the onyms of certain historical figures mentioned in the story in order to implicitly justify the deeds of these characters. The polemically emphasized discrepancy of the historical person’s onym with that one given to him by the author reflects the extinction of moral and heroic essence in this person. The author does not use the word “enemy”, he deprives the word “antagonist” of its negative connotation and does not mention the nationality of the belligerents; Tolstoy applies the only epic criterion of estimation to all characters and stands for the cessation of the slaughter and for mutual understanding.