ВОПРОСЫ ОНОМАСТИКИ | PROBLEMS OF ONOMASTICS

Anna Vladimirovna Dybo ^{1, 2, 3}
Ali Muratuly Baibossyn ⁴
Kuanyshbek Karimovich Kenzhalin ⁴
Gulzhanat Abdrakhmanovna Begimova ⁴
Bekzhan Abdualiuly ⁴
Vyacheslav Nikolaevich Khoninov ^2
1 Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia
² Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
³ Kalmyk State University, Elista, Russia
⁴ L. N. Gumilev Eurasian National University, Astana, Kasakhstan

REVISITING THE MONGOLIAN STRATUM OF KAZAKH PLACE NAMES

For citation
Dybo, A. V., Baibossyn, A. M., Kenzhalin, K. K., Begimova, G. A., Abdualiuly, B., & Khoninov, V. N. (2024). Revisiting the Mongolian Stratum of Kazakh Place Names. Voprosy onomastiki, 21(1), 27–71. https://doi.org/10.15826/vopr_onom.2024.21.1.002

Received on 5 October 2023
Accepted on 16 December 2024

Abstract: The study examines a representative sample of toponyms located in the territory of Kazakhstan, that can potentially be of Mongolian origin. These toponyms are classified into three categories: 1) settlement names (oikonyms), 2) water body names (hydronyms), and 3) geographical feature names (oronyms). In cases of duplicate toponyms (oikonym and oronym), precedence is given to the geographical feature name, following the most common direction of toponymic transfer. The analysis investigates the significance of Mongolian names in the Kazakh language, encompassing motivational, word-formational, and etymological aspects, and proposes new hypotheses of their origin while considering earlier theories. The authors identify the main challenges faced by etymologists and toponymists and review previous authors’ unsuccessful etymological solutions. Errors detected in the data include references to Russified place names borrowed into contemporary Kazakh, inattention to early toponym records, neglect of phonetic changes in Kazakh and Mongolian, as well as their relative chronology, and disregard of potential phonetic adaptation patterns that one could expect based on the phonological peculiarities of both the source and receiving languages. The study aims to categorise place names according to the time and source of borrowing, each name being evaluated based on whether it was initially borrowed as a toponym or an appellative word that later integrated a Kazakh toponym. The analysis concludes that Kazakh toponymy of Mongolian origin (i.e. place names that were borrowed as toponyms) is predominantly recent and associated with the borders of two historical Mongolian states — the Dzungar and Kalmyk khanates.

Keywords: Turkic languages; Mongolian languages; toponyms; etymology; language contacts; lexical semantics

Acknowledgements
This article was prepared as part of the grant project AR08855980 Historical Dictionary of the Kazakh Language, approved by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The processing of the Mongolian material was carried out within the framework of the Russian Science Foundation project No. 23-18-00518 Electronic Dialectological Atlas of the Mongolian Languages of Russia: Basic Vocabulary.

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