The toponymic legacy of the Tatar expansion period in Ukraine

Abstract

In European historiography, the influential influence of immigrants from Mongolia on the social, cultural and economic life of the Eurasian people, enslaved by them in the 13th century, is marked by the Latin term Pax Mongolica (Mongolian World). In the twenty-first century, the interpretation of the influence of the Tatar ethnos – the key nucleus of immigrants from Mongolia, on Eastern European history – has changed significantly. The researchers now state the expressive positive effects of Tatar expansion from the XIII to the end of the fifteenth century to Russia. A number of facts concerning the presence of the Tatars in Ukraine led to the establishment of significant differences between Ukrainians and Russians. In Ukraine, the Tatars were less influential than in Russia. The policy of Galician and Volyn princes about the invaders at that time was perhaps the most optimal for the Ukrainian lands and different from the policies of the princes of the Rostov-Suzdal land. In addition, the period of Tatar rule in Ukraine was much shorter (by the middle of the XIV century.). The geopolitical “relations” of Muscovy with the Crimean Khanate in the 15th-17th centuries, in the context of its Turkish vassal dependence, largely determined the fate of the Ukrainian lands in the future. Numerous Tatar raids in the XVI-XVII centuries the Ukrainian lands were accompanied by the destruction of settlements, the destruction of the local population, but almost everywhere preserved their own geographical names that arose before the invasion. The toponymic legacy of the Tatar expansion in Ukraine is represented predominantly by comonomies, hydronyms, dromonyms, and a heavy reservoir is concentrated among microtoponomisms, which requires more detailed research. Taking into account the arguments of historians, ethnologists, ethnographers, with regard to the separation of the Tatar (Kazakh) and Mongolian ethnic groups, it is undoubtedly necessary to abandon the imposed in the nineteenth century, in Russia, the “widely-used” phrase “Tatar-Mongols” (as well as its analogue – “Mongol-Tatars”), not identifying the names of two independent ethnic groups. In Ukraine, there are virtually no geographical names derived from the ethnonym “Mongols”, but much more toponyms, formed from ethnonym “Tatars”. In the context of the policy of de-communization introduced in Ukraine, one should remember the restoration of Tatar names in the Crimea, which were practically totally renamed from 1944–1945 and 1948. Key words: toponymic heritage, ethnonyms, own geographical names, Tatar ethnos, Mongolian ethnos.