Dėl kai kurių vandenvardžių kilmės ir darybos

fat (acc. sing. fat) “fat(ty), lush”: to become fat “become fat” (as to flood: become deep, dry: become dry, to wrinkle: to shrink, etc.); to thrive, -s, -ed “thrive well (of grain, livestock)” also belongs here. On the other hand, Baltic languages also have an acute root, cf. Lithuanian fat (acc. pl. fats) “fat”: Latvian I become fat (as to break: to break: to drag: to tear, etc.); cf. also tū-las, Old Church Slavonic ty-ti. In place of the singular instrumental head, it should be head (p. 9), since nouns with an acute root do not shift the stress to the ending in this case (except for instrumentals with the ending -mi); cf. window, devil, serpent, song, month, water, waist). The Baltic counterpart of Slavic *męso (plural męsą) is Samogitian mensā (Kaltinėnai, Vainutas11, Laukuva, Saugos). Like its Slavic counterpart, this word has a circumflex and belongs to the mobile-stress paradigm. The origin of the related Samogitian form meisa is unclear (cf. Old Prussian mensā|menso), although in some Samogitian dialects en can become ei; cf. Samogitian lėišis, skėisk12 (from *lenšis “lentil, lens,” *skeńsk “I submerge, drown”). The author incorrectly considers the Latvian form mièša to be borrowed from Slavic. Latvian miè-sa likewise derives from Baltic *mensā (cf. Latvian five=Lithuanian five). These few critical remarks do not diminish the great value of V. Illich-Svitych’s work. Such a study was needed for the further development of Baltic and Slavic accentology, and the author of the work, having convincingly substantiated the connection between the Baltic and Slavic accentuation systems and the Indo-European one, made a significant contribution to Baltic and Slavic accentology. S. Karaliūnas ON THE ORIGIN AND FORMATION OF SOME HYDRONYMS Alfred Senn, Zur Bildung litauischer Gewässernamen, „Annali dell’ Instituto Universitario Orientale, Sezione Slava“, II, Napoli, 1959, p. 41—47. Recently, articles and studies on Lithuanian place names have been appearing increasingly often in foreign linguistic and specialist toponymic literature. However, when incomplete or unreliable toponymic material is used, unjustified conclusions are sometimes drawn. This can also be said of A. Zenas’s article discussed here. Drawing on the proper names presented in the “Dictionary of Lithuanian Spelling” (1948) and the introductory remarks on Lithuanian place names, A. Zenas attempts to describe the more prominent patterns of Lithuanian hydronym formation. Unfortunately, many of his claims are unsubstantiated, and he even gives incorrect explanations of the formation and etymology of some Lithuanian hydronyms. The author asserts that proper names in Lithuanian and Latvian have not yet been studied in a truly scientific manner, and that even now people still content themselves with the current— 11 K. Būga, RR, I, p. 113. 12 P. Skardžius, ZslPh, XXVI, 1958, 375 tt.; E. Grinaveckienė, LKK, III, 1960, p. 196. 236 the collection of “correct” forms of place names and refrains from studying them historically1. A. Zenas is inclined to regard only the historical study of place names as “truly scholarly.” It should be noted here that the prevailing view in toponymic scholarship today is precisely that synchronic analysis based on structural-grammatical classification must serve as the preparatory stage for historical research. Place names are viewed as a distinctive system governed by its own (toponymic) laws. It is therefore considered that a national toponymic system can be studied only after its general, specific features of formation and semantics, its structure, and its developmental trends have been thoroughly clarified. The second stage in the study of place names should consist of a stratigraphy of derivational and semantic types and an attempt to establish their relative chronology. It is only then, consequently, that the historical study of place names begins. An important preparatory task for such research is to collect all place names from an ethnically unified area and to distinguish the original forms of individual place names from the numerous secondary forms that have arisen through folk etymology or other kinds of distortion. Place-name research is understood in this way in Lithuania as well. A. Zenas apparently adheres to the traditional view of toponymy, according to which a place name is first and foremost a “historical source,” and believes that individual place names can be explained atomistically, detached from the toponymic continuum and their system, with regard only to their formal, phonetic similarity to appellatives. The direction in which such an atomistic study of place names can lead is most clearly shown by some of A. Zenas’s own etymologies. A. Zenas is simply convinced a priori that most Lithuanian hydronyms derive from personal names. In fact, only a small proportion of Baltic river names and a somewhat larger number of lake names can be derived from personal names. Such hydronyms are usually possessive or commemorative in meaning, formed from the given names or surnames of the owners of the waters or of other persons associated with those features. Most often they are genitive forms, or elliptical genitives that have already become proper names. However, this process has produced names only for relatively small hydrographic features lying within the boundaries of their owners’ estates. Larger rivers generally do not have anthroponymic names. The Baltic hydronymic corpus shows that older river and lake names are semantically connected with the physical-geographical or configurational properties of the features, or are simply physiographic terms. This is precisely why hydronyms are not isolated: they recur in different places, and the distribution of the roots of many hydronyms covers almost the entire historical area of the Baltic languages. Only a hydronym’s isolation within the hydronymic system may provide grounds for deriving it from a personal name. 1 “The... VI. International Congress for Name Research... must have brought home to the Balts the shameful realization that proper scholarly research into names in Lithuanian and Latvian does not yet exist at all, since there people are still content merely to collect the ‘correct’ forms of names in use today and display a cool reserve toward any historical investigation” (p. 41). 237 In view of what has been said above about the genesis of Baltic hydronyms, we find convincing J. Otrębski’s etymology of the river name Zeimenà and the lake name Zeimenas|Zeimenes|Zeimenys (: *žeimą “cold”; more likely *žeimuõ. — B. S.), whereas A. Zenas’s criticism of this etymology is wholly unconvincing, being based on the unsubstantiated conviction that these hydronyms supposedly derive from a personal name. Among other things, deriving these hydronyms from personal names is also precluded by the lake name’s variant forms Zeimenes|Zeimenys, since their morphology shows the inflection of a consonant-stem appellative, which is entirely uncharacteristic of personal names. A. Zenas’s derivation from a personal name of the river name Šalantas is equally unconvincing; it cannot be distinguished from the river names Salietìs (Debeikiai), Salūtė (Raseiniai), Salõtė (Kapčiamiestis), Saltekỹs (Viduklė), Salūkė (Stakliškės), Sālupis (Gaurė and Kiduliai), and Salūpis (Panemunėlis and Stačiūnai). H. Krahe³ has given a wholly convincing etymology of this river name (Sal-antas: Old Prussian salus “rain stream”; compare also Lithuanian salvėti “to flow, seep gradually.” — B. S.). J. Otrębski⁴ has also convincingly criticized A. Zenas’s attempts to derive these hydronyms from personal names. Relying entirely on his own conception of the anthroponymic origin of hydronyms, A. Zenas proceeds to link Lithuanian hydronyms with German (!) personal names: “Galm-onas is the German Hallmann or Hellmann, from which, perhaps, Almenas“⁵ also derives. Such an etymology is certainly fabricated out of thin air. The name of the lake Almenas (Linkmenys) cannot be separated from the hydronyms Almajas (Lake Linkmenys), Almė (Šiluva River), and Almuonė (Kraupiškas River), and is to be associated with the Lithuanian appellatives almuõ, almė́ti⁶; and the river name Galmonas (Batakiai), it seems to us, cannot be separated from such Baltic place names as Prussian Galmen⁷ and Latvian Galmene⁸, which in turn are also associated with the root gal-gel-gil. of Baltic hydronyms. J. Otrębski has already convincingly refuted A. Zenas’s view that the river name Baužas supposedly derives from the Polish personal name Bohusz, showing that Bohusz < Bogu-sław, whereas Lithuanian Baužas < baužas “hornless”⁹. 2 Żr. Jan Otrębski, „Beiträge zur Namenforschung“, 1958, p. 189. 3 “In principle, therefore, Salantas could have originated, at the level of an individual language, from an appellative corresponding to Old Prussian salus, which was later lost from Lithuanian.” H. Krahe, Der Flußname Salantas, “Beiträge zur Namenforschung”, 3, 1960, p. 259. 4 Jan Otrębski, Beiträge zur baltisch-slavischen Namenkunde, “Beiträge zur Namenforschung”, 1, 1961, p. 42. 5 Galmonas is the German Hallmann or Hellmann, from which Almenas may possibly also derive” (p. 46). 6 Żr. K. Būga, Rinktiniai raštai, III, Vilnius, 1961, p. 413. 7 G. Gerullis, Die altpreußischen Ortsnamen, Berlin und Leipzig, 1922, p. 35. 8 A. Bielenstein, Die Grenzen des lettischen Volkstammes..., St. Petersburg, 1892, p. 254. 9 See Jan Otrębski, Beiträge zur baltisch-slavischen Namenkunde, “Beiträge zur Namenforschung”, 1, 1961, p. 39. 238 By etymologizing place names in this way, A. Zenas makes a methodological error also characteristic of other linguists, who sometimes try to explain individual place names in isolation from their variants, tearing them out of the toponymic continuum and the national system of names without having grasped the totality of Baltic proper names. For instance, in his book on Lithuanian place names, R. Šmitėnas