Ethnonymics

Very few people know that a possibility of reconstructing protolanguages or protoforms was probably first suggested as early as in the 16th century by Miechowita while discussing the origin of the name of Hungarians and that of Yugra. Miechowita’s “Treatise on the Two Sarmatias” was once an extremely important source of knowledge of the geography and history of East Europe. Although much was written on its significance in correcting more or less unlikely information concerning these subjects his linguistic material was actually ignored. The aim of this study is to examine what was known about East European languages in the early sixteenth century.

In article, an analyse of ethnonyms included in so called Bavarian Geographer, a historical source from 9th – early 10th century, is given. Actual state of scientific research on tribal names is summarized, latinized transcritions of the proper names are analyzed and previous etymological interpretations are verified. Also there are some new etymological interpretations of a few demonyms and topo-ethnonyms. Analysis of proper names revealed that there are names of Slavic, Paleobalkan, Celtic, German, Baltic and Oriental origin.

The purpose of the article is to review the question of the use of the Proto-Polish ethnonym Polanie. According to the opinion traditionally adopted in historiography, this name referred to one of the tribes inhabiting Greater Poland (the territories of Kuyavia) whose territorial conquests led to the establishment of the Polish State. On the basis of a semantic analysis of the earliest written occurrences of this name, the author develops the thesis that it originally designated a tribe residing in the western part of Lesser Poland, and only at the beginning of the 11th century, again, it came to denote the ‘inhabitants of Poland’ (understood as the state of Bolesław I the Brave).

This chapter describes how ethnic identifications, language and religion in present-day Cabetigo have been affected by the Thai and Islamic influences described in previous chapters. While the Muslims in Cabetigo are comfortably bilingual ethnic Malays who adhere to traditionalist expressions of Islam, significant religious, linguistic and ethnic diversity exists. The chapter begins by describing how reformist and revivalist movements dealt with in the previous chapter have increased religious diversity—even division—in Cabetigo. I delineate the various ways in which Muslims identify themselves, but also the factors that affect which strategic identity is chosen at any given time and place. This chapter concludes with an account of how the bilingualism in Cabetigo brought about the widespread adoption of Thai by urban Malays.

This article deals with the usage and combinability of words from the synonymic rows Rusʹ/Rossiia/Russiia, russkii/rossiiskii/rosskii, and russkie/rossiiane/rossy, on the basis of the Catalogue of the Kievan Metropolitans, from the early 18th c.—a little-known work on the history of the Russian Church. In the Catalogue, there are about the same number of place names using either rus- or ros- and the adjectives derived from them (a total of 32 and 37, respectively); however, there is an identifiable relationship between each adjective and a specific noun, apparently reflecting fairly stable collocations. Also, the author notes the predominance of ethnonyms with ros- and a general trend towards editing rus- to ros- in the later copies of the Catalogue and in its sole publication in 1776.

In contemporary Russian speech we can see a competition between a number of ethonyms, standing for the major population of some countries, and relevant inhabitants’ names in general, e.g., russkie ‘ethnic Russians; East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia’ vs. rossiyane ‘citizens or inhabitants of the Russian Federation’, and respectively latyshi ‘ethnic Latvians’ vs. latviytsy ‘inhabitants of Latvia’, kazakhi ‘ethnic Kazakhs’ vs. kazakhstantsy ‘inhabitants of Kazakhstan’, etc. The latter variants are used much less frequently according to the Russian National Corpus data, but the frequency of inhabitants’ names is higher in mass media discourse.
In 2012 we conducted a linguistic survey among Almaty and Moscow 17–21 year old students, in which they were to answer—in Russian—the questions Who lives in Russia? and Who lives in Kazakhstan? along with other places, e.g., steppe, mountains, city, province, Moscow, Mars, etc. The questions did not provoke the usage of ethonyms in the answers, but many respondents preferred them to inhabitants’ names, when a name of a country was mentioned. Thus, 82% Moscow and 55% Almaty respondents believe that rossiyane live in Russia, with 12.2% and 22.6% respectively – that russkie live. The answers to the second relevant question turned out mirrored: 59.7% Almaty and only 9.4% Moscow respondents believe that kazakhstantsy live in Kazakhstan, with 34.1% and 85.3% respectively – that kazakhi live there.
Therefore respondents are more likely to choose the special inhabitants’ name according to their country, while a foreign country more often is perceived as mono-ethnic than the own one, with the views on the monoethnicity of neighboring country being more rigid in Russia than Kazakhstan.

The paper deals with the ethnicity manifesting itself in the list of the saints’ ethnonymic cognomens based on the complete Orthodox Synaxarium (edited by hieromonk Macarius of Simonopetra in French and translated into Russian in 2011) as well as earlier Byzantine and Slavonic Synaxaria. The statistic data reveal that ethnonymic cognomens are an extremely rare type of saints’ nomination in the context of Eastern Christian (Byzantine) hagiographical tradition. Thus, the October and November parts of the Russian Synaxarium by Macarius contain 640 commemorations including 1,196 saints mentioned by their names, and only three with ethnonymic cognomens (Oct. 2 – St. Cassian the Greek the Thaumaturge of Uglich, Nov. 22 – St. Abba the Ishmaelite, 27 Nov. – St. Jacob the Persian). The Synaxarium Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae of the 10th c. according to the Codex Sirmondianus contains 277 commemorations including 420 named saints – and two ethnonyms among their cognomens (except St. Jacob, Oct. 4 – St. Dometius the Persian). Likewise, the Slavonic-Russian Synaxarium translated from Greek before the early 12th c. has 218 commemorations and 357 named saints – and two ethnonyms. In general, there are only 69 saints with ethnonymic cognomens in the Russian Synaxarium. The main reason for the above statistics could be the fact that belonging to a certain nation was not very significant in Christian life at the time when the Byzantine and Slavonic cult of saints emerged and developed.

This paper touches upon the expressive people’s names, which do not contain negative connotations: first of all these are solemn endonyms (based on data of Latin, Classical Hebrew, English, and especially, Russian), and also some ancient ethnonyms—Biblical and Antique—which figuratively designate contemporary nations. Most of these words belong to the highest stylistic registers of a language and tend to become obsolete.