Novye Issledovaniâ Tuvy (Sep 2018)
Water-names of Tuva: turkic, mongolian, samoyed
Abstract
The article covers several layers of ancient hydronyms of Tuva, especially those names of the rivers and lakes which etymologically can be of Turkic, Mongolian or Samoyed origin. The presence of the latter on the list can be explained by early arrival of ancestors of the Samoyed people to the territory of Tuva. During the next millennia, the Samoyed trace in the local toponymy was almost completely erased: the place names initially given by Samoyeds were revised first by the Mongolian people, and then by the Turks. The reason for viewing toponymical history of Tuva in such a way (i.e. through the lens of convergence of Turkic and Mongolian languages) is the Altai theory, one of the main points whereof is the notion of one parent language for both. This root language later produced several offshoots, wherefrom modern Turkic, Mongolian, Tung-Manchurian, Japanese and Korean languages developed. Contemporary Turkic pronunciation and the Turkic-Russian (also called Mongolian-Russian) form presented in its unified shape on geographical maps can be considered as the latest (and, probably, final) variants of the hydronyms which originally appeared in ancient times.
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