INFORMATION ABOUT PROJECT,
SUPPORTED BY RUSSIAN SCIENCE FOUNDATION

The information is prepared on the basis of data from the information-analytical system RSF, informative part is represented in the author's edition. All rights belong to the authors, the use or reprinting of materials is permitted only with the prior consent of the authors.

 

COMMON PART


Project Number23-18-00439

Project titleOmasticon and Linguocultural History of European Russia

Project LeadBerezovich Elena

AffiliationFederal State Autonomous Educational Institution of Higher Education "Ural Federal University named after the First President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin",

Implementation period 2023 - 2025 

Research area 08 - HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, 08-453 - Linguistics

KeywordsEuropean Russia; Russian language; Finno-Ugric languages; Turkic languages; dialectology; onomastics; toponymy; anthroponymy; ethnonymy; chrononymy; mythonymy; language contacts; ethnic history; linguocultural history.


 

PROJECT CONTENT


Annotation
The project is aimed at carrying out a multifaceted study of the onomastics of European Russia, which is ultimately aimed at reconstructing the ethnic and linguistic and cultural history of the region. The relevance of solving this research problem is determined, firstly, by the modern context of Russian and world linguistics with its growing attention to the richest material of onomastics. This context, if the Project is implemented, can provide highly important clues both for reconstructing the ancient ethnic map of European Russia, and for reconstructing the linguocultural history of the region, which has taken shape in the last millennium in the conditions of very close interaction of several dozen peoples. Secondly, the planned research is highly significant for modern onomatology – the science of proper names, which in recent decades has experienced a new stage of development. This stage is associated, on the one hand, with the expansion and simultaneous detailing of the studied onomastic space (not only of the "nuclear" layer – toponyms, anthroponyms and ethnonyms, but also, for example, chrononyms, hagionims, mythonyms, etc.), and on the other hand – with the expansion of the general theoretical base of onomatology and the range of methods for analyzing a variety of onomastic material. Thirdly, research on the planned project is in demand today in the context of a number of linguistic disciplines related to onomatology: comparative linguistics (both historical and typological), dialectology, etymology, socio- and ethnolinguistics, etc. Fourthly, the results of the planned research are highly significant not only for linguistics, but also for other humanities: history, ethnology, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, religious studies. The objectives of the Project are an ethnohistorical and linguocultural interpretation of a large-scale corpus of proper names (onyms) attested in historical and modern sources relating to the territory of European Russia. The academic novelty of the research proposed by the Project is connected, firstly, with the involvement of a large array of material that has either never been studied before, or, in the light of the latest achievements in onomatology, has been interpreted unconvincingly or erroneously. Secondly, the Project implements a number of innovative methods for analyzing onomastic material, which have been developed and already tested by project participants in the academic papers of the last decade (semantic-motivational reconstruction, microsystem analysis, semantic modelling, retrospective epistemological analysis, etc.). It should be specially noted that the vast majority of the Project participants are among the very rare for the Russian tradition “field work” onomatologists, i. e. they build their research mainly on the basis of material collected and verified in the conditions of expeditions. This is especially important in the current situation of a sharp decline in the volume and pace in field collection of onomastics (in fact, in the last 25 years, only the team of Project participants has been collecting such collections on a large scale) and the passion for “armchair” research, in which various kinds of errors become natural. The Project participants will devote their main attention to the onomasticon “core”, which consists of toponyms, anthroponyms and ethnonyms. From other areas of proper name vocabulary, it is planned to involve chrononyms and mythonyms in the research (including derivational-phraseological nests of all the above-mentioned proper name types). Due to the scale of the region and the corpus of its onomastics, the work of the Project participants is planned to be organized in steps. During the nearest stage (2023–2025), maximum attention will be devoted to a number of those territories that form either sections of the main migration routes of the ancient population, or the ethnohistorical boundaries of the region, and thus are especially significant for the whole work on the Project. These territories are the Volga region, the Cis-Urals and Pomorie - especially its Arctic zone (Kola Peninsula, White Sea Karelia, the northern part of the Arkhangelsk region). It is important to note that in these sub-regions field studies of the team took place in the past and will be continued during the fulfilment of the Project.

Expected results
The expected result of the Project team’s work for the entire period is: ● A series of research articles (at least 30), including those published in journals indexed in Russian Science Citation Index, Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus databases (at least 20); ● Preparation of the monograph “Ethnonymy of the Volga and Cis-Ural Regions in the Historical Perspective” (by V. V. Napolskikh, A. V. Savelyev); ● Preparation of the monograph by N. V. Kabinina “Linguistic Relics of the Russian North”. ● Preparation of the electronic database "Onomasticon of the White Sea Region". The base will include the toponymicon, anthroponymicon (individual, collective, family nicknames), chrononymicon of the White Sea shores (territories of the Arkhangelsk, Murmansk regions, Karelia). ● Participation of the Project members in Russian and international research conferences, submission of at least 20 reports. ● Organization of the 6th International Research Conference “Ethnolinguistics. Onomastics. Etymology” (Yekaterinburg, 2025). ● Fulfilment of at least 6 trips by expeditionary parties and groups, replenishment of existing file cabinets and databases with new field materials. In addition to academic results as such, the work of the Project team has an enlightening and educational significance for the general Russian reader who is interested in Russian onomastics and how it reflects the history of our country.


 

REPORTS


Annotation of the results obtained in 2023
Thanks to the support of the Russian Science Foundation, the year 2023 has become extremely fruitful for all participants of the Project. During the reporting period, the team members published 14 scientific articles on the Project, 10 of them are indexed by RSCI, WoS and Scopus. Work has begun on the monograph "Ethnonymy of the Volga region and the Urals in a historical perspective" (by V. V. Napolskikh and A.V. Saveliev) and the monograph by N. V. Kabinina "Linguistic relics of the Russian North". Work has been organized to create an electronic database "Onomasticon of the White Sea". Conceptual parameters of the database have been developed, toponymic materials of the Mezen, Onega and Primorsky districts of the Arkhangelsk region have been introduced. During 2023, the Project participants presented 8 reports at Russian and international scientific conferences held in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Petrozavodsk, Voronezh. Two expeditions were conducted: to Ostrovsky, Mezhevskoy, Manturovsky and Makaryevsky districts of the Kostroma Region and to the Belomorsky district of the Republic of Karelia. The field trips resulted in onomastic card files, which include a total of about 5,000 cards (toponyms, anthroponyms, chrononyms). In 2023, the scientific publications of the Project participants carried out a historical-linguistic, etymological, ethnolinguistic / linguocultural analysis of several hundred onyms of the studied region, belonging both to the nuclear zone of the onomastic field (toponyms, anthroponyms, ethnonyms) and to its relative periphery (mythonyms, chrononyms). The line of toponymic research aimed at recreating the history of the northern and northwestern parts of the region is presented in the works of I. I. Mullonen and A. A. Bakhtereva (Makarova). In the article by I. I. Mullonen "Toponymic memory of medieval Karelian fortresses in Sortavala", a toponymy-based reconstruction of significant elements of the historical and cultural landscape of the surroundings of Sortavala in the Northern Ladoga region – the territory of the formation of the Karelian ethnos is proposed; toponyms with the Linna base (Karel. linna "fortress") preserving the memory of medieval history are analyzed; the etymological interpretation of a number of other toponyms bearing significant historical information has been carried out. In the publication by I. I. Mullonen "Finnish-Sami flood in the toponymy of Karelia and the Russian North", an analysis of toponyms with the semantics of "flood, water spill" with Baltic-Finnish and, more broadly, Finno–Ugric origins is carried out. The author has established that the Baltic-Finnish lexemes "tulva", "paise" and "kosta-" serve as etymons for the Tulv-, Pais- and Kost-bases; the semantically identical Prasaam basis *pēnte- is also reconstructed. This allows to offer new possibilities for the etymologization of some substrate landscape terms (for example, pendus) and toponyms (Kushta, Page, Pindusha). In the article by A. A. Makarova "Names of churchyards and the origins of the term churchyard in the oikonymy of the Russian North: chronology and evolution" it was found that in northern Russia the Old Russian term churchyard, despite the loss of its original meaning, retained its historical and cultural significance until the middle of the XIX century, thereby becoming a vivid marker of the stability of the system of Northern Russian linguistic and cultural traditions. In a different ethnolinguistic aspect, one of the toponymic groups is highlighted in the article by E. L. Berezovich "The motif of exclamation, call, response in toponymy and toponymic legends"; it is established that this motif is often associated with the mythopoetic functions of toponyms. In the anthroponymic studies of the Project participants, primary attention is paid to the nickname onimicon. Thus, in the article by E. O. Borisova "How a Lapot became a Shoe: on the variants of individual nicknames in the Urals and the Russian North", the cases of giving one person several individual nicknames are analyzed. As shown by the author, in these cases, nickname semantic microsystems are often formed in which secondary names are motivated by primary ones. In the work by Ya. V. Malkova's "Northern Russian nicknames characterizing speech: semantic and motivational aspect" has studied a large array of nicknames reflecting such features of human speech as excessive talkativeness, a tendency to fast speech and, conversely, taciturnity, a tendency to slow speech. The author has established that in the formation of such onyms, onomatopoeic verbs and verbs with different sound meanings are the most productive. The article "On the origin of the Russian surnames Bagryzlov, Badryzlov" by N. V. Kabinina concerns the nickname and family onymicon. The nickname *Badryzglo, which formed the basis of these surnames, is reconstructed, going back to the derivative with the archaic amplifying prefix ba- from the dialect verb "to sprinkle" in the meaning of "drink alcohol immoderately" or "be loose, crumble". Ethnonymy research is presented by a joint article by V. V. Napolskikh and A. V. Savelyev "Mari, Merya, Muroma – the history of ethnonyms and the reconstruction of languages of substratum toponymy". The article proposes a variant of the scheme of the family tree of the Finno-Permian languages with the inclusion of the Mari-Meryan group and other dead Finno-Permian languages reconstructed according to substrate toponymy. This reconstruction is verified by the analysis of the ethnonyms Mari, merya, Murom, for which the primordial forms of Mar. *märə, mer. *märə, murom have been restored. *mürə, erected to the common Mari-Meryan basis *märə (<ariy. *marya - ‘a young man, a young warrior, a member of the youth military union’). Thus, the authors present a strong argument pointing not only to the proximity of the languages of the Mari-Meryan group, but also to the close ethnic ties of the speakers of these languages and their common origin. Scientifically valuable results were obtained in the works of the Project participants, which are devoted to other classes of onomasticon – mythonyms and chrononyms. So, in a joint publication by E. L. Berezovich and O. D. Surikova, "Who is the East Slavic Karachun? (word, name, character)" it is proved that the mythological character Karachun mentioned in scientific and popular literature, to whom the status of an ancient Slavic deity is attributed, is in fact the product of "armchair" researchers of the 19th–21st centuries and the result of an uncritical attitude to sources. A broader picture of the formation of mythonyms based on common lexemes and proper names of other classes, taking into account folk tradition, is developed in a joint article by E. L. Berezovich and O. D. Surikova "From Name to Myth (Based on Russian Cultural and Literary Tradition)". The authors show that two sources of motivation are required for the emergence of a new mythonym: linguistic (a word that seeks a new context) and cultural (a semiotically saturated context – for example, a situation associated with danger, prohibition, omens, aggression or magical practices). In V. S. Kuchko's work "Chrononyms and features of the calendar cycle of the Makaryevsky district of the Kostroma region", the main attention is paid to the unique chrononyms of this territory: Yarilova Plesh, Ostannoe Voskresenye, Makaryev Den' etc., the local originality of the all-Russian holidays is also studied. Motivational comments are given for chrononyms with a darkened inner form. In the article by V. S. Kuchko "Yarilova plesh ‒ a holiday in the Makaryevsky district of the Kostroma region" separately considered the chrononym Yarilova plesh, naming an important holiday of the Troitsko-Petrovsky cycle. It should be noted that most of the scientific publications of the Project participants for 2023 are based on field materials collected by the Ural University and Karelian Scientific Center of the RAS expeditions until the summer of this year, and include a large array of material that was first introduced into scientific circulation. The members of the team are constantly improving the research methodology, analyzing their own scientific experience, which is reflected, in particular, in a joint article published in the reporting year by E. L. Berezovich and K. V. Osipova "Ex onomastic origine: on the history and methodology of the Ural School of Onomastics, Etymology and Ethnolinguistics".

 

Publications

1. Bakhtereva Anna A. Терминология землевладения и типы поселений в ойконимии Белозерья Известия Уральского федерального университета. Серия 2. Гуманитарные науки, - (year - 2023)

2. Berezovich E.L., Surikova Olesia D. From Name to Myth (Based on Russian Cultural and Literary Tradition) Religions, № 14 (1412). P. 1–12. (year - 2023) https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14111412

3. Berezovich Elena L. Мотив восклицания, зова, отклика в топонимии и топонимических преданиях Живая старина, № 4 (120). С. 5–9. (year - 2023)

4. Berezovich Elena L., Osipova Ksenia V. Ex onomasticā origine: об истории и методологии Уральской школы ономастики, этимологии и этнолингвистики Вестник Томского государственного университета. Филология, - (year - 2024)

5. Berezovich Elena L., Surikova Olesya D. Кто такой восточнославянский карачун? (слово, имя, персонаж) Вопросы ономастики, Т. 20, № 2. С. 193–246. (year - 2023) https://doi.org/10.15826/vopr_onom.2023.20.2.021

6. Borisova Elizaveta O. Как Лапоть стал Ботинком: о вариантах индивидуальных прозвищ на Урале и Русском Севере Живая старина, № 3 (119). С. 36–38. (year - 2023)

7. Kabinina Nadezhda V. О происхождении русских фамилий Багрызлов, Бадрызлов Вопросы ономастики, Т. 20, № 2. С. 288–299. (year - 2023) https://doi.org/10.15826/vopr_onom.2023.20.2.024

8. Kuchko Valeria S. Ярилова плешь ‒ праздник в Макарьевском районе Костромской области Живая старина, № 3 (119). С. 5‒8. (year - 2023)

9. Kuchko Valeria S. Хрононимы и особенности календарного цикла Макарьевского района Костромской области Вопросы ономастики, Т. 20, № 3. С. 164–183. (year - 2023) https://doi.org/10.15826/vopr_onom.2023.20.3.036

10. Makarova Anna A. Названия погостов и истоки термина погост в ойконимии Русского Севера: хронология и эволюция Вопросы ономастики, Т. 20, № 2. С. 119–143. (year - 2023) https://doi.org/10.15826/vopr_onom.2023.20.2.018

11. Malkova Yana V. Севернорусские прозвища, характеризующие речь: семантико-мотивационный аспект Филологический класс, Т. 28, № 3. С. 135–146. (year - 2023)

12. Mullonen Irma I. Топонимическая память о средневековых карельских крепостях в Сортавале Живая старина, № 3 (119). С. 32–35. (year - 2023)

13. Mullonen Irma I. «Финско»-саамское половодье в топонимии Карелии и Русского Севера Вопросы ономастики, Т. 20, № 3. С. 31–48. (year - 2023) https://doi.org/10.15826/vopr_onom.2023.20.3.030

14. Napolskich Vladimir V., Savelyev Alexander V. Мари, меря, мурома – история этнонимов и реконструкция языков субстратной топонимии Вопросы ономастики, Т. 20, № 3. С. 9–30. (year - 2023) https://doi.org/10.15826/vopr_onom.2023.20.3.029

15. - А первый блин - на чердак! Новая жизнь, 2023. 11 нояб. (№ 131). С. 2. (year - )

16. - Язык Белого моря Радио Форум, - (year - )