The first title in the MONOMIT publishing catalogue explores the onomastic heritage of Petlovača, a village in the Mačva region of Serbia, preserving local names as traces of language, history, family memory and community identity.
Dr Anđelka Lazić
MONOMIT
Dragana Drljačić, PhD
Šabac, Serbia
Serbian
First edition
Onomastika mačvanskog sela Petlovače – Imenoslov is a study devoted to the names preserved in the linguistic and cultural memory of Petlovača, a village in the Mačva region of western Serbia.
Through onomastic material, the book records elements of local history and everyday life that are easily lost when they remain only in oral memory. Personal names, family names, nicknames and other forms of naming become a way of reading the community itself — its relationships, traditions, language and continuity across generations.
The work combines linguistic research with a strong local-cultural dimension, making it relevant not only to specialists in language and onomastics, but also to readers interested in Mačva, local history, genealogy, cultural heritage and community memory.
Names are more than labels.
They can preserve information about origin, kinship, occupation, character, migration, local speech, historical circumstances and the ways in which a community understands itself.
By documenting the names connected with Petlovača, Imenoslov contributes to preserving a part of intangible cultural heritage that might otherwise gradually disappear from collective memory.
The book therefore functions both as a linguistic study and as a record of one local community.
To preserve a name is also to preserve a fragment of memory.
Dr Anđelka Lazić is a linguist, author and educator whose research and professional work have been closely connected with the language, traditional culture and cultural memory of the Mačva region.
Her postgraduate research focused on onomastics, including the study Mačvanska imena u prvim krštenicama Miloševa vremena (Mačva Personal Names in the Earliest Baptismal Records from the Time of Miloš), while her doctoral dissertation, Leksika tradicionalne kulture u Mačvi (The Lexicon of Traditional Culture in Mačva), examined the vocabulary through which traditional life, customs and cultural experience are preserved in language.
Her long-standing interest in the linguistic heritage of Mačva has resulted in a number of books and studies, including Jela i pića u Mačvi (Food and Drink in Mačva), Građa za rečnik govora Mačve (Materials for a Dictionary of the Mačva Dialect), Mačvanska imena u prvim krštenicama Miloševa vremena (Mačva Personal Names in the Earliest Baptismal Records from the Time of Miloš) and Rečnik leksike sa dominantnom kulturnom komponentom (Dictionary of Vocabulary with a Dominant Cultural Component).
Her engagement with onomastic material goes back several decades. In 1989, she collected field material for the Onomastics Committee of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, contributing data used in academic research.
Alongside her scholarly work, she has extensive experience in teaching, editing, proofreading, reviewing and literary criticism. Her work brings together language, local memory and cultural heritage — the same intersection at the heart of Onomastika mačvanskog sela Petlovače – Imenoslov (Onomastics of the Mačva Village of Petlovača – A Register of Names).
Onomastika mačvanskog sela Petlovače – Imenoslov marks the beginning of MONOMIT Publishing.
With its first publishing title, MONOMIT is expanding its cultural work into the publication of books that preserve knowledge, memory, creativity and heritage and make them accessible to wider communities.
Publication support
The publication of Onomastika mačvanskog sela Petlovače – Imenoslov is supported by the Elixir Foundation and the City of Šabac.
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The book is currently in preparation for publication.
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