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LANDSCAPE AND THE EVENKIS' TOPONYMS

Anna Sirina

Abstract

This article concerns the EvenkisВ—hunters and reindeer herders of the Siberian taigaВ—and their interactions with the landscape reflecting in a land naming. I use a semantic approach to the analysis of the Evenkis' toponyms, which were gathered during my fieldwork in Eastern Siberia in the 1980s and 1990s and were found in the scientific literature and dictionaries. The features of the land are learnt by the Evenkis from their everyday socio-economic and ritual practices, as well as from their eldest since the early childhood. Some Evenkis have still been conducting a mobile life in the taiga. Their way of understanding and organizing their landscape is keyed to the river system. Most land names of the Evenkis language origin reflect distinctive features of the rivers and the riverside landscape, or the flora and fauna of the rivers. A secondary group of place-names reflects human activities. The similar mobile practices had resulted in many identical river names of the Evenkis landscape in Siberia and the Far East. Hydronyms derived from anthroponyms and ethnonyms are relatively rare in Evenki naming system. Sometimes one and the same river has two or three names regarding to it different parts, usually very distinctive as to its flowing characteristics. In the territories used by different ethnic groups, the rivers as a rule have two or three names, sometimes with the same meaning. The Evenki place-names form an important collective memory of geography, biology, subsistence activities, beliefs, customs, and local history, they also provide a sense of master of the land and contribute to the maintenance of Evenki identity.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2018/4.1/S15.007

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