Displays of Socio-Cultural Priorities of the Lower Dnipro Ship-owners in the NaDisplays of Socio-Cultural Priorities of the Lower Dnipro Ship-owners in the Names of Coastal Sailors: the first quarter of the 20th centurymes of Coastal Sailors: the first quarter of the 20th century

The report considers the informational possibilities of the documents of the Kherson State Archives for the knowledge of socio-cultural priorities and the real mechanisms of formation of social and national consciousness in the socio-professional group of the Lower Dnipro owners of coasting vessels. The study of the source base gives grounds to assert that the modern funds of the state institutions of the Russian Empire in the Kherson State Archives are only the remnants of the former departmental archives, and the most complete funds presenting the problems in the specified chronological framework, that is, the names of coastal merchant ships of the basin of the Lower Dnipro in the early twentieth century are the funds of Kherson port customs. If we are talking about the most ancient documents found on the subject today, then they are related to the end of the 18th century. Mostly they record the names of military frigates and large merchant ships that entered Kherson port and also have Greek and Turkish names. This allows for interesting parallels in the continuity of the tradition of names, in particular biblical and sacred history. In the main part of the message, the identified names are grouped and analyzed. The hierarchy of priority of ship-owners in the choice of names was as follows: in the first place are the names of their own, followed by the names that personify the biblical and evangelical heroes, saints (the absolute priority of St. Mychola), the fathers of the church, and others. Further in descending order are geographical names, social definitions and family relationships, qualitative definitions, general concepts, natural phenomena, names of historical figures and famous people, historical terms that denoted social division or specific occupations, Soviet and communist names, astronomical names or phenomena, names from the world of birds, names from mythology, fairy tales and Legend, ancient Ukrainian social concepts, ethnonyms, names of authors and literary heroes, names from natural history, exotic names rarely used in the region, names and titles of members of the Russian Imperial House, names from the world of fish, water creatures, names from vegetation and animal world and from the world of insects. The conclusion is that the statistics given in the text show the wide range of preferences of ship-owners, mostly conservative and often romantic and the ones that reflected real social and spatial self-determination, national, and in the Soviet times, more and more political priorities. The potential of the materials used in the study of the problem is far from being exhausted, so the topic remains promising for further research.