O uwarunkowaniach procesu kształtowania się i stabilizacji rosyjskich nazwisk

The aim of this article is to point to the factors that started the process of family names formation in the Eastern Slavonic area. It also discusses extralinguistic reasons for fixing them as permanent surnames.  The official usage of surnames by the representants of different social groups in Russia proceeded as they were receiving full civic rights. It was also connected with the development of administrative structure of the Russian State.The key factor conditioning the usage of family names by the representants of the future generations was the inheritance of grounds and other material goods within a family. It seems that two types of Russian surnames could evaluate spontaneously: 1. the family names of Russian aristocrats motivated by toponyms, and 2. the family names of craftsmen derived from names of professions and occuppations. The creation of the majority of Russian townspeople’s and peasants’ surnames was a concious and controlled process. However, it took into account the trends in forming patronymics and their tendency to become the family names.