Optics Letters

The article examines the names of Lithuanian stones regarded as sacred and the legends associated with them. Researchers estimate that there are approximately 500 such stones in Lithuania. Popular beliefs link many of these stones with pagan deities and Christian saints, attributing to them the abilities to move, speak, teach, heal, advise, lend money, and even form families and have children. Evidence of stone worship during pagan times is reflected in their names, which often reference both chthonic figures and Christian saints, and may also be associated with the names of animals and people. The article systematically analyses these cases, considering legends about the stones’ origins, relevant historical evidence, and archaeological and folklore data. Lithuanian legends regarding the naming of stones suggest that those now bearing Christian names may have originally had pagan ones. The “baptism” of some stones by bestowing Christian names upon them not only alters some of their properties but is also believed to stop their growth and movement. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the mythological perception of stones has evolved over time. Historical data indicate that in pagan antiquity, stones were identified with deities, serving simultaneously as altars and idols. With the advent of Christianity, the focus shifted, and stones that were once venerated began to be associated with figures from lower mythology, such as the devil, witches, and Laumės (woodland spirits). Folklore traditions classify stones as “otherworldly” objects, emphasizing their connection with the chthonic realm, the world of the dead, and the “unclean”.

Chinese texts from the 5th to the 11th centuries, including chronicles, treatises, encyclopaedias, and travellers’ reports, frequently mention both mythical and real states ruled by a line of female monarchs (referred to as Nü guo, “Kingdom of Women,” or Nü-wang guo, “Kingdom of a Woman King”). This study aims to localize those “Kingdoms of Women” situated in or near Tibet. In doing so, it addresses whether the macrotoponyms Nü guo and Nü-wang guo refer to actual or legendary regions. Analysis of the sources reveals that the chronicles describe Kingdoms of Women located on opposite sides of the Tibetan Plateau. By synthesising information from multiple disciplines, including extensive ethnographic material, the study identifies the geographical location of a Kingdom of Women in Eastern Tibet, within the Sino-Tibetan borderlands. In this region, matrilineal families, primarily composed of women and their descendants, were prevalent. Local architecture also displays a clear connection to the Kingdom of Women described in medieval Chinese documents. Additionally, a potential cultural parallel is found in the significant role of monkeys among the Qiang, a borderland ethnic group that maintained traditional beliefs. The findings suggest that the toponyms Nü guo and Nü-wang guo correspond to a real kingdom encompassing territories in the Daduhe and Yalongjiang river basins, located at the geographical and civilizational boundary between Tibet and China.

This paper provides a review of a comprehensive study of Bosnian-Herzegovinian surnames. It is a multidisciplinary research project that lasted from 2018 to 2023, involving several authors and publishers, resulting in three volumes. The results of the study under review are based on Bosnian-Herzegovinian and foreign archival material, birth registers, medieval and early modern inscriptions, charters, and contemporary population censuses. The reviewed volumes employ an adequate methodology which allows for systematic presentation of the results. Some shortcomings of the technical arrangement of the first volume were successfully eliminated in the following parts of the edition. Due to the abundance of material and insight into the chronological development of surnames as a category of anthroponyms, these books are of an immense importance for Bosnian linguistics. Additionally, beyond their onomastic value, these three volumes provide insight into the broader historical, religious, and cultural contexts, shedding new light on the complex ethnolinguistic contacts in that part of the Balkans, both in the past and today.

This article is based on field data collected in September 2023 by the Toponymic Expedition of Ural Federal University (Ekaterinburg). The research was conducted in several settlements along the Pomor coast of the White Sea in the Belomorsky District of Karelia, including Sumskiy Posad, Kolezhma, Lapino, and Belomorsk. The paper presents some of the expedition’s findings on how collective nicknames and related narratives reflect the region’s history, culture, and social, ethnic, and religious characteristics. The article examines the microsystem of local group nicknames used along a segment of the Pomor coast. These nicknames include repoedy from Shueretskoye, kochegary from Virma, meshchane and tserkovnye srali from Sumskiy Posad, lopari from Kolezhma, and tsari and vory from Nyukhcha. It also considers nicknames from inland villages near the Pomor and mainland border, such as repniki from Lapino, vshiviki from Korosozero, pisanye batogi from Pulozero, and lindushniki from Endoguba. The article notes the factors contributing to the prevalence of local names on the White Sea coast, particularly on the Pomor coast, compared to mainland regions of the Russian North and other traditionally agricultural areas. The study explores the motivations behind the nicknames that persist in the collective memory of the Pomor coast’s older residents (the expedition’s informants). It suggests explanations for several collective nicknames, describing the historical and sociocultural context in which and thanks to which they emerged, based on historical and ethnographic sources.

The article examines the oikonymy of East Kazakhstan, a region that has historically served as a hub for significant ethnocultural interactions, contacts, and conflicts. The study aims to identify the composition and systemic connections within the oikonymy of this region, focusing on the toponymic material from three administrative districts: Altai, Glubokoye, and Katonkaragay. The research draws on both contemporary and historical lists of settlements — published and archived — primarily concentrating on the names of non-urban settlements, which constitute the bulk of the region's toponymy. The oikonymy in the area under investigation is multilingual, featuring oikonyms of both Kazakh and Russian origin. Kazakh oikonymy is linked to the region’s historical nomadic, patronymic, socio-economic structure, while the emergence of Russian toponyms corresponds with various waves of migration into the region. These include oikonyms related to the initial migration wave in the 18th century, as well as those linked to subsequent migrations of Slavs during the late 19th and throughout the 20th centuries. It is crucial to distinguish whether the oikonyms belong to the earlier settlers (first wave) or later arrivals (second wave). To achieve this, the study employs chronological methods that, through a comparison of the modern characteristics of toponyms, help establish the time of their integration into the system. The authors conclude that the region’s oikonymic system reflects two opposing trends: the unification of oikonymy and geographical terminology on the one hand, and the preservation of traditional diversity on the other.

The reviewed work represents the first instalment of a comprehensive project aimed at studying the historical toponymy of Western Circassia. This volume focuses on the geographical names of the Abadzekhia region. Since many of these toponyms have fallen out of use, their documentation, analysis, and interpretation rely primarily on the study of 18th and 19th-century Russian documents, including military maps, historical and ethnographic texts, and military and topographic descriptions of the area. Additionally, the author incorporates folklore references to geographical features of Abadzekhia. In total, approximately one thousand toponyms, encompassing both natural features and oikonyms, have been identified and mapped onto a modern representation of the North-West Caucasus. The dictionary entries, arranged alphabetically, consolidate all known spelling variants of each toponym, facilitating their semiotic reconstruction. Given the linguistic differences between Russian and Adyghe (Circassian), reconstructing the original pronunciation and etymology of the toponyms presents challenges. To address this, the author identified and utilised over five hundred Adyghe topographical elements frequently found in local place names. The work employs data and methodologies from various disciplines — linguistics, folklore, history, geography, ethnography, and archaeology — lending it an interdisciplinary nature. The scholarly apparatus of the publication, particularly the compilation of documents and literature, holds intrinsic value, offering a concise history of Circassian toponymy and providing a comprehensive overview of the book’s source material. This publication will undoubtedly be of significant interest to specialists in Adyghe toponymy as well as to local historians and guides.

This publication presents findings from the collection and analysis of toponymic materials gathered during the 2023 expedition to the Pomor Coast of the White Sea. Karelian toponyms are featured here as a substrate element. Although they comprise only about 10% (approximately 300 names) of the total number of toponyms, they give the impression of a more substantial presence. This is primarily because they denote some of the most significant landmarks in the area, and also due to the prevalence of geographical terms in the local Pomor language derived from Karelian dialects. The specific distribution of terms such as kórga, índola, and sélga highlights the distinctive characteristics of the southern edge of the Pomor Coast, particularly the rural locality of Nyukhcha, which is connected to the Vygozero region. The study also discusses the gradual erosion of the Karelian layer in toponymy and the processes involved in adapting the original Karelian place names, which are often overlooked by researchers due to the difficulty in identifying them. One such process is folk etymological convergence, where a toponym is assimilated to a familiar Russian word, often with some phonetic changes (e.g., Gárye Lake > Gagárye Lake). This is a type of direct adaptation. Another adaptation pattern, calque or translation, is evident in the coexistence of pairs (or groups) of toponyms within a single micro-area, where one retains the original Karelian form, while the other is a translated version. This scenario has significant potential for etymological study. The paper suggests several such connections, including the name of Túmishche Island and the Kétmuksa River, which flows into the White sea near the island. Their joint analysis allowed the author to reconstruct the lost Russian term *tumishche (< Slavic *(s)tum-), meaning ‘shelter, a secluded place where one can hide or wait out bad weather’. This etymology is further supported by the river name Ketmuksa, which embodies the Balto-Fennic kätke- or Sami giet’k’ât, both meaning ‘hide, conceal’.

This work tries to cast some light on a number of indigenous names of north-eastern Italy. It specifically addresses a selected number of names from Brixia and its environment, which lies in the west of Venetia et Histria, and close to the border of the Gallia Transpadana, covering an area that runs from the Oglio to the Adige rivers, around the Garda Lake. Most of these names have one thing in common: they are hardly ever found anywhere else, and, as a consequence, they have obtained a label: Jürgen Untermann called them Brescianisch, thus tacitly paving the way for considering them as a trace of an independent, unknown and unclassified dialect. That these names are not attested outside this area is not necessarily diagnostic of their not being Celtic or Italic, though the path leading to their classification may prove winding and indirect. Their etymology and attribution to either Celtic or Venetic will be thoroughly discussed. The study of the Venetic name fersimo comes to confirm the evolution of the complex superlative suffix *-is-m̥(H)o- > -izʊmo- > -īmo- is common to Sabellic and Venetic, where only the name meitima provided evidence for this change. Some misidentified or overlooked derivational and compositional patterns are addressed, such as the superlatives in -umus, the Celtic compounds in -gassi- and the probably both Italic and Celtic compounds whose first member is an Indo-European root-noun *ḱlu- ‘hearing.’ The personal names qverra, dievpala, endvbro, rvtvba, rvtvmanne, barbarvtae, aprofennivs are Venetic and decidedly bely the widespread notion that Italic did not preserve Indo-European compounds as personal names. The Celtic personal name vorvodisivs and the personal or divine name boxarvae are considered as belonging to a very ancient layer of Indo-European composition and, when possible, are connected to other compounds belonging to the same “semantic paradigms.” The analysis shows that it is premature to label these forms as Brescianisch — a new Indo-European dialect not attested in indigenous sources, which is in fact little more than a label for an onomastic landscape whose members are otherwise unattested but can be unproblematically linked to Continental Celtic and Italic.

The article is based on the field materials of three expeditions to the Greeks of Russia (territories of the Krasnodar Krai, Karachay-Cherkessia, Caucasus Mineral Waters region). This paper analyzes the typological transformations that Greek given names and surnames underwent in different periods of history, as well as the peculiarities of naming among the Pontic Greeks. The historical and modern trends in the choice of a name are considered, as well as the features of the functioning of Greek surnames in different historical and social contexts (“Russification” of surnames during the period of repressions, reverse process of “Hellenization” when moving to Greece, morphemic translation of surnames from Turkic into Greek, etc.). Along with names that easily could be labeled as “Greek” (Nikos, Despina, Christos, Ellada, Athena, Euclid, Socrates), Greeks in Russia use “Russian” names (e.g. Maria, Elena, Pasha, Olya, Nadezhda) as well. It often turns out that these “Russian” names are hypocoristics of Greek ones: e.g., Olya from Olympiada, Pasha from Parthena. The paper also contains the description of the features of Greek anthroponymy in the field of traditional culture, such as the use of “double” names to protect one against the evil eye and “stopping” names designed to prevent the birth or death of children. The “Russification” of surnames and given names, as well as the use of Georgian names by Greeks during their residence in the territory of the Georgian SSR, are considered as strategies of ethnic mimicry, which were common among different ethnic groups in the USSR. At the same time, the reverse processes are characteristic of the last three decades: the return of “Greekness” to surnames and given names when obtaining a new citizenship, when installing tombstones, etc. Ever since the Soviet era, the Pontic Greeks have found the use of ancient Greek names that clearly indicate the ethnicity of the bearer, recently in the Caucasus it has become possible to baptize a child with this name in the Russian Orthodox Church.

This article draws on field materials collected by the Toponymic Expedition of Ural University, conducted in 2023–2024 in the Pomorye area of the Belomorsky District, Republic of Karelia. It examines collective nicknames such as oblivantsy (‘residents of the village of Sukhoye’) and lesovikibezmedniki (‘residents of villages and settlements in the south-eastern part of the Belomorsky region, including Endoguba, Vorenzha, Sumostrov, Pertozero, and Pulozero’). The study also explores phraseological units containing toponymic adjectives (e.g., face as / looking like hot Vyg copper, ‘about a flushed man’), and terms used for territorial groups with locative semantics that are similar to nicknames (e.g., poozery — pomory — lesoviki). Additionally, it includes various onomastic and appellative units, such as the names of sketes derived from lake names and the expression polumbrous hilozër, which features the quasi-katoikonym hilozër. The author interprets these linguistic elements as implicit markers of the Old Believers, who significantly influenced the historical and cultural landscape of the region. For example, the nickname oblivantsy is linked to the practice of dousing baptism practiced by the residents of Sukhoye, which the Old Believers viewed negatively. The phrase face like hot Vyg copper alludes to the tradition of crafting copper-cast icons among the Vyg Monastery inhabitants. The triad pomory — poozery — lesoviki is not only taxonomic (referring to the place of residence of the respective groups of people), but also reflects an evaluative opposition: the coastal inhabitants are economically and religiously contrasted with the Old Believers who retreated to the forests and lakes. Beyond reconstructing the semantics of these names, the author reveals the nominators’ perspectives embedded within them.

This article is the concluding part of a series of articles investigating the derivation of the geographically limited system of Christian personal name forms during the pre-national period. Drawing on anthroponyms from Tver business texts of the 16th–17th centuries, it explores the structural reorganization of full male personal names in colloquial speech. The focus of the analysis is on the productive paradigmatic class *-jŏ, specifically full forms of anthroponyms with a soft base (ending in -y) in different variants: -iy, -ey, -ay, -oy. During the period studied, these colloquial full forms were highly diverse, with numerous phonetic and morphological variants. These variants primarily emerged from fictitious segmentation and formal alteration of the anthroponymic bases. At the same time, preference in documents is given to colloquial rather than canonical forms, which were used mainly by clergymen. The article identifies the word-formation mechanisms that facilitated the integration of foreign personal names into the Russian onomastic system, leading to the development of numerous colloquial full forms of names, particularly through structural reorganization and formal-associative relationships involving modifications to the final segment of the name. These structural transformations, combined with phonetic changes, create a unique anthroponymic pattern specific to each territory. The analysis reveals that in the 16th–17th centuries Tver documents, two forms of Christian personal names were particularly stable and frequently recurring: consonant-final truncated forms (e.g., Vlas, Nazar, Taras, Fedos) and forms ending in -ey (e.g., Vlasey, Nazarey, Tarasey, Fedosey).

The article investigates the settlement names in Southern (Olonets) Karelia, where the Livvik dialect of the Karelian language has been spoken for centuries. The study highlights that, in the early stages of settlement by Livvik Karelians, the development of villages was shaped by the region’s physical geography and the population’s way of life. Due to the abundance of lakes and rivers in Southern Karelia, early villages were mostly established along these water bodies. However, from the 18th century onwards, settlements began to develop on higher ground, leading to the formation of “settlement” type villages. The article focuses on the types of rural settlements and the structure of their names. The most common single-component names include oikonyms with the -l formant, typically derived from personal names. Less common are deanthroponymic patterns without a formant, and those with the formants -(i)ne, -sto, or the Russian -ovo and -shchina. Among other oikonyms, those based on geographical terms such as pogostu ‘village with a church,’ kylä and hieru ‘village’ are particularly prevalent. The study also identifies terms for smaller settlements and farmsteads, such as kodi, kondu, perti, and taloi, along with terms borrowed from Russian, like myza and khutor. The author examines why certain types of oikonyms are more common, the timeline of their adoption into the local toponymy, and the inclusion of reconstructed terms like moiživo and tula, which likely referred to small homesteads. The author concludes that the formation of the settlement system in Southern Karelia peaked in the early 20th century but began to decline with collectivisation and subsequent repressions, leading to the abandonment of many villages in the 1960s and 1970s.

The study investigates the nomenclature of Ural minerals derived from anthroponyms. The data was sourced from printed and electronic publications on geology and mineralogy. The aim of the research is to analyze the primary word-formation patterns evident in the lexemes of the compiled corpus, discern deviations from traditional word-formation patterns, and ascertain their underlying causes. The deanthroponymic model emerges as the predominant one for mineral nomenclature, constituting 38% of the total number of names analyzed. The second most prevalent model is based on toponyms (22%). Models wherein mineral names are derived from indications of their geochemical composition or properties exhibit significantly lower frequency compared to the two aforementioned models. The most prevalent method of forming deanthroponymic mineral names (mineralonyms) entails incorporating the surname of a notable figure associated with mineralogy, followed by the addition of the formant -it (less frequently, -lit) or -in. Departures from this model manifest in two ways. Firstly, atypical formants such as -an, -zit, -oit, and -anit are utilized, which may be categorized as phonetic-graphic variants or instances of contamination of productive formants. Secondly, deviations occur in the base of the mineralonym, whereby the generating unit is not solely the surname but rather its constituent parts (in cases where the surname is multi-component), as well as the inclusion of the first name, first name and surname, or the root part of the surname translated into Latin. It can be posited that in the use of formally atypical models and approaches to mineralonym creation, the subjective aesthetic considerations of the nominator play a pivotal role, driven by the desire to craft a harmonious and user-friendly term. Additionally, the evident intention is to mitigate homonymy and other instances of ambiguity that are incompatible with a coherent terminological system and hinder the unequivocal association of the name with the denoted object.