Semantic Family “Black”, “Dark” in the Indo-Iranian Hydronymy of Eastern Europe

Abstract

The proposed article continues the direction of onomastic studies, launched in previous issues of the journal and devoted to the study of Indo-Iranian hydronymy of Eastern Europe. This time, the author’s interest concerns a set of water names that embrace the semantic family “black”, “dark”. Besides a series of completely “transparent” Slavic names of this kind, there is a significant part of Eastern European hydronymy, a convincing etymologization of which is possible thanks to appealing to the Indo-Iranian linguistic and cultural tradition. These are, in particular, meaningful stems “kṛṣṇa”, “śyāma/śyāva”, “kāla/kālma”, “mala”, “varana”, “asita”, etc., often used in Indo-Iranian languages for the designation of “blackness”, “darkness”. Although in the process of “Slavization” of archaic Eastern European hydronymy these ancient names underwent considerable transformation and distortion of their original internal content, they may still be identified and interpreted based on the current state of comparative linguistic research in the field of Indo-European studies, the methodological principle of investigating names in their totality, as well as interpreting the Eastern European hydromyny in its onomastic context, which, in most cases, makes an accidental coincidence impossible in the methodological combination. The article proposes new interpretations of a number of Eastern European hydronyms, which are interpreted in the context of the semantic meanings of “blackness” and “darkness”. It is noteworthy that the lands of Ancient Ukraine and its separate regions, according to the data of modern onomastic studies, appear as an area of concentration of “black”, “dark” hydronymy and onomastics in general (to some extent in its opposition to “white” and “light” onomastics). This provides an additional methodological ground for seeking the origins of this enduring onomasiological tradition in the Indo-European heritage.