Historicity and dynamism are the most important characteristic features of semiotic space and onomastic space as its inseparable part. Therefore, proper names and their subclass anthroponyms are viewed as the constituents of semiosphere. As a sign, an anthroponym has its symbol, denotatum and significatum which can accumulate information. This cumulative function of the linguistic sign allows the transformation of an anthroponym into the sign of culture under the influence of certain factors. The best evidence of the fact that the anthroponym has got its new status of the valuable sign of culture is its fixing in the written text which becomes a reliable means of information preservation, such as an encyclopedia entry. Since the time the anthroponym is included there it begins to serve as a link between generations. Thus, encyclopedic anthroponym as a proper name of a human being which has its value and is subject to storage and reproduction in the semiotic space. While an anthroponym is a linguistic sign, an encyclopedic anthroponym is both a linguistic sign and a sign of culture. This difference has its consequence in their functioning, because anthroponyms function in discourse communities, and encyclopedic anthroponyms function not only in discourse and national communities, but also in the expert community. It is the expert community who approves the insertion of the anthroponym in the encyclopedia, which is an authoritative reference work and its contents undergo formal expertise. Political and economic situation as well as social climate may be strongly advised by the authorities to be considered. Taking into account Lotman’s understanding of a boundary, according to which ‘every culture begins by dividing the world into “its own” internal space and “their” external space’ (Lotman, 1990: 131), we assume that it is also true of the texts, produced in different national communities. Historic processes taking place in some territory can influence people’s discourse practices. Social life and public opinion determine frames of reference which become benchmarks in certain spheres of human activity. The analysis of 2000 encyclopedia entries undertaken by the authors revealed the dependence of the interpretation of the historic importance of the personality on the values of the certain period in the internal space. The example of the universal sign of culture ‘Stalin’ shows the similarity and differences of internal and external semiotic spaces. The encyclopedias of the Soviet period demonstrate a specific attitude to this sign of culture which belongs to “its own” semiotic space. During a short period of time the evaluation given by the expert community had changed. The panegyric tone in the Big Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE, 1947) was substituted by a more balanced evaluation in its next edition (BSE, 1977), and in the New Russian Encyclopedia (NRE, 2015) the negative evaluation prevailed. This example shows that the stability of evaluation of an anthroponym as the sign of culture cannot be preserved in the society undergoing radical changes, like Russia in the period of the last 100 years. The anthroponym ‘Stalin’, being the sign of culture, has the right for both positive and negative evaluation in “its own” internal space. At the same time in “their” external semiotic space of ‘Western culture’ with more stable ideologic system the evaluation of the anthroponym ‘Stalin’ was and remains negative, as can be seen, for instance, in Britannica. Thus, the encyclopedic anthroponym claims to take the role of one of the most important signs of culture, since it is oriented on the intergenerational continuity and, on the other hand, it aims at revealing in the encyclopedia entry the ideologic constituent adequate to the historic period.