Novye Issledovaniâ Tuvy (Sep 2018)
On the origin of the river name Kaa-khem and the appellative form ‘khem’ (river)
Abstract
The article analyses the problems of the origin of the river name Kaa-khem, which is one of the headwaters of the river Yenisei, and an identification of a linguistic affiliation of the word ‘khem’, acting as a suffix with the meaning "river" in river names. Such type of toponyms with a root or affix ‘khem/hem’ are typical only for the territory of Tuva; appearing rarely in Turkic languages of Southern Siberia, outside of Siberia the word ‘khem’ (river) is completely unknown. The river Yenisei which Tuvans called Ulug-Khem, ‘big river’, had had a number of different names in earlier sources, but all of them meant the same, ‘big river’. Such were its Ketic names of Hizes ~ Hezes and the hydronym Kaa-khem, which contained the Ketic root Kja – “big”. According to linguists, the word ‘khem’ (river) appears in Tuvan, Khakass, and Tofalar languages (Turkic), as well as in Kottic language (an extinct language from the Yenisei group). The author of the article shows that the origins of the name in fact lie in Samoyed languages, where the Nenets word ‘хӑмдь’ (cliff, steep slope) precisely describes the relief of the banks of Tuvan rivers.
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