ВОПРОСЫ ОНОМАСТИКИ | PROBLEMS OF ONOMASTICS

Nadezhda Vladimirovna Zhuravleva
Nadezhda Vladimirovna Kabinina
Ural Federal University, Ekaterinburg, Russia

ON THE ORIGIN OF THE EAST SLAVIC SURNAME KAGADEEV

For citation
Zhuravleva, N. V., & Kabinina, N. V. (2025). On the Origin of the East Slavic Surname Kagadeev. Voprosy onomastiki, 22(3), 275–306. https://doi.org/10.15826/vopr_onom.2025.22.3.037

Received on 30 June 2025
Accepted on 15 August 2025

Abstract: This article investigates the East Slavic surname Kagadeev from both linguistic and etymological perspectives. A number of related variants are attested across East Slavic territories (Kogodeev, Kakadeev, Kakadzeev, Kagadiy, Kogodey, Kagady, Kakadiy, among others). Drawing on linguogeographical and statistical methods, the authors argue that the surname most likely originated in eastern Ukraine and/or south-western Russia, specifically among the Zaporozhian, Don, or Little Russian Cossacks, where it initially appeared in the forms Kagady, Kagadiy, or, less frequently, Kagaday. The proposed etymon is a Turkic lexeme cognate with Turkish kabadayı (‘brave man’, ‘daredevil’), in which the phoneme <b> may be realized as an aspirated or fricative consonant, corresponding to the [γ] sound (rendered as g) in Cossack speech. The authors suggest that the borrowing may have occurred via dialects of Crimean Tatar, which, during the Russo-Turkish conflicts, exhibited significant variation. Lexical transfer could have taken place both at the level of common nouns and proper names. Historical migration patterns have resulted in the dispersal of surname bearers across multiple East Slavic regions — most extensively in southern parts of Central and Western Siberia, but also in the Lower Volga, the Southern Urals, and the Russian Far East. Over time, the surname underwent a series of phonetic and morphological modifications, largely shaped by the phonological constraints of the Russian language. In addition to the etymological discussion, the article includes appendices containing statistical and geographical data for each surname variant and presents a consolidated overview of their distribution across administrative regions in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. The authors contend that these findings may support genealogical research into families bearing the surnames Kagadeev, Kogodeev, Kagodiy, Kakadiy, and their variants.

Keywords: anthroponymy, East Slavic surnames, surname Kagadeev, South-West of Russia, Siberia, Eastern Ukraine, Cossacks, Ukrainian, Turkic languages

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 gratitude to A. V. Savelyev for his valuable comments, which will be taken into account in subsequent work.

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