Towards interpretation of some calques in the Belozerye toponymy: Loan translation types and verification methods

• Published in: Acta Linguistica Petropolitana
• Main Author: Makarova, A. A.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Russian
• Published: Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences 2022
• Subjects: BELOZERYE; FINNIC LANGUAGES; LANGUAGE CONTACTS; LOAN TRANSITION; RUSSIAN LANGUAGE; RUSSIAN NORTH; TOPONYMY; karelian; karelians; Russian North; sami
• Online Access: http://elar.urfu.ru/handle/10995/131501; https://doi.org/10.30842/alp2306573716311

The article discusses the types of loan translation in toponymy based on the lake hydronymy of Belozerye (of Russian and Finniс origins). The toponymy of Belozerye is a multilayered phenomenon. On the one hand, it clearly shows North-ern Russian toponymy types associated with the Novgorod expansion to Belozerye and the subsequent settlement of the Slavic population on this territory. On the other hand, the extant substratum names contain traces of the previous Finno-Ugric (Finniс, Sami, and in the South, possibly, Volga-Finniс) population. The consequences of the ethnic contacts were reflected, in particular, in the calqued toponyms (primarily, names of lakes or other water bodies) attested on a wide strip running from the South-West to the North-East of this zone. Some of these names reflect historical (starting from the 10th–13th centuries) contacts, while other names are related to the modern (mainly, the 20th-century) interactions in the area where Belozerye borders on the territories of Finnic peoples — the Veps (some of them live in the extreme North-West of Belo-zerye) and the Karelians. The article considers irregular patterns in the toponymy of Belozerye, for which contact origins can be assumed, and also discusses the criteria that make it possible to qual-ify specific patterns as either borrowed or native. Fairly common cases of semantic and derivational (full) replication of popular Finnic patterns in the Russian toponymy, as well as not so obvious cases of toponymic pattern copying are investigated. Some patterns have a limited distribution, or appear semantically/lexically isolated against the background of Russian toponyms, or else have a structure that is typical of the Russian toponymy. In some cases, a Russian-looking stem is in fact a phonetically adapted Finniс stem; these cases are considered separately against the background of their toponymic environment. Our methods of verification involve consideration of parallel Veps place names from the North-West of Belozerye and Karelian place names ...