UDC

811.161.1’282.2 (470.11)+811.511.1’282 + 81’373.4

DOI

10.17238/issn2227-6564.2019.1.47

Authors

Nadezhda V. Kabinina
Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin; ul. Bol’shakova 71, Yekaterinburg, 620142, Russian Federation;
e-mail: nadia.nvlad2010@yandex.ru

Abstract

This article provides an etymological commentary on the geographical terms tundra and rada which characterize Northern Russian terrain. Tundra now belongs to the standard language whilst rada is a dialectal word only known in Pomor dialects. The first part of this article is devoted to the word tundra, providing a number of clarifications and commentaries on its etymology developed earlier by J. Kalima, M. Vasmer and E.A. Anikin. The principal clarification is that the main source of borrowing for the Russian word tundra is not Finnic languages, but rather Eastern dialects of Sami languages. According to the author of this article, the way of semantic development of tundra (from its primary meaning ‘mountain’ in Pomorye to ‘lowland’, ‘plain’ in Siberia) can serve as a model for etymological analysis of some other Northern Russian landscape terms. This possibility is illustrated in the second part of this article, which is devoted to the geographical term rada. This term, as well as tundra, has a range of meanings from ‘highland’ to ‘lowland’. The paper shows that all previously proposed etymologies for the word rada proved to be inconclusive. The author suggests that the Eastern Sami dialectal lexeme with the stem *rat(t)- can be the etymon for this word. This stem corresponds to the stem raχt- in Kildin Sami and Paatsjoki dialect, where raχt- has the meaning ‘land/territory with treeless mountains’. Since this syncretic Sami stem has at the same time the semes ‘up’ and ‘down’, both meanings ‘highland’ and ‘lowland’ could have developed through the process of semantic adaptation of this word to the Russian language. This hypothesis is supported by the linguistic geographic map included in the article which illustrates adjacency and partial overlapping of the areas of the Russian rada and the Sami raχt-.

Keywords

North of Russia, Arkhangelsk Region, Northern Russian dialects, geographical terms, Finno-Ugric substrate, etymology

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