Comprehensive study of the toponymic landscape of the local territory: the area of the Ryazan villages of Dyadkovo and Vyshgorod

Abstract

The subject of the study is the toponymy of the Ryazan district of the Ryazan region, which belongs to one of the concentration zones of the Old Russian toponymy of the region. The purpose of the study is a comprehensive survey of the toponymic landscape of the Ryazan villages of Dyadkovo – Vyshgorod with the identification of the most ancient layer of local names, their linguistic and chronological attribution. The sources of the material are Russian chronicles, scribal books, historical and modern topographic maps, as well as data from the author's toponymic expedition of 2021. In the analysis of the material, etymological, structural-semantic, formant, areal methods, the method of comparing linguistic, archaeological, geographical and historical data are used. The novelty of the research lies in the collection and systematization of the modern toponymy of the studied area, a comprehensive description of the Old Russian group of toponyms, identification of links with the territories of earlier Slavic settlement. It is established that the toponymy of this area does not reveal traces of a toponymic substrate, which indicates that the territory was fully developed in the past by the ancient Russian population. The etymology of the names is related to the traditional Slavic geographical terminology (city ‘fortified settlement’, Vyshegorod ‘fortified settlement on a hill’ or ‘city laid upstream from another city’, bystrets ‘small river with a fast current’, raka ‘river with a narrow channel and high steep banks'), Slavic terms kinship or Old Russian namesake (uncle "father's or mother's brother", personal name Uncle). The existing etymologies of names that go back to geographical terms are confirmed by the geographical realities of the area. The appellatives of Ryazan toponyms reveal areal connections with the territories of the basins of the Dnieper, Dniester, Desna, the Carpathian zone, and toponyms – with the Kiev toponymy. The study confirms the importance of conducting toponymic expeditions in the comprehensive study of the toponymic landscape of local territories, even taking into account temporary changes in relief, fauna and hydrographic network. The results of the study are of interest for historical lexicography, regional and interregional toponymy, toponymic cartography.