Числительные в топонимах Тувы

Abstract

Introduction. When it comes to Tuvan toponymy it is, as usual, the geographical environment that served as the primary basis for its development, but this article studies place-names with different semantics. Goals. The paper basically aims to analyze place-names containing numerals, clarify lexical meanings and etymologies of their components, identify some secondary or primary nature of the emerged toponymic metonymies, delineate the distribution area of some ‘wandering’ Turkic geographical names among Tuva’s toponyms, and ascertain the history of their emergence. Materials. The article examines the author’s field data collected during comprehensive research expeditions undertaken between 1999 and 2018, as well as examples extracted from The Toponymic Dictionary of Tuva by B. K. Ondar. Results. The study concludes that in numerals-containing toponyms the quantitative element — a) accurately specifies the number of geographical objects; b) expresses the meaning ‘several’; c) expresses the meaning ‘a lot’; e) and acts as an unclear quantitative indicator. First components of complex toponyms are usually common Turkic numerals, the exception to this being saya ‘million’ borrowed from Tibetan through Mongolian, while latter components are common Turkic names of geographical objects, trees, including a small number of Mongolisms or Turko-Mongolisms related to other lexical clusters. Tuva’s numerals-containing place-names comprise a number of ‘wandering’ Turkic geographical names to be traced throughout the Altai, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Khakassia, and the Caucasian Mineral Waters.