Once Again on the Origin of the River Name Vyatka and the City Name Vyatka (Modern Kirov)

Abstract

The article reports the results of a comprehensive historical and linguistic investigation into the history of the place name Vyatka, associated with both a river and a contiguous city in the Kama River area in Russia (modern Kirov Oblast). The author provides a critical review of existing explanations of the mysterious name and argues for a new view of its origin. The paper traces back the attestations of the name Vyatka in medieval sources and evaluates its association with different geographical objects, providing both toponymic and appellative interterritorial correspondences. The author comes to the following conclusions: 1) as applied to the city presently called Kirov, the name Vyatka preceded the name Khlynov; 2) originally, Vyatka was a hydronym which was later transferred to the city and the adjacent region; 3) onomastic data reveal some linguistic affinities between the historical Novgorod and Vyatka regions; 4) Vyatka is a Slavic name; 5) Vyatka is a name which comes from the early Novgorod-Pskov dialects that contained elements of the Old Krivich dialectal complex; 6) Vyatka is a metaphorical name which evokes the idea of deviation (from the main shipping rout) and seems to be associated with the migratory ways of settlers from the Russian North-West. Along with the toponym Vyatka from the Kama River area, the author considers toponyms such as Vyatka, Vyatitsa, Vyatsa, Vyatichi etc. attested in other Russian regions. It also engages the problem of etymologization of some Russian dialectal appellatives, e.g. vyasche ‘small bush’, vyatka ‘land parcel’, vyat’ ‘top of a haystack’, and others.

Keywords

• Russian language
• toponymy
• hydronymy
• Vyatka
• etymology
• Old Krivich dialectal elements