Names of trees and fishes as topo bases in the Evenki language

Abstract

Having traveled the taiga length and breadth, taiga nomads Evenks had a perfect sense of direction and identified various geographical phenomena associated with the relief features, terrain conditions and the presence of animals, tree species, medicinal plants, reindeer moss, etc., water features flow and the presence of fish in reservoirs. They reflected all their knowledge, natural observation, their experience of communicating with the outside world in their language in full and in all its diversity. There are original ways of nominating geographical objects that distinguish Evenki toponyms from other languages. This article aims to analyze Evenki toponymic names derived from the names of trees and fish common in the North, Siberia and the Russian Far East.The toponymic names were recorded from the 17th century and later by famous travelers Richard Maak, Innokenty Tolmachev, Alexander Chekanovsky and others in the places where various Evenki groups migrated; the names still appear on modern geographical maps. However, different transcriptions of the same name, recorded by the Russians from the Evenks speaking different dialects, the arrival of new ethnic groups in the territories inhabited by the Evenki and giving them a new meaning to an already known toponym today complicates the interpretation of the true origin and meaning of toponyms. Modern researchers of the Evenki language experience difficulties in etymologizing certain toponyms due to the difficulties of determining the topographic basis of a word, since there are no dialectological dictionaries for many dialects of the Evenki language, a difficult linguistic situation with proficiency in the native language, and the replacement of toponyms with names from other languages.