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GEOLOGY AT THE SERVICE OF HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY: ABOUT SOME CONTROVERSIAL CASES OF THE ETYMOLOGY OF TOPONYMS IN THE CENTRAL PART OF THE LAKE DISTRICT OF RUSSIA
Abstract
This work is devoted to the study of the prospects of toponymic analysis for historical and geographical reconstructions. Despite of the repeatedly recognized interrelationship between the toponymy of the regions and the historical, ethnic, historical-geological features of the area, the use of toponymic datas for obtaining the missing geographical and geological information for the historical past is not common. On the example of Leningrad, Pskov, and Novgorod regions, located in the north-west of Russia, which have an informal name Lake District in the natural science literature, the author analyzes the patterns of the distribution of toponyms depending on various types of landscapes. There is a toponymic and historical evidence of the lost landscapes of the region in the archival materials of the XII - XIX centuries, in particular the distribution of settlements in the region in the XIV century indicating disproportionately lower level of water logging. Thus, historical datas confirm the leveling data on the dominant downwarping of the described territory. From the point of view of toponymic research with archival materials, the temporal stability of the anthropotoponyms is illustrated. Conducted historical-landscape analysis of the region allowed the author to identify the lost geographical term of Novgorod Rus' "kilom" (in Russian ?????) corresponding to the outdated form of the word wedge. Toponyms with the basis formed from this word were in the isolated land areas with characteristic wedge-shaped form. The resulting new nominal term can be tested in adjacent territories. The comprehensive toponymic and historical-landscape analysis carried out demonstrated the possible polygeneticity of toponyms that are similar in sound in areas that are identical in the historical, geographic, geological and ethnic aspect. Nowadays the problem of the historic and geological research of the Late Holocene is directly linked to the problem of identifying the Anthropocene as a fundamentally new subdivision. Toponymic and historical analyses are fairly new and extremely relevant as they could provide the accuracy of stratigraphic division and characteristics of natural objects, not fixed by any conventional science methods.
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References11
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