Janusze, halyny, sebixy i karyny. Memy internetowe jako źródło nowych eponimów.

Internet memes are an important element of the modern culture and theirvocabulary is transmitted to other texts thus becoming an important componentof communication and familiarity with it becomes necessary for the understandingof various statements and utterances. The object of the description is the memeeponyms and their derivatives. In the analysis of derivative words, the nestmethodology and synchronic word formation principles were applied, and in thedescription of their bases, i.e. eponyms identical to the base ones, referenceswere made to the studies by B. Dereń and M. Rutkowski. The research permittedthe determination of a high word formation activity of meme eponyms the statusof which varies: some of them are stabilised, which allows their recognition asdictionary units, while others are textual. A large number of the structures havebeen created with the use of the same formants and word formation techniques.What deserves particular attention is verbs, which are very seldom coined basedon fi rst names. Similarities to creating eponyms based on last names can beseen in derivation. Adjectives with the suffi xes –owat(y) and –ow(y) are coinedfairly often. The analysed eponyms and their derivatives refer to the stereotypesof Poles functioning in online texts, which differ from the self-stereotypesfunctioning in the Polish culture to date.