On One Name for a Wolf in Serbia: Archaics or Innovation?

Abstract

The article considers two hypotheses of the origin of the word kurjak ‘wolf’ in the Serbian language. This word has a limited existence in the Serbo-Croatian dialect space (spreading to the dialects of Eastern Bosnia and Montenegro). However, it is included in the vocabulary of the Serbian literary language. The compact area of usage in the center of Southern Slavia may denote the Slavic archaic origin of the word (as the written onomastic fixations have been known since the beginning of the 14th century, based on the work of A. Loma). The more common hypothesis of Turkish borrowing also has the right to be comprehensively analyzed. In both cases, folklore and ethnographic material is involved in the analysis, which helps to find some possible traces of the wolf veneration in the Slavic Balkans. Firstly, a sacrifice is made to a dangerous beast with a rooster, hen or chicken (Serbian-Bulgarian border). Secondly, the taboo names of harmful animals, including the use of swearing, can serve as a reinforcing factor in the case of borrowing the Turkish kuyruk with subsequent contamination with the Slavic swear word when naming a wolf. In both cases, ethnolinguistic and cartographic data seem to be the most correct route towards solving the problem of the autochthonous / borrowed nature of this word in the Serbian language space.

Keywords

• serbian lexicon
• dialects
• borrowings
• wolf cult
• sacrifice
• national calendar
• ethnolinguistics
• areaology
• serbian-bulgarian border
• balkans