| Abstract [eng] |
This dissertation analyses the process of integration of the Polish nobility in Samogitia in the 16th–18th centuries via the prisms of migration, language and memory. In the beginning of the paper there is an analysis of the status of the newly-arrived Polish noble and how this status changed in Lithuanian law, examining the main contours in the migration process of the Polish nobility (push-pull factors, re-emigration, and migration chains). This dissertation also analyses the communication space of the arrived nobles, creating a model illustrating how the Lithuanian language was mastered by later generations of the new-arrivals, and examining the features of their anthroponymy: the spread of names that sounded unusual to the local Samogitians, the formation of surnames of the new-arrivals, how these surnames were presented in chancelleries and alike, and unsual instances where Polish surnames were “Lithuanian-ised”. In this study, the extensions used along with the first names of newly-settled Polish families are also discussed as they conveyed the Polish origins that functioned in the memory of these families (via their progenitors, places of birth and eponyms). There is a separate section on the analysis of a “scenario” of how a family that had settled in Samogitia searched for their Polish origins (the case of the Nagurski family). The conclusions of this multi-disciplinary research unambiguously dismantle the hitherto entrenched historiographical stereotypes concerning Polonisation/Lithuanianisation processes among Lithuanians and Poles, and also testify to the complex and multi-dimensional Polonisation phenomenon in Samogitia. |
