OIKONYMIC SYSTEM OF SOUTH KARELIA IN ITS DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The system of Karelian oikonyms of South Karelia is analyzed from the point of view of its development in time. For this, along with modern field materials, a wide range of historical sources (cadastres, census books of the 15-17th centuries, revision materials of the 18th-19th centuries, historical maps, as well as some other documents of past centuries) are involved. As a result of the study, two clear trends in the development of the oikonym system were traced: the birth of new oikonyms - the names of newly emerged settlements, and the change of former oikonyms to new ones. These processes proceeded in parallel and were provoked by the socio-economic development of the peasant community. It was revealed that certain models existed in a certain time period and, due to this, can serve as chronological markers for studying the formation of the settlement system. Such is the model of complex oikonyms with the main element -selgä / -selga , marking the settlements of the watershed type, which began to appear in southern Karelia at the turn of the 17-18th centuries during the internal migration of the population. It has been proved that the process of interaction between two levels of nomination: official (written) and unofficial (oral) is at the heart of the change of oikonym in traditional oikonymy. The first strove for stability, the second, on the contrary, was unstable, which led to a gap between them and the need from time to time to transfer unofficial names to the official level. A large-scale renaming that affected all of southern Karelia occurred, judging by statistical documents, in the middle of the 19th century. At the same time, field materials contain many informal variants of oikonyms that are not recorded in official sources. It is shown that the analysis of the dynamics in the development of the oikonymic system is promising for the reconstruction of ethno-linguistic and historical-cultural processes. It is proved that the appearance in the 17th century on the territory of the ancient Karelian administrative center Olonets of a whole layer of oikonyms with the formant - la (Karelian -l , - lu ) and their entry into the official level of existence was caused by the active migration of settlers from the Ladoga region. It played a decisive role in the formation of the Livvik dialect as part of the Karelian language.