THE STUDY OF PLACE NAMES IN THE KARAKALPAK HEROIC EPOS “YER ZIYUAR”

Abstract

Annotation. The toponyms of the Karakalpak epos “Yer Ziyuar” demonstrate the national and cultural originality of the conceptions of space in this article. The study was based on the dastan “Yer Ziyuar”, a variety from the repertory of Kurbanbay zhyrau that was featured in volumes 24-47 of a 100-volume scholarly edition released by publishing house in Nukus city. The importance of studying toponyms in heroic epos through the definition of their semantics and etymology, which allows revealing linguistic and cultural distinctiveness of Karakalpak language, determines the study's relevance. The linguistic and cultural aspect is considered the toponymic vocabulary and reveals the features of toponyms functioning in the epic text.
 Color designations and numbers are determined to be one of the components in the composition of complicated toponyms using the structural-semantic analysis method. There was also a study of toponyms and their variations (oronyms, hydronyms, and macrotoponyms), which are used in the design of the dastan plot. Toponyms are not only the name of geographical objects, but also contain in their semantics vivid cultural and historical information. Toponyms that functioned as precedent units were discovered among the toponyms in the epic text. In Karakalpak linguistics, and particularly in Karakalpak folklore, such prior units represent linguocultural and linguocognitive features. In a folklore book, toponyms define the life space of the major characters and identify the most significant or memorable geographical items for the narrators. As a result, we can observe that there are true toponyms of Samarkand, Bukhara, Tashkent, Kokand, and Turkestan in the heroic epos “Yer Ziyuar”, which could have appeared in the epos and been fixed in its text at a later stage. The names of these cities, on the other hand, have been recorded in history since very ancient times, although their inclusion in the epic “Yer Ziyuar” could have been considerably later. Nonetheless, the dastan “Yer Ziyuar” mirrors the dynamism of real-world topography.
 Thus, toponyms in the dastan “Yer Ziyuar” serve as a point of reference not only in time, but also in the Karakalpak people's communicative space, as well as a means of conveying historical and cultural occurrences. As a result, the most essential work of current onomastics is to research epic toponyms, their genesis, and derivation.