ВОПРОСЫ ОНОМАСТИКИ | PROBLEMS OF ONOMASTICS

Vladimir V. Napolskikh
¹ Ural Federal University
Ekaterinburg, Russia
² Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration
under the President of the Russian Federation
Moscow, Russia

Alexander V. Savelyev
¹ Ural Federal University
Ekaterinburg, Russia
² Institute of Linguistics of the RAS
³ National Research University Higher School of Economics
Moscow, Russia

Mari, Merya, Muroma — History of the Ethnonyms and Reconstruction of the Substrate Toponymy Languages

Voprosy onomastiki, 2023, Volume 20, Issue 3, pp. 9–30 (in Russian)
DOI: 10.15826/vopr_onom.2023.20.3.029

Received on 3 September 2023
Accepted on 15 September 2023

Abstract: The old hypothesis on the relatedness of Merya languages (today we can speak about a group of languages or dialects reconstructed on the basis of substrate toponymy of Central Russia: Merya of Rostov, Merya of Kostroma, and Merya of Murom also known as “Lower Klyazma” Merya) with the Mari (Cheremis) language has been reliably proven in the works of A. K. Matveyev, O. V. Smirnov and others. The authors contribute to the ongoing discussion in this area and argue that the new reconstruction of Proto-Mari vocalism based on the history of Mari-Turkic contacts undoubtedly supports this hypothesis. The article suggests a version of the Stammbaum of Finno-Permian languages, including the Mari-Merya group and some other extinct Finno-Permian languages, reconstructed on the basis of substrate toponymic data. However, since the results of the analysis of substrate toponymy are naturally debatable to a certain extent, the authors propose to turn to the analysis of ethnonymy. The long-noted (by M. A. Castrén) similarity of the ethnonyms Mari, Merya, and Muroma is considered, suggesting them to be self-names of the respective ethnic groups. The reconstruction of the Mari historical vocalism (as well as features of the vocalism of the Merya and Muromian languages that can be extracted from toponymic materials) delivers the proto-forms Mari *märə, Merya *märə, Muromian *mürə, going back to the proto-form *märə. The latter is proposed to regard (as it is now common in the Finno-Ugric studies) as some reflex of Aryan *marya- ‘young man, warrior, member of youth war community’ (the authors are going to devote a special article to the problem of the Aryan source of this ethnonym). The reconstruction of the common Mari–Meryan–Muromian auto-ethnonym *märə is not only a strong argument for the relatedness of these languages, but also indicates to close relations between the respective ethnic groups and their common origin.

Keywords: substrate toponymy; ethnonymy; Merya language; Mari (Cheremis) language; Merya; Mari; Muroma; Finno-Permian languages

Acknowledgements

The grant of Russian Science Foundation No. 23-18-00439 Onomasticon and Linguocultural History of the European Russia (https://rscf.ru/project/23-18-00439/) is gratefully acknowledged.

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