The Russian pagan anthroponymicon in the twenty-first century (based on questionnaire survey data)

Abstract

The article examines the contemporary Russian pagan anthroponymicon. The study is based on materials from a questionnaire survey conducted in 2025-2026 among members of pagan communities and individual adherents of pagan worldviews who do not belong to structured associations. The questionnaire consisted of two thematic sections: the first aimed to establish the respondents social and religious profile (eight questions), while the second focused directly on the specific features of pagan names in twenty-first-century Russia (ten questions).The preliminary analysis of the questionnaire data leads to the following conclusions.First, the average representative of the contemporary Russian pagan diaspora is a middle-aged (43 years old) urban resident, most often employed in occupations of the “person-to-person” type and, in terms of the range of professions represented, broadly comparable to the average Russian. The self-identification of adherents of this worldview is concentrated around the terms “pagan” and “Rodnover.” The overwhelming majority of respondents do not belong to pagan organizations (communities). Second, the “second” name is a fundamental and, for most neophytes, the only element of initiation that enables entry into a new pagan tradition. Third, the most common ways of acquiring a pagan name are a naming ceremony conducted by a religious specialist (priest or volkhv) and an independent choice of a sacred name (self-naming). The latter tendency confirms the development of “pagan individualization.” Fourth, the choice of a pagan name is determined, on the one hand, by personal and unconscious factors (intuition) and, on the other, is understood as the will of higher powers. Fifth, for a significant proportion of informants, the second name functions exclusively as a religious “module/pass” marking belonging to the constructed micro-world of the ingroup. Distinctive features of the pagan anthroponymicon include two-stem names, parallel male and female name forms, and references to the natural world.