To the Etymology of the Name Vladimir

Abstract

Amongst other ancient Slavic pre-Christian two-part anthroponyms, the name Vladimir (*Voldimirъ) has been a recurrent subject of etymological analysis. However, some aspects of its etymology remain unclear. The article discusses four main issues: 1) the morphology of the first member of the name (is it a noun or a verb stem?); 2) the meaning of the second element of the name (-mirъ as ‘pax’ or ‘mundus’?); 3) the correlation between Old Russian names Volodimirъ and Volodimѣръ; 4) the overall meaning of the compound. The author concludes that the verbal nature of the first component of the name is suggested by the structure of the whole corpus of names ended in -mirъ, generally preceded by a verbal form, either in the imperative or the pure stem variant. Contrary to many researchers, the author believes that -mirъ, as part of personal names, should mean ‘pax’. This is evidenced by the meanings of the verbs preceding this element (‘to want,’ ‘to guard,’ ‘to protect,’ ‘to make,’ ‘to destroy / break / crush,’ etc.), the co-occurrence of the words found in name variants (cf., ‘peace’ and ‘silence’ in *Tixomirъ) and phraseology (cf. ‘to reach peace’ in *Stanimirъ, ‘to conquer peace’ in *Ratimirъ, ‘to break peace’ in *Lomimirъ, *Krušimirъ, *Rъvimirъ). Yet, it is the issue between the final elements -mirъ and -měrъ that remains the most controversial. The majority of scholars agree upon Germanic origins of the element -měrъ or the whole name *Voldiměrъ, however, some opinions about the possible Slavic origin of the ending formant (at least for some names in -měrъ) also persist. The etymology of the name Vladimir and similar two-component names should account for the systemic connections of each component with other lexical units having the same position in the structure of the compound name, the morphology and morphonology of these compounds, the internal syntax of the name, the meaning of each component and of the whole name.