Article

Name: Deciphering etymologically unknown names of musical instruments of Siberia and Russian Far East

Authors: I. Shimomura

Independent Researcher, Overseas Member of the Phonetic Society of Japan (Tokyo), Warsaw, Poland

In the section Этномузыковедение

Abstract: This study presents etymological deciphering using ancient Japanese ways of reading ancient Chinese scripts of the names for the five types of stringed instruments, known as komuz, tatonpa, sugut, tambur, and tonkori. Based on the phonetic variants of the term komuz written in Roman and Russian alphabets and Chinese scripts, two hypothetical forms *qonbulrsukie and *qonbulrsir were reconstructed: qon ‘sheep’, bulr ‘tendon’, sukie ‘string’, sir ‘string’. As to the form tatonpa, the ancient form *siudonbule {siu ‘boar’ + don ‘gut’ + bule ‘tendon-fiber’} was revealed. The hypothetical form *siugudi {siu ‘boar’ + gudi ‘gut’} was reconstructed from the phonetic variants of the name sugut, written in Chinese scripts. The hypothetical form *donbule {don ‘gut’ + bule ‘tendon-fiber’} was reconstructed from the phonetic variants of the name tambur written in Chinese scripts. An Ainu word tonkori consists of Altaic root-forms don ‘gut’ and kur ‘string-instrument’, followed by an Ainu suffix {i} ‘that’. We have proved that, except for the Ainu suffix {i}, all the root forms linguistically belong to Altaic lan- guages. Not a few ethnographers dealt with the etymological analysis of instrument names encountered in Siberia and the Russian Far East, mainly taking into account the context of shamanism. It is known that shamans used the instruments as tools in healing rituals. However, contrary to our expectations, the reconstructed root forms of the names revealed practical aspects of daily life.

Keywords: music terms, Turkic languages, loan words from Turkic languages, musical instruments of Altais, Shors, Khants, Selkups, Voguls and Ainus, kon, bulr, sukie, sir, siu, gudi, don, kur

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