Сложные существительные со значением лица в русской письменности XVII века

The aim of the paper is to present the way of forming compound personal nouns in Russian language of 17th century. The material to the research was selected from texts, the language of which is close to the common parlance. Compound nouns presented in the article were formed with the help of suffixes -ец, (-лец), -тель, -(н)ик, or others and connecting vowels: o and e, e.g. вощебитник, доброприятель. The second parts of the compounds are mainly derived from verbs and nouns, e.g. злочинец,сенокосец, чернокнижник, etc. The analysed nouns are also differentiated from semantic point of view. There are professional names (рудокопец, винопродавец), names connected with religion and church (безверник, священномученик, богомолец), names qualifying people according to their social situation (белопашец), behavior, features of character (злоиматель, бездушник), place of descent (иноземец, таможилец) and so on. Finally, the article leads to the conclusion that the masculine compound personal names clearly predominate in the Russian language of 17th century. Suffixes of feminine gender were not productive in forming compound nouns in the time mentioned.