Abstract
This article analyzes the national characteristics of nickname anthroponyms practiced in English and American ethnolinguistics and linguoculture. The bases of the national-cultural marking of nicknames are determined. Their status in the language and society, in diachrony and synchrony, is described. Their semantics and functional-pragmatic potential are considered. In addition, the article deals with the problems of the modern status of nicknames as secondary unofficial names, which is a consequence of the development of means of linguistic identity of a person in society. The result was a division of anthroponyms into official and unofficial names based on the opposition "primary - secondary".