Toponyms in the Context of the Winter Farewell Rite on the Belarusian-Ukrainian

Abstract

The article offers an analysis of the toponyms found in rhymed sentences accompanying the local rite of celebrating a farewell to winter and welcoming spring in Western Polesie (Brest, Volyn, Rivne regions). The ceremony is timed to the first Sunday or Monday after Easter and is a typical example of ritual expulsion (in this case, of the calendar season). The range of toponyms, as well as the vector nature of the expulsion of winter from its “own” to some “outer” space bring insight into the local ideas about symbolic boundaries, as well as the formation of mental maps reflecting the mythology of space in the minds of (micro)local population. Verbal formulas including toponyms demonstrate different ways of structuring space by means of a language (from the center to the periphery, inside and outside of the “own” space, crossing symbolic boundaries), outline the main vectors of the ritual path of the mythologized character (the winter) — microlocal, local, regional, state. In some cases, the choice of the place of winter’s exile from a particular locality is determined by its status and significance for the local confessional tradition. Some forms of toponyms recorded in folklore texts are conditional on the structure of the text (the name changes under the influence of rhyme, consonance, alliteration). The vocabulary of the winter send-off ceremony is organically consistent with the ethnodialect subdivision of Polesie. The expulsion of winter to the west is determined by the clear western border of the region where the rite takes place (the Drogichin — Pruzhany — Kamen-Kashirsky line). Taking into account the division of the Polesie region along the north-south axis, the author argues that for the rite that is spread exclusively in the northern part of Western Polesie, the south (southwest, southeast) becomes the priority direction of the expulsion of winter from the “own” into the “outer” space which is evidenced by toponyms from ritual texts.