Anthroponyms As A Subclass Of The Lexical-Grammatical Class Of Nouns

The present article reports on the study of English forenames. It focuses on the comparison between a noun and a forename, which is a type of an anthroponym, in accordance with the principles of categorization, and the determination of some specific features of the latter. The material studied shows that anthroponyms (forenames) do not exist in isolation. They are a subclass of nouns as they have the main lexical-grammatical and morphological features being typical of the latter: to a certain extent, anthroponyms (forenames) are characteristic of the processes applying to the rest of the representatives of the given class, and forenames are involved in all these processes as other types of nouns. They perform the same syntactic functions, have their derivational patterns, and reference to gender. If required, they can be additionally determined by an article, an adjective, etc. However, there are a lot of discrepancies in understanding a proper name and a forename in particular, as demonstrated by a lack of unanimity of views on these linguistic categories.