Place Names of the Pelym River Area on Antal Reguly’s Handwritten Maps and the Etymologization of Mansi Toponyms

Abstract

The article analyses toponymic data from the handwritten maps made in 1844–1845 by the outstanding Hungarian ethnographer and explorer Antal Reguly, that he later used as a basis for his famous Ethhnographic Map of the Northern Ural (1846). Reguly’s handwritten maps, still understudied, contain valuable toponymic information, considerably more detailed than in the final map, which makes them an important source of unique data on the toponymy of the region’s peoples in the 19th century. Based on previous research in the Pelym River toponymy (works by G. P. Vuono, G. V. Glinskikh, A. K. Matveyev), the materials of the explorations of G. F. Müller (1742), B. Munkácsi (1888–1889) and A. Kannisto (1901–1906), the fieldwork materials of the Ural University Toponymic Expedition, collected in 1960s–1970s, as well as on contemporary maps of the region, the author provides etymological interpretations of several toponyms of the Pelym River area whose Mansi population became completely Russified by the mid-20th century. The data retrieved from Antal Reguly’s maps serve to confirm the reliablity of previously suggested etymologies, to specify some of them, and to reconstruct the names that earlier failed to be etymologised.

Keywords

• maps of Antal Reguly
• Pelym River
• Pelym Mansi people
• Mansi place names
• etymology