Kaimo vardas „Stabaunyčius“

LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI XXXVI (1996) LIETUVIŲ KALBA: TYRĖJAI IR TYRIMAI Aleksandras VANAGAS VILLAGE NAME STABAUNYČIUS In the Kaunas district, in the Babtai area, there is a village officially called Stabaunyčius. The current standard form is probably not old—it was recommended as such in 1974 and 1976 (1:90; 2:287). This recommendation, in turn, was based on the fact that this was the form entered in the place-name records for Babtai rural district in Kaunas County, compiled in the late 1930s: Stabaunyčius. It is unclear where the latter form came from, since it does not occur in the alphabetical index of place names collected from spoken language (3). Nor has it been found in the prewar book of protocols on the standardization and management of place names (4:107; 5:100). The 1935 place-name questionnaire records Stabaunyčios kaimas; “Inhabited Places of Lithuania” gives the genitive form Stabaunyčios km. (6:61). The first official postwar list of inhabited places gives the same form—Stabaunyčios km. (7:935). B. Kviklys writes Stabaunyčios kaimas, Stabaunyčios kalno (7:352—353). Spoken language also yielded the form Stabaunyčios kalnas, recorded as late as 1960 (3). The evidence from historical documents is relatively late: Stabownica in 1784 (9), Stabownica in 1854 (10:161), ”Stabownica osada nad Niewiążą... o 2 w. powyżej Bobt, przystań na Niewiązy” in 1890 (11:170), Стабовница in 1892 (12:33), Stabaunica (siehe Stabownica) in 1918 (9). It would therefore be reasonable to suppose that the original form was most likely feminine—Stabaunyčia or the like. B. Kviklys attempted to explain the origin of the place name. He wrote: ”2.5 km south of Babtai, on the left bank of the Nevėžis, lies the village of Stabaunyčios. Its name comes not from the word ”stabas” (idol), but from a landing place; stabauti means to stop ships. In former times there was a harbor here, used also by the Nemunas river barges” (8:353). This is the only hypothesis about the origin of the name known to me. It is not entirely impossible, but it raises quite a few doubts. We must therefore seek another, more convincing explanation. At first glance, the word stàbas cited by B. Kviklys may not seem entirely coincidental. B. Kviklys himself provides very interesting information: ”In the fields of the former Babtynas (Babcinos) estate there were two enormous brick pillars, about 1 km apart; a third, identical pillar stood on the other side of the Nevėžis, on Stabaunyčios Hill, beside the old Kaunas-Riga highway. All the pillars were identical, [...] made of large bricks, plastered at the top, with a masonry pinnacle shaped like a little roof... No information has survived about who built these monumental pillars or when. Attempts to find out were unsuccessful. Some claimed, 71 that they might have been 300 years old and erected in memory of the Swedish invasion; others said they were secret monuments to the 1831 uprising.” B. Kviklys adds: ”There are conjectures that they could even have been boundary markers between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Order. Unfortunately, these have not been verified” (8:352). The pillars were widely known, so it is not impossible that they may have been perceived as idols, and perhaps even called such. The word stabas means not only ”a statue or some object regarded as a god and worshipped,” but also simply ”statue; pillar” (13:XIII 604). Thus, a hybrid form *Stabownia could have been formed from Lithuanian stabas in the speech of local Poles or Polonized Lithuanians. Its meaning would be ”place of idols, a place where idols are found,” or the like. Cf. Lithuanian vazainė, vazaunìa ”room for carts, sleighs....” — Polish wozównia, Belarusian vazoužnja (14:II 12009); Lithuanian ledaūnė, ledaunìa ”place for storing ice” — Polish lodownia, Belarusian ledovnia (13:VII 222; 14: I 350). Stabaunica would be a derivative in -ica from *Stabownia, just as, for example, alongside Lithuanian ledaūnė, ledaunìa we have ledaunyčia ”a place for storing things cooled with ice”—from Polish lodownica (13: VII 222). Thus Polish lodownia and lodownica correspond to Lithuanian *Stabownia and Stabaunica. Another place name formed in a similar way is known: the name Stabaunica, Stabownica of a field (arable land, 4 ha) lying within the boundaries of the villages of Kleboniškis and Vaistariškės, in the Pažaislis area of Kaunas district. We have no evidence that there was a landing place here. It is true that no pillars or the like, which might have been called idols, are known in these places either. However, given that in Prussian the cognate of Lithuanian stabas, stabis, simply meant ”stone” (14: II 891), it would be possible to argue that Lithuanian stabas too may have had a more general meaning of ”stone” or the like. In general, it is thought that words in Lithuanian, Prussian, and Latvian (both proper and common nouns) containing the root stab- are among the more prominent isoglosses linking all these Baltic languages (18:61). Moreover, it should not be overlooked that Lithuanian stabas can simply mean ”statue” or ”pillar”. A certain alteration of *Stabaunyčia or the like is probably also the name Stabonýčia, recorded in modern times, in 1972, for a hill in the village of Jurkšai, in the Alksnėnai (Pilviškiai) area of Vilkaviškis district. Associating Stabonýčios with stabauti ”to stop” is doubtful also because this verb is otherwise unknown: it is absent from the comprehensive ”Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language”; it is mentioned neither by K. Būga, who perhaps examined Lithuanian stabas and its cognates most extensively (15:II 599—602), nor by E. Fraenkel (14), nor by other dictionaries or authors. It is true that the ”Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language” includes related words of similar structure: stabinti ”to stop” (13:XIII 609), stabýti, stābo, stābė ”to stop” (ibid., 610). But it is hard to imagine that a hybrid noun *Stabaunia and Stabaunica could be derived from them. The connection between Stabaunyčios and Lithuanian stabas would also be supported by the fact that place names containing stab- are generally quite common in the Baltic lands: Lithuanian Stab-galė, a meadow, Vandžiogala; Stabinė, a field, Saločiai; a marsh, Skaudvilė; Stabinė village, Telšiai; Stabinės Hill, Varniai; Stab-u-lankiai village, Leliūnai; Prussian Stabayn, Stab-e-gode, Stab-e-lauken, Stab-ingen (16:171—172); Latvian Staba-gals, Staba-plava, Stabu-plava, Stabu-rags (17:313). Interestingly, some Lithuanian place names have been Slavicized and are of hybrid formation, like Stabaunyčia: Stabaūcas forest, Rumšiškės; 72 Stabavicos marsh, Daugai; Stabavicos Hill, Alytus. The meadows in the vicinity of Varėna, whose field name is Stabaviškas, have a distinctive and somewhat problematic derivation (possibly Yotvingian). From what has been said here, it can probably be concluded that the original form of the name, which arose in Polish or in the language of local Lithuanians who had become Polonized, was most likely Stabaunica, Stabownica, or something similar. From it, the form Stabaunyčia developed in Lithuanian (cf. Belarusian Bistrica — Lithuanian Bistryčia). Initially, the hill with the aforementioned pole was apparently called Stabaunicos, Stabaunyčios. Later, the name of the hill was adopted by a settlement established nearby. This could probably explain the emergence of the masculine form Stabaunyčius—both the hill and the village are masculine. If this version of the origin of Stabaunyčius were confirmed, it would then have to be accepted that the three aforementioned poles were erected no later than 1784, since the name was already recorded in documents at that time. LITERATŪRA 1. Lietuvos TSR administracinio-teritorinio suskirstymo žinynas 1, Vilnius, 1974. 2. Lietuvos TSR administracinio-teritorinio suskirstymo žinynas 2, Vilnius, 1976. 3. Abėcėlinė vietovardžių, surinktų iš gyvosios kalbos, kartoteka saugoma Lietuvių kalbos institute. 4. Vidaus Reikalų Ministerijos Pavardžių ir Vietovardžių Komisijos protokolų knyga. 1934. I. 24—1936. III. 27. 5. Vidaus Reikalų Ministerijos Pavardžių ir Vietovardžių Atlit lietovinimo Komisijos Protokolų Knygos. 1936—1940 m. 6. Lietuvos apgyventos vietos. K., 1925. 7. Lietuvos TSR administracinis-teritorinis suskirstymas. Vilnius, 1959. 8. K v i k l y s B. Mūsų Lietuva 2, Vilnius, 1991. 9. Lietuvių kalbos instituto abėcėlinė istorinių vietovardžių kartoteka. 10. H o l o w i n s k i I. Telšių ir Žemaičių vyskupystės vietovardžių rankraštinis sąrašas, saugomas Lietuvių kalbos institute. 11. Słownik geograficzny królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich 11, Warszawa, 1890. 12. Список населенных мест Ковенской губернии. К., 1892. 13. Lietuvių kalbos žodynas 1—15, Vilnius, 1956—1991. 14. F r a e n k e l E. Litauisches etymologisches Wörterbuch 1—2, Heidelberg, 1962 t.t. 15. B ū g a K. Rinktiniai raštai 1—3, Vilnius, 1958—1961. 16. G e r u l l i s G. Die altpreußischen Ortsnamen. Berlin und Leipzig, 1922. 17. V a n a g a s A. Lietuvių hidronimų etimologinis žodynas. Vilnius, 1981. 18. Д а м б е B. Соответствия в топонимии Латвийской ССР с древнепрусским языком. — Baltistica. 1 priedas, 55—62, 1972. DER DORFNAME STABAUNYČIUS Zusammenfassung Die erste Variante des Namens, entstandene aus dem Polnischen oder der polonisierten litauischen Sprache, war sicherlich Stabaunica oder Stabownica. Das ist das Wort der hybridischen Bildung: aus dem lit. stabas ”Pfosten, Säule, Götzenbild” und aus dem slawischen Suffix -ovnica (cf. polnisch lodownica). Die Formen Stabaunica, Stabownica wurden in der litauischen Sprache zu ”Stabaunyčia”. Aus ihr entwickelte sich später die Variante des männlichen Geschlechts Stabaunyčius. 73