ВОПРОСЫ ОНОМАСТИКИ | PROBLEMS OF ONOMASTICS

Valeria Stanislavovna Kuchko
Ural Federal University, Ekaterinburg, Russia

Olesya Dmitrievna Surikova
Ural Federal University, Ekaterinburg, Russia; V. V. Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the RAS, Moscow, Russia

ELECTRONIC MAPPING OF DIALECT CHRONONYMY: POSSIBILITIES AND PROSPECTS (Based on Data from the Kostroma Region)

For citation
Kuchko, V. S., & Surikova, O. D. (2025). Electronic Mapping of Dialect Chrononymy: Possibilities and Prospects (Based on Data from the Kostroma Region). Voprosy onomastiki, 22(3), 149–186. https://doi.org/10.15826/vopr_onom.2025.22.3.032

Received on 8 January 2025
Accepted on 1 September 2025

Abstract: The article presents a description of a geoinformation resource on folk chrononymy in the Kostroma region, developed by the authors. It is planned to be publicly available on the Internet by the end of 2027. The solution is based on a corpus comprising over 5,500 chrononyms, compiled from the card index of the Toponymic Expedition of Ural University. As fieldwork in the Kostroma region is ongoing and new data continue to be collected annually, the database will be updated regularly to reflect the latest materials. The article outlines the historical development of chrononym mapping within Russian linguistic scholarship and substantiates the value of the proposed geoinformation system for dialectological and ethnolinguistic research. It also provides a detailed overview of the system’s architecture, including current and planned search filters, data structuring principles, and methods for geospatially linking chrononyms to specific localities. Using culturally and linguistically illustrative examples, the authors demonstrate the research potential of the resource. Notably, it enables the comparison of the frequency and geographic distribution of various chrononyms and the calendar dates they denote, even in narrowly localized instances. It allows for the tracking of regional variations in the naming of identical festivals or seasonal periods, the mapping of religious commemorations of particularly venerated local saints, and the comparison of chrononymic distributions (isodoxes) with the areal spread of natural phenomena, among other uses. The article is accompanied by colour maps produced with the geoinformation system, which serve both to illustrate the system’s interface and to exemplify its practical application.

Keywords: mapping, electronic databases, Russian folk dialects, ethnolinguistics, onomastics, chrononymy, folk calendar, Kostroma region

Acknowledgements
The grant of Russian Science Foundation No. 23-18-00439 Onomasticon and Linguocultural History of European Russia, https://rscf.ru/en/project/23-18-00439/, is gratefully acknowledged. The authors express their sincere gratitude to Sergei V. Zhuzhgov for technical assistance in the creation of the Kostroma chrononymy GIS and Vladimir V. Napolskikh for assistance in drawing a number of maps for this articlex.

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