Names of guelder rose (Viburnum) in Finno-Ugric Languages

Abstract

The paper discusses the folk names of guelder rose (Viburnum) in the Finno-Ugric languages, with more than a hundred phytonyms having been studied to reveal their origin, areal distribution, and the lexical nomination of Viburnum according to various features. Among the phytonyms studied, the Baltic-Finnish vocabulary noticeably prevails, probably due to the fact that the dialectal lexical material of Baltic-Finnish languages has been much better collected. The entire study was done from a comparative perspective. The majority of the Finno-Ugric names of guelder rose originated in separate languages and has no correspondences in the related tongues. Not more than two phytonyms belong to the ancient lexical fund. Moreover, in the languages under consideration, there are several names of guelder rose that were borrowed from Germanic, Turkic, and Slavic languages. The compound phytonyms formed in individual languages are numerous and rather diverse. The multiplicity of names given to guelder rose is more characteristic of herbaceous plants, with trees usually having far fewer names with more ancient origin. The Finno-Ugric names of guelder rose are based on a number of features, such as medicinal use, flower coloring, place of growth, and external similarity to other plants. The study has identified the lexical-semantic models by which the compound names of guelder rose were formed, with their components analyzed. Thus, each phytonym may contain two or three components. The names of guelder rose also include zoosemisms denoting various animals: a dog, a wolf, a pig, a partridge, and a crane.