The article describes the functioning of anthroponyms in the Russian 18th century tragedies and laudatory odes. It underscores the correlation of the characters’ names with the other anthroponyms in the texts of the tragedies, as well as the actualization of «the topic of genus» through the tropological substitutions of a personal name. Various forms of semantic transformations of personal names and the «anthroponymicformulaicity» of the Russian laudatory odes, associated with the personified classicistic mentality, are being investigated.