More on Reconstructing Mountain Mythonyms of the Urals: Mythonyms Motivated by Inanimate Nature Vocabulary

Abstract

The article investigates the system of mountain mythonyms (mountain mythonymy) in the Urals. These mythonyms are names for supernatural beings (anthropomorphic or zoomorphic) which, according to folk beliefs, guard treasures of the earth (minerals and metals), facilitate or hinder their discovery, extraction and working. Russian mountain mythology is sufficiently studied by folklorists, but its linguistic aspect is barely touched upon so far. The material for this article draws upon field collections of 2020–2023, as well as upon dictionaries, folklore texts, and fiction. The authors reconstruct the semantics and motivations of the mythonyms. The article analyses the most archaic group of mythonyms, which are motivated by inanimate nature vocabulary. The archaic character of these words is attested by the themes present in their stems. These themes are: landscape spirits (Gornyy batyushka — lit. ‘Mountain Father’, Gornaya matka — ‘Mountain Mother’, Semigor — ‘A Person of Seven Mountains’, Kamennaya devka — ‘Stone Maid’); the elements (Ognevka — ‘Fire Maid’, Ognevushka-Poskakushka — ‘The Dancing Fire Maid’); weather conditions (Morok — ‘Darkness, Mist’, Sinyushka, Sinilga — ‘Blue Maid’); rocks and minerals (Malakhitnitsa — ‘Malachite Woman’, zmei-medyanki — ‘copper serpents’, Khozyain Zolota — ‘Master of Gold’, Zolotaya devka — ‘Gold Maid’, Zolotaya baba — ‘Gold Woman’, Zolotoy Volos — ‘Gold Hair’). An important feature of some archaic mythonyms is that they combine different motivations and are included into specific mythopoetic systems. The latter, similarly, combine motivations and also unite facts belonging to different channels of transmitting ethnocultural information (language, a folklore text, beliefs, a ceremony). The mountain mythonymy of the Urals is distinctive in that it contains mythonyms deriving from local place names (toponyms). Some examples are Azovka, Starik Taganay, Bogatyr Ural, Bogatyr Polyud and others. The reasons for the popularity of this model are, first, the specifics of the realia (especially in the case of the Ural Mountains with their figures created by weathering) and, second, the influence of the Turkic and Ob-Ugric traditions with their wide-spread myths about ‘stone masters’. The authors also observe that a highly active type is “authorial” mythonyms, which interact with the folk mythonymy and, notably, tend to individualize the character. So, for instance, the mythonym khozyayka ‘mistress, hostess’ turns into Khozyayka Mednoy Gory ‘Mistress of the Copper Mountain’ in an author’s work of fiction.