The work follows a general model for the study of personal names and expressive suffixes developed by A. Wierzbicka on the basis of linguistic semantics and pragmatics, designed to investigate naming systems in typologically different languages. At the core of this model lies the notion of a “prototype”, which in Wierzbicka’s words reflects “the main orientation posts in the universe of interpersonal relations”. The interpretation of name forms is carried out in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage, whose universality makes it suitable for explicating lexical, grammatical, and pragmatic meanings. The proposed interpretations of personal name forms, consisting of several sentences, more fully capture the overall content of individual forms than labels such as “diminutive” or “affectionate”. As a result of this different approach, the study delineated the framework of the system of Bulgarian personal names and made it possible to develop a new, coherent classification of personal names, with clearly defined groups and subgroups.