ON THE QUESTION OF COLLECTIVE FAMILY NAMES IN BULGARIAN

This article examines several types of collective nouns in the Bulgarian language and its dialects that are formed with the morphemes -ovi/-ini, -ovci, -ovceh, -ovcem: Ivanovi/Ivankini, Ivanovci, Ivanovceh, and Ivanovcem. All of these mean ‘the home and family of Ivan' (except Ivankini ‘the home and family of Ivanka'), and represent different case variations on the same family name. The origin of the first type of family name in the list (Ivanovi, etc.) is the most difficult to explain, but in the second part of the article the author proposes an origin in the old masculine dative singular forms, which coincide with the forms of the possessive adjectives.