The Nothern Russian Toponym Urdoma: Old and New Etymologies

Abstract

The paper focuses on some earlier and new etymologies of the mysterious toponym Urdoma which nowadays refers to a village located on the left bank of the river Vychegda in Lensky district, Arkhangelsk region. Studying historical records and materials related to local history, the authors conclude that this place name was originally attributed to a stream (the right feeder of the Vychegda) nearby the settlement Urdoma and the volost of the same name. The first part of the paper reviews the earlier etymologies of the name and comments on their validity and reliability. The authors reject the hypothesis of Sanskrit ūrdhva (‘high’) as the origin for Urdoma; the interpretation of the place name as Komi-Zyryan ur ‘squirrel’ + Russian doma ‘houses’ is considered a folk etymology; the authors also note the weaknesses of some other hypotheses which trace the origin of the name from Finnic *Urto/maa ‘the woodland for hunting,’ or from Komi *(V)urd/vom ‘obstruct’). Within this hypothesis, the meaning of ‘obstructedness’ conveys the river’s suitability for setting fishing weirs, or the presence of obstructions of natural origin such as deadfall piles, or (considering metonymy) the existence of a fortress near the river in the past. According to the second hypothesis, the hydronym Urdoma relates to the place names which include the term -dom widely spread in historical Meryan lands and on the northern Finnish territories. In that case, considering denotative toponymic meaning of the term -dom, the final component of the toponym Urdoma can be interpreted as ‘mountain; raised riverbank’. The first component of the place name (which possibly has been deformed) can be associated with Sami urd ‘large plateau or highland’.

Keywords

• arkhangelsk region
• etymology
• finno-ugric languages
• permic languages
• substrate toponymy
• the european north of russia
• urdoma