ВОПРОСЫ ОНОМАСТИКИ | PROBLEMS OF ONOMASTICS

Aleksandr Matveyev was a renowned scholar specializing in Slavic and Finno-Ugric linguistics, onomastics, etymology, dialectology, language contacts. He was the head of a large group of linguists known as Ural School of Onomastics. His major contributions concern the study of substrate toponymy of the Russian North, the reconstruction of the remotest history of Finno-Ugric languages, the linguistic study of Finno-Ugric peoples' ancient migrations and their contacts with Russians.

Since 1961 Aleksandr Matveyev was the leader of the Ural University Toponymic Expeditions, developing and improving methods of field work in the study of place names. The analysis of collected materials is presented in his numerous publications including the fundamental three-volume work Substrate Toponymy of the Russian North (2004—2007). Aleksandr Matveyev was the editor of most volumes of The Dictionary of the Russian Dialects of the Middle Urals, of a part of Materials for a Dictionary of Finno-Ugro-Samoyedic Loans in the Dialects of the Russian North, of the first three volumes of The Dictionary of the Dialects of the Russian North. Since 1962 to 1984 he published periodical collections of articles Voprosy onomastiki (Problems of Onomastics) and Etimologicheskiye issledovaniya (Issues in Etymology). He was also the founding editor of the journal Voprosy onomastiki (Problems of Onomastics).

Aleksandr Matveyev was the advisor of more than 30 PhD students and of 6 habilitation dissertations. His disciples constitute the largest and the most authoritative group of researchers in the field of onomastics in Russia. As of today, the collection of the Ural University Toponymic Expeditions numbers more than 2 million files, including data on Russian, Ob-Ugric, Permic, Samoyedic, Turkic toponymy and materials on the extinct Kamassian language.