Uteniškių kaimas yra ne „Narkūnai“, o „Norkūnai“

Pastabos The Utena dialect village is not Narkūnai, but Norkūnai The village, situated 3 km southwest of Utena, by the stream Utenaitė, is listed as Narkūnai5 in the directory of administrative-territorial divisions. This village (and its name) is quite widely known, mainly because of two famous hillforts, one called the Great Hillfort, or Utenis Castle, and the other the Little Hillfort, or Utenis’s Grave6. Local people pronounce the village name as na.rkúnai—with a long a in the first syllable7; therefore, the spelling Narkūnai must be considered incorrect in the standard language, and the dialect pronunciation must be transposed to Norkūnai. (If the first syllable had a short [a], we would hear it as a somewhat reduced [Λ], but what we hear now is a clear [a], which misleads many people—it seems that one can write “as it sounds,” so even linguists whose native dialect is another one can make a mistake. It is important to understand that the half-long vowels of the Utena dialect cannot in any way be written directly, without transposition, using standard spelling, because the Utena dialect has vowels of three different lengths, whereas the standard language has only two.) Vladas Žulys Tako g. 1–7, LT–53356 Akademija Kauno r., Lietuva On the relationship between the surnames Žiulys and Žulys In the Dictionary of Lithuanian Surnames, the surname Žiulys is not explained; it is simply referred to the surname Žulys8. Apparently, it was thought that Žiulys was a secondary, later surname, while Žulys was the original one (the relationship would be similar, for example, to that between the loanwords župonas and žiūponas). The facts about the Utena dialect known to me compel me to explain this relationship differently. Most Utena-dialect speakers named Žiulys and Žiulys lived before the Second World War in rather com- 5 Directory of Administrative-Territorial Divisions of the Lithuanian SSR 1. Vilnius: Mintis, 1974, 320. 6 Soviet Lithuanian Encyclopedia 8. Vilnius: Mokslas, 1981, 92 (entry Narkūnų piliakalniai). 7 That is how my mother, Rožė Cibaitė-Žulienė, also pronounced it; she came from the not very distant village of Vosgėliai. 8 Lietuvių pavardžių žodynas L–Ž. Vilnius: Mokslas, 1989, 1340 (Žiulys), 1348 (Žulys). 159