Medieval names of churchyards in Korelsky county: On the border of states and languages

Abstract

The article comprehensively analyzes the origin and history of the names of medieval Novgorod churchyards (pogosts) adjacent to the northern shores of Lake Ladoga. The churchyard names are considered in geographical sequence — from north to south: Il’inskij Ilomanskij, Nikol’skij Serdovol’skij, Voskresenskij Solomjanskij, Bogorodickij Kir’jažskij, Voskresenskij Gorodenskij, Mixajlovskij Sakul’skij and Vasil’evskij Rovdužskij. The authors focus primarily on the analysis of the second adjectives in the given pairs. These are mainly derivatives of the Karelian names of those villages that the Novgorodians made the centers of their churchyards and church parishes. The name of the Gorodenskij pogost differs from the others in its vernacular, ancient Russian origin ( gorodъ, gorodъkъ ‘fortified place’), it referred only to the territorial district. In medieval documentation (Russian, Swedish, Finnish), place names have many variant forms due to the peculiarities of language adaptation and writing systems. Most of the first written mentions of churchyards date back to 1500, except for the Kir’jažskij and Serdovol’skij pogosts, evidence of which goes back to the 14th–15th centuries. Some churchyard names (Kir’jažskij, Rovdužskij, Serdovol’skij) in their phonetic development went very far from the reconstructed Karelian prototype place names: *Kurgijogi, *Raudu, *Sordavala. The Old Russian adaptation of these Karelian toponyms, in addition to regular phonetic correspondences, included a secondary convergence with assonant lexemes and anthroponyms. This thesis can also be applied to the name Solomjanskij pogost, which arose by replacing the Karelian *Salmi with the equivalent Old Novgorod Solomja (= solomja ‘strait’). The originally Karelian place names are interpreted differently. Some reproduce the designation of a natural site near which a Karelian village that became a territorial center was located. These are the churchyard names: Kir’jažskij ( *Kurgijogi ‘crane river’), Solomjanskij ( Salmi ‘strait’) and Ilomanskij churchyards (Ilomantsi Proto-Saami *e̬lēmäηće ‘topmost’). Others — Sakul’skij (Sakkula), Rovdužskij (*Raudu), Serdovol’skij (*Sordavala) — contain an anthroponym which should qualify as a patronymic, personal name, or nickname of the first settler.