2025, Volume 22, Issue 2
|
Mikhail Anatolyevich Babkin ON THE ORIGIN OF THE SECOND LETTER S IN THE TOPONYM MIASS: A SOURCE ANALYSIS
For citation Received on 4 September 2024 Abstract: This article examines the historical development of the toponym Miass, the name of a river, a settlement founded near a metallurgical plant, and a station along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The settlement was established on 18 (29) September 1773 and was granted town status on 11 November 1919. Drawing on reference works, encyclopaedias, and cartographic publications from the late 19th to the early 20th century, the study investigates the emergence of the second s in the toponym Miass and the corresponding adjective Miassky. The analysis reveals instability in the written forms of the toponyms Mias and Miyas prior to 1917, with sixteen different variants of the settlement name identified in published sources. In some cases, multiple spellings appear on the same page. Based on this evidence, the article challenges the commonly accepted view that the town’s name derives directly from that of the river. An alternative explanation is proposed: in the early 1890s, the name Miass became the official designation of the railway station, originating from one of the variant spellings of the settlement. In the 1910s, a process of toponymic standardization began. The name of the station was gradually extended to the river, and later, in 1919, to the town itself. By the late 1920s, the spelling Miass had become dominant in printed sources. Although instances of the earlier form Mias still appeared in the early 1930s, by the mid-1930s Miass had become the established and form of the toponym. Keywords: toponymy; hydronymy; oikonymy; source studies; Trans-Siberian railway; city of Miass; Miass River References Kert, G. M. (2001). Toponimiia v sovremennom mire [Toponymy in the Contemporary World]. Izvestiya Uralskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Ser. 2: Gumanitarnye nauki, 20, 48–54. Mazur, L. N. (2011). Istoriia Rossii XX veka v nazvaniiakh naselennykh mest [20th-Century History of Russia in the Settlement Names]. Voprosy onomastiki, 2, 5–18. Matveyev, A. K. (1987). Geograficheskie nazvaniia Urala: kratkii toponimicheskii slovar’ [Place Names of the Urals] (2nd ed.). Sverdlovsk: Sredne-Ural’skoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo. Moiseyev, A. P. (2001). Miass, toponim [Miass, a Place Name]. In V. S. Bozhe, & V. A. Chernozemtsev (Eds.), Cheliabinsk: entsiklopedia [Chelyabinsk: Encyclopaedia] (p. 521). Chelyabinsk: Kamennyi poias. Podolskaya, N. V. (1990). Problemy onomasticheskogo slovoobrazovaniia (k postanovke voprosa) [Towards the Problem of Onomastic Word Formation]. Voprosy jazykoznanija, 3, 40–53. Strelnikov, S. M. (1995). Miass: Slovar’ geograficheskikh nazvanii [Miass: A Dictionary of Geographical Names]. Zlatoust : Izd. S. M. Strelnikova.
|
 |
