Unveiling the Sociolinguistic Significance of Feminine Personal Names in Ukrainian Culture: Exploring Grammatical, Historical, and Cultural Perspectives

Abstract

This study explores the grammatical, historical, cultural, semantic, and social dimensions of feminine personal names in Ukrainian, employing term theory. The analysis reveals that merely adding feminatives as direct counterparts to “masculine” nouns can result in inconsistencies, leading to violations of grammatical and phonological norms and potentially diminishing the language’s expressive potential. Furthermore, this binary opposition offers little improvement in the visibility of women while failing to accommodate the identification of non-binary individuals or the representation of personified objects. As a potential resolution, we propose adopting a generalized gender, conceptualized as a logical “OR” combining the simple genders. This category, supported by linguistic practice analysis, would involve replacing masculine nouns in their generalizing function with corresponding inclusive lexical units.