Uwagi o dawnej mikrotoponimii rosyjskiej

Abstract

The article discusses Old Russian microtoponyms – the names of uninhabited land terrain objects including marsh. The material comes from central Russia and it was taken from tax registers of the 16th century Muscovy. The following terrain objects whose names are classified as microtoponyms have been registered: ravine/gorge (враг), meadow (луг, покос, пожня), wood (лес, роща, остров), oak wood (дуброва), coniferous, especially pine forest (бор), border, balk (рубеж, межа), mountain, hill (гора, холм, вершина), field (поле), marsh (болото, болотина), road (дорога, зимняк), the land near the source of the river (верховье), apiary (бортный ухожай), ford (брод), the land behind the fields (заполье), and forest clearing (поляна). Some of the named objects can be described as wilderness but the topographic term урочище is not used in the analyzed texts. The majority of the researched microtoponyms is word-combinations; compare e.g. Бояринов враг, Троншинской лес, Вечково болото, Плоской луг, Красная пожня. Less frequent in the researched material are names formed by onymization (that is the names transferred from the category of appellatives to the category of microtoponyms without formal changes; e.g. Выгарь, forest, выгарь which means ‘a place burned out in the wood’) and derivative names (nearly all of them are suffixal formations; Березовка, meadow, береза which means ‘birch-tree’). From the semantic point of view possessive names prevail in the 16th century.