Improving Reliability of Onomastic Etymology (with Reference to the Southeastern Lake Onega Region)

The paper addresses the problem of improving reliability of onomastic etymologies using the example of historical and modern personal and place names of southeastern Lake Onega region. The issue is pertinent, as specialists form other fields (c.f. historians and ethnologists) take little account of onomastic research where serious studies and quasi-scientific works presenting unverified data are sometimes difficult to separate. The paper provides examples of erroneous etymologies of personal and place names. Wrong etymologization can occur due to the neglect of written sources (the person named Shestak living in the village of Shestovo, or Terenty living in Terovo) or processes of phonetic adaptation in language contacts (Tyug- from Vepsian tühj ‘empty,’ not from tuug ‘spring sowing’). Another cause is the use of unverified written sources that might include invalid variants of names due to their misspelling or incorrect rendering (Kosach instead of Kagach, Saminskoye instead of Salminskoye). Tangly ethnic and linguistic contexts, such as heterogeneity of topobases (Goik-) or the widespread prevalence of appellatives (Kubas), can also result in etymological mistakes as some name variants may be underinformative and misleading. The author offers a complex approach for improving reliability of onomastic etymologies based on 1) expanding the source base and making comparative research of the collected data, 2) using the data of historical phonetics and phonetic adaptation in contacting languages, 3) emphasizing the so-called “exact” etymologies, 4) comparing local toponymic and anthroponymic data with onomastic evidence from other regions, 5) identifying toponyms with a greater differentiating linguistic potential, 6) eliminating bias which include etymologies accommodated to a specific language.