Some Names of “Bee Houses” in the Udmurt language of the 18th Century

Abstract

The study of the terminology of various crafts, including beekeeping, is one of the current trends in modern linguistics. The purpose of the study is to trace the history of the fixation of the words podem ‘bort’ and umorto ‘beehive’ in the Udmurt language, starting from the 18th century - the earliest written monuments - and ending with dictionaries of the modern period, to analyze the development of their semantics, and also to determine the origin. To achieve this goal, the article solves problems focused on identifying and describing the above terms and comparing them with data from other languages. The material of the study was written monuments of the 18th- 19th centuries, modern dictionaries of the Udmurt language, as well as parallels from related and contacting languages. A descriptive method, elements of semantic and etymological analysis are used. The work for the first time traces the history of more than two centuries of fixation of Udmurt words related to beekeeping. The study revealed the expansion of the lexical content of the word umorto in the course of language development. The etymological analysis made it possible to reveal that podem ‘bort’ is a native Udmurt word, and umorto ‘beehive’ was borrowed from Tatar.