SACRED MOTIVES IN UKRAINIAN MILITARY ERGONYMY

Over the past four years, a new trend has emerged in the Ukrainian onymic system: giving proper names to military units by their members without a special procedure of their formalisation. These proper names are quickly migrating into official contexts and becoming known to the general public. The purpose of the article is to analyse Ukrainian military ergonyms of sacred origin, clarify their nature, modes of formation, and functional load. The object of the study is Ukrainian-language ergonyms, the subject is the sacred sector of Ukrainian military ergonyms. The actual material of the study was collected from open sources (mass media, online platforms) during 2022–2026. The number of collected proper names of military units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is 650, 60 of which are included in the sacred sector. The scale of the corresponding nominated groups varies: from a corpus or brigade to the crew of a separate military vehicle. The spelling and graphic features of the representation of onyms are preserved according to the original, so along with the standard transmission of proper names with a capital letter, we find either the absence of the initial capital letter or the fact that the entire name is given in capital letters. The language of the original is also preserved, namely: Ukrainian (337), English (275), Latin (21), German (5), Norwegian (4), Belarusian (3), French (3), Spanish (1), Greek (1). In total, almost 10% of the collected ergonyms are mainly formed by transonymization of theonyms, demononyms, agionyms, toponyms, chrononyms, chrematonyms, ergonyms, mythozoonyms and mythonyms associated with ten religious and mythological systems: ancient Greek, ancient Roman, ancient Slavic, ancient Persian and Scandinavian mythology, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, shamanism and Shintoism. In turn, the subclasses of these proper names already allow us to talk about the motivation for choosing an ergonym to designate a military unit. In military ergonym creation, the dominant positions are occupied by the transonymization of theonyms (28) and the transonymization of mythozoonyms (13). Transonymization of mythopersonyms (5), demononyms (3), chrematonyms (3), toponyms (2), chrononyms (2), agionyms (1), ergonyms (1), as well as onymization of the appellative (2) occur much less frequently. Certain sacred functions turned out to be the most popular in the Ukrainian military ergonymy, because sacred ergonyms almost always symbolize strength, victory, war, revenge, death or, conversely, rebirth, protection and salvation. Military ergonyms serve as peculiar language amulets and symbolically attract the power of the patron character.