The structure of Russian toponyms at the end of the 15th and 16th century

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Pages: 130-151

Abstract:

The 16th century is the first period to have marked the appearance of a large number of documents containing names of various places in Russia. The names of villages were identified in Russian tax registers of the end of the 15th and 16th century. The materials come from the North-West (the Novgorod District and the Pskov District) and the center and adjacent regions of Muscovy (Moscow District, Tver, Vladimir, Yaroslav, Kostroma, Tula, Old Ryazan, Orel and the other districts). The aim of the present article is a description of the structure of the Russian village-name system of the period. The structural analysis led to the identification of (1) names originated by onimisation and transonimisation, (2) toponymic derivatives, (3) word-combinations and (4) prepositional phrases. The dominant class are the toponymic derivatives, the most frequent and productive wordformation formants are -ov-/-ev-, -in- and -sk-. The toponymy of the Novgorod region is a case in point. The similarities between Novgorod and Ukrainian toponymy of the period can be a result of the linguistic contacts between the inhabitants of the Novgorod Province and the Mid-Dnieper region.

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