Open AccessColour term ‘black’ in Estonian place names
Author(s) -
Kaidi Rätsep
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri./eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.142
H-Index - 5
eISSN - 2228-1339
pISSN - 1736-8987
DOI - 10.12697/jeful.2012.3.1.04
Subject(s) - toponymy , estonian , nominative case , genitive case , geography , history , genealogy , linguistics , archaeology , noun , philosophy , verb
Must ‘black’ is considered to be the most common colour attribute in place names. The article provides a brief overview of must ‘black’ in Estonian place names. The data was obtained from kohanimekartoteek ‘place names card index’ of the Institute of the Estonian Language. In the index there are 1377 slips beginning with (or containing) must ‘black’, discounting within-parish duplicate slips 1081 place names were found. Altogether, 728 different place name variants were discovered. The most frequent occurrences of must in the nominative case were Mustjõgi ‘Black-river’ (frequency = 26), Mustjärv ‘Black-lake’ (22), Mustkivi ‘Black-stone’ (21), Mustoja ‘Black-rivulet’ (18) and Mustmägi ‘Black-hill’ (16). In the genitive case Musta talu ‘Black farm’ (22) was twice as frequent as the next most common, Mustitalu ‘Musti farm’ (11). According to the studied material the most common determinant was talu ‘farm’ (231), followed by mägi ‘hill’ (70), mets ‘forest’ (45) and heinamaa ‘hayfi eld’ (43).