O. Būsas reviews the book by Estonian academic P. Ariste, “Language Contacts. Contacts of the Estonian Language with Other Languages” (Keelekontaktid. Eesti keele kontakte teiste keeltega. Tallinn, 1981). Dz. Barbarė provides a bibliography of works on Latvian language contacts published between 1945 and 1984.

A. Sabaliauskas

Мурзаев Э. М. Словарь народных географических терминов. М.: Мысль, 1984. 654 с.

This is the first substantial dictionary of folk geographical terms of its kind to be published in our country. Its author is the well-known geographer interested in place names and especially in geographical terminology, Doctor of Geographical Sciences and Honored Scientist of the RSFSR, Professor Eduardas Makarovičius Murzajevas. His scholarly interests are primarily connected with Asia: he has taken part in expeditions to northern and central Asia, Mongolia, and Vietnam. His interests have also included many geographical, toponymic, and geographical-terminology problems concerning a number of other countries. In 1959, the Geographical Literature Publishing House published E. and V. Murzajev’s “Dictionary of Local Geographical Terms” (“Словарь местных географических терминов”). In 1973, E. Murzajevas’s book “Popular Toponymy” appeared in Moscow, followed in 1974 by “An Outline of Toponymy.” The comparatively short “Dictionary of Local Geographical Terms” was very popular and received favorable reviews in the press at home and abroad. It also included some terms from the Baltic republics, but, as the author himself notes in the introduction to the dictionary under review, few compared with other republics of the USSR. E. Murzajevas therefore continued working over the next two decades, gathering additional material and so on. The result of this work is truly impressive: a volume of 654 pages (59 quires, 1 sheet). As in the earlier work, it also includes geographical terms from the Baltic languages (Lithuanian and Latvian). In what follows, we will discuss mainly these.

The introduction to the “Dictionary of Folk Geographical Terms” indicates that the author sought to present the terminology of all the republics and regions of the USSR as evenly as possible. We lack the data to assess how well he succeeded for the country as a whole, but the Baltic languages are represented far too scantily: the dictionary contains only a few dozen (about 60) Lithuanian and Latvian terms. In itself, this number might not be considered either too small or, naturally, too large; everything depends on its relation to the terms from other languages of the USSR. Even so, one may question whether Lithuanian and Latvian are represented proportionately. That is one point. A second, and perhaps more important, point is that including such a small number of Baltic-language terms raises the question of selection criteria: which of the thousands must be included in the dictionary? In our view, the author must have found it rather difficult to establish clear selection criteria; consequently, the few dozen Lithuanian and Latvian words often seem not to be the most important, and sometimes rather arbitrary or even questionable.

Selecting terms is not easy, especially for someone from another nation: when adequate literature is lacking, one must rely on intuition, which a non-native usually lacks. As a result, intuition can do little to establish a hierarchy of terms, not only according to the importance of the objects they denote, but also according to the terms’ own prevalence, popularity, and the like.

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The author’s principal source for Lithuanian and Latvian terms was almost exclusively L. Nevskajos’s book “Baltic Geographical Terminology” (M., 1977). Other works, including specialized dictionaries of geographical terms—which are admittedly very few—appear, judging from the bibliography, to have gone unused. Bearing in mind that even in L. Nevskajos’s book the terms are wholly undifferentiated in terms of their “hierarchy of value,” one can understand how difficult the task of selecting terms was for the author of the work under review. E. Murzajevas included some of the more important terms in his dictionary. But, as noted, very few. Such widely known and used words as akivaras, duburys, dumb­las, gelmė, iškyšulys, kraštas, kriaušis, lenkė, lydymas, lieknas, lyguma, lūnas, lūbas, loma, mūras, ola, pakriaukė, plyné, praraja, raguva, raistas, skardis, tarpėklis, tyras, užutekis, vingis and so on are absent from the dictionary. Conversely, some of the terms included are less important: акменац, алкна, брода, аугурас, гирь, губурас, икалне, кланас, макна, миестас, тиллис, смалка and so on. Other, more popular terms could have taken their place. One or two terms have been selected poorly; for example, борас “pinewood.” This is clearly a Slavicism, and is not widely distributed; šilas should have been used instead. The term нерунг is also included by mistake: Lithuanian has only nerija.

In the author’s words, the work also provides the “etymology, if there is one” of a term (p. 8), but this is very provisional and is mostly limited to “the very highest level” (ibid.). This is entirely understandable, since determining the full etymologies of all the terms included in the dictionary is beyond the capacity of one person. Of course, even allowing for this, there would nevertheless be reason to expect somewhat fuller explanations of origins, especially since this could have been done relatively easily for Baltic-language words in this case, using even a single source: E. Frenkelio’s “Lithuanian Etymological Dictionary.” Unfortunately, as the etymological notes themselves show, and as is also evident from the bibliography (which, incidentally, is presented very haphazardly—with no numbering, not even in alphabetical order, and so on), the author did not use this dictionary. The main sources for etymologies are the aforementioned book by L. Nevskajos, M. Fasmerio’s “Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language,” and a few articles by V. Dambė, I. Duridanovo, E. Katonova, N. Tolstojaus, and others. The author occasionally draws on V. Toporovo and O. Trubačiovo’s book “Linguistic Analysis of the Hydronyms of the Upper Dnieper Region.” Apparently, this is essentially why most Baltic geographical terms have no etymologies in the true sense of the word: usually only the meanings of the terms are given (also, with rare exceptions, following the aforementioned book by L. Nevskajos). More is said about origins when a Baltic term has an obvious equivalent in Russian (e.g., Lithuanian viršūnė — Russian верх, Lithuanian lankà — Russian лука, Lithuanian akis — Russian око, and so on). Yet even this “highest level” of etymology, to use the author’s words, is sometimes excessively superficial, based on one or another linguistic correspondence, and most often on no more than a reference to a related, sometimes quite distant, Russian word (e.g., Lithuanian dubà — Russian дебри, Lithuanian girìà — Russian гора, and so on). Baltic-language terms are rarely placed in the context of other Indo-European languages; moreover, with rare exceptions, this is done only through Russian or Slavic languages generally. Thus, their “etymological motivation” for inclusion in this dictionary is minimal.

When presenting Baltic-language terms, errors of stress and proofreading occur.

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Several place names are often listed alongside the relevant geographical terms. Sometimes they are in the right place, but mistakes also occur. Among the clearer examples, let us mention Калвария, given under the term kalvà (the place name Kalvarija, as everyone knows, derives from the religious term kalvarijà (Polish kalwarja <Latin calvaria ‘station of the Stations of the Cross’)).

In conclusion, it may be added that there seems to be no particular reason to include Baltic-language terms in this dictionary. More generally, the usefulness of a dictionary of this kind may be questioned: it covers too many languages, and, moreover, they have been selected on a territorial (administrative) basis. Would it not make more sense to compile dictionaries of geographical terminology for several or many related languages?

A. Vanagas