Personal Names of the Bulteger Tungus Clan of the Urulgin Steppe Duma (Based on Early 19th Century Census Lists)

• Published in: Вопросы Ономастики
• Main Author: Raisa G. Zhamsaranova
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Russian
• Published: Izdatelstvo Uralskogo Universiteta 2021
• Subjects: anthroponymic patterns; anthroponyms; bulteger clan; census lists of the early 19th century; principles of naming; tungus; urulginskaya steppe duma; History of Civilization; CB3-482; Philology. Linguistics; P1-1091; Evenk; Siberia
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.15826/vopr_onom.2021.18.3.040; https://doaj.org/article/6529815bd4a74aa3b31598173f811494

The paper explores personal names of Tungusic people belonging to the Bulteger clan of the Urulgin Steppe Duma, based on State Archive census data from the Trans-Bailkal area of the early 19th century. This is a first approximation to creating a full corpus of male and female names of the Tungus within a particular clan including its population figures across different periods. The author establishes nationally motivated strategies of naming and uses morphemic analysis to draw correlations with Evenk names. In addition to the characteristic affix -cha of Evenk personal names (Bukacha, Iglancha, Irkencha, Kivuncha, Magalcha, Tevancha, Uvulcha, Cholboncha), the study has revealed some other affixes: -(v)ul (Gatavul, Genevul, Dekevul, Toepul / Toepvul), -ga/-gu/-ka (Wamchigu, Dambuga, Damkinka, Sopchinga, Eldinga, Emkinga). This multiplicity of name forms is due to both objective (e.g., dialectal differences) and subjective factors (phonetical spelling cases that distort the original name). It is concluded that the historical name-list of the Tungus-Orochon people of the Bulteger clan shares the common naming principles of the peoples of Siberia and the Far East. The article describes nine anthroponymic patterns. In terms of motivation, all of them reflect the ethnocultural specificity of Siberian aboriginal peoples attributable to the nomadic reindeer herding type of farming, lifestyle, and relationships between man and nature. The same archaic worldview is unconditionally reflected in the naming patterns. Based on semantic correlations between the anthroponymic stems of the studied names and appellatives of other Tungus-Manchu languages, the author also hypothesizes about the multi-ethnic structure of the vagrant Orochon tribes.