Healing-Protective Personal Names in the Traditional Tatar Culture

Abstract

The article examines specific Tartar personal names which are supposed to protect children from disease, adversity, and death. Drawing on folklore and ethnographic data, the author distinguishes between the two main types: names that do not require any ritual, and those historically associated with some or other ritual actions. The first type includes “stopping,” “protective-wishful” and “averting” (“bad”) names; the second type is represented by personal names related to the rites of renaming or selling a child. As the author illustrates, Tatar native speakers believe that the former can “stop” death (such as Tuktamysh, Tuktar, Tuktasyn, etc. — derived from the verbal stem tukta ‘stop’) or protect the child, like the names with components timer ‘iron’ (Mintimer, Timerbay), bulat ‘steel’ (Aibulat, Bulat, Timerbulat), tash ‘stone’ (Biktash, Tashbai, Tashlyyar); the names with a negative meaning (like Sasyk ‘Smelly’, Yaman ‘Bad,’ etc.) are also considered to have protective impact. The latter type is exemplified, firstly, by names with the components min and cal meaning ‘birthmark’: Mielebulat, Migaleali, Milelebik; Kalpik, Kalystan, etc. — historically formed and often associated with the “ritual” renaming of the child. Secondly, the same type includes names reflecting the rite of “sale”: Satar ‘will sell,’ Satubal ‘buy,’ Satubaldy ‘bought,’ etc. As the article shows, all the considered varieties of Tatar healing-protective names have parallels in other Turkic languages, which means they may date back to the Old Turkic nominative patterns.

Keywords

• Tatar language
• Tatar culture
• Tatar personal names
• anthroponymy
• healing-protective names
• ritual of renaming a child
• ritual of selling a child