Article

Name: A lexicological commentary on the fabulous sights of Russia and especially Siberia

Authors: Alexander E. Anikin

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Linguistics

Abstract: The paper deals with the peculiarities of the “Siberian” text of Russian and world literature in the aspect of diachrony. The author provides lexicological comments to some of the data on the natural history of Russia attached to the “Grammatica Russica” by G. V. Ludolph (1696), including many of the sights of Muscovy from the flora or fauna, minerals, ores, trade items, and so on. Among others, the Chinese medicine Temzui is mentioned, the etymology discussed in the first part of the paper. However, the focus of the first part is on the two fossil objects described by Ludolph, namely, Adamovoi kost ‘Adam’s bone’ (essentially, fossil wood) and Mammontovoi kost ‘mammoth bone’, that is, the bones or “horns” of a mammoth. In this context, the author considers the origin of Even adām ‘coal’, Yakut Adām uota ‘fire wiped out of wood’ (cf. Russian dial. derev’annyi ogon’, literally ‘wooden fire’), Russian mamont, indrik, inder, endar’ ‘fabulous beast’ and others. It is especially noted that the biblical etymology of the mammoth (from the name of the behemoth), appeared in the 18th century, finally was rejected only in the 20th сеntury. Information is given about the typology of the mammoth designations against the background of mythological ideas about mammoth among the peoples of Siberia. The second part of the paper deals with the origin of some facts absent in Ludolph’s work: three Russian (in Siberian dialects), Yakut, and other names of people of a fantastic type (headless, etc.): miravda, chuchuna, myulen.

Keywords: early data about Siberia, names of fossil trees, names of mammoth and “wild people”, etymology

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