Etymology of meanings. Brief etymological dictionary of planetary toponyms. At the origins of civilization

Translator Polina Mozzhukhina

© Alexander Tokiy, 2021

© Polina Mozzhukhina, translation, 2021

ISBN 978-5-0053-0497-1

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

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Foreword

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Gentle reader!

We tried to translate this book from Russian into English, so as not to lose the semantic subtleties of the content. The book is written in Russian, but it could also be written in any other language, because all the languages of the planet grew out of one, common language, which is most clearly visible in the naming of the area or in toponyms.

Thousands years ago, distant ancestors marked their places of stay with sounds that accompanied their existence and evoked certain associations.

For example, when they drank from reservoirs, the sound “ms” appeared. In their minds this sound corresponded to the ability to quench the thirst, so the places where it could be done began named with this sound. So there were a large number of names of reservoirs or places close to the water that include this protoroot: the Moscow River, the Miass River, the Mississippi River, the Thames River, Mesopotamia, Lake Michigan, the city of Mosul, the Mezima River and hundreds of others.

Gradually, the sound “m” (the sound of food), which appears when mammals feed, disappeared from some names; only the sound “s” remained, the sound of flowing water, which retains its meaning “water” in different languages and included in the names of many other reservoirs\toponyms: Sudan, the Sura river, lake Issyk-Kul, the Seine river, the Seym river, the Svir river, the Siya river, the Sista river and others.

In some peoples, the sound “s” eventually “hissed”, so the names with hissing sounds appeared: the Chagra river, the Chaya river, lake Michigan, the Shari river, the Shaiga river, the Zhekan river and the ancient sickle became shekel.

Even more obviously protoroots are visible in the names of the mountains. If a person raises his head and pronounces some sounds simultaneously, the vowels – first of all the sound “a” – come out unhindered. But as soon as the trachea is bent, cutting off the air, there is the sound of “y” (“i”). From this movement of the head, two ancient protoroots were formed: “ay” is the movement up and “ya” is the movement down. Or simply: “ay” is at the top, “ya” is from top to bottom. So the sound “ay” entered the names of a large number of mountain peaks: Ay-Petri, Ay-Foka, Ay-Vita, Aykuayvenchorr, Aino, Aizu, Nantai, Ayoava, Sinai, Ohio, Altai and hundreds of others. The water frozen on the mountain tops became known as “ice” and the whiteness of the mountain slopes is “white” colour.

In turn, in the name of mountains that have both ascents and descents, you can find both protoroots at the same time: Sayan, Aya, Yokohama and others. Clearly protoroots can be seen and heard in the Japanese hieroglyph (山), which has the meaning “mountain” but which is pronounced as “Yama”, where we can not only hear, but also see the well – known protoroots “ay” and “ya” – up and down. The familiar words also speak about the downward movement: “yakor” (anchor) “yasno” (clear), “yama” (hole\pit), “Yaga” (a witch in Russian Folklore), “yagnyonok” (lamb), “yabeda” (sneak). In the vast majority of cases, the meaning of protoroots fully corresponds to the features of the landscape and keeps these secrets for many centuries.

I hope that you will be interested in learning the secret of the origin of not only ancient place names: Troy, Dardanelles, Caledonia, Baikal, London, Paris, Rome, Moscow, Washington and hundreds of others but also the meaning of the simplest words: ogon’ (fire), otets (father), Russkiy (Russian), pravda (truth), igemon (hegemon), man`yak (maniac) and others.

Enjoy this book.

To the Descendants of Sisyphus

(instead of a Preface)

My ancestors went back to the ancient Greeks, who left mankind an incredibly rich gallery of symbolic meaning and intimate knowledge of mythological images. They inherited knowledge from the depths of centuries and created a fascinating and confusing world of heroes and gods. One of them was Sisyphus, the founder and king of Corinth, who tried to cheat death, for which he was condemned to the severe punishment by the gods – always lifting a heavy stone up the mountain. As soon as he reached the top, the stone would fall under its weight, and poor Sisyphus would come back for it and roll it up the mountain again and again. It became a symbol of painful but useless meaningless and fruitless labour and in the twentieth century French existentialists was raised to the banner of the absurdity of human existence.

Everything is so obvious, but it is far from true. Only one intuition about the meaninglessness of “Sisyphean labour” goes back to the ancient “semantic” understanding of the myth of Sisyphus. The stone that he rolled up the mountain is actually the stone of knowledge. We reach extreme heights with the age, but everything is reset with our departure. There is only a stone at the foot of the mountain, waiting for the touch of new and young hands. The ancients understood the mechanisms of knowledge transfer well and they knew the main “enemy”—the loss of continuity, the absence of someone who will pick up the baton. No one learns from other people’s mistakes, preferring to make their own, repeatedly multiplying and distorting the original meanings.

Since ancient times, people have tried to put knowledge in a variety of forms: in words, fairy tales, legends, metaphors, hoping that these tips will help understanding and knowledge of the world. But the descendants of the ancient perceived “signals” as a fun puzzle, and were often understood literally, without hidden meaning. Abraham Maslow’s famous dictum that civilization is a form of struggle against entropy, the loss of cultural heritage, explains the difficulties that humanity has faced in passing on knowledge to the next generation best of all. This also applied to language – the main means of communication, the most subtle tool for transmitting information, with the slightest error of which meanings could be lost, changed and disappear.

The easiest way of it can be seen in the etymology, and especially in the interpretation of place names. This is an amazing legacy left to us in the names of localities – a legacy visible, audible, easy to understand and always rough to the touch. Thousands and thousands of years ago, our ancestors gave names to the places where they lived. The laws of the language development began with these names, with the primal concepts that I tried to discover during my life in the course of independent searches. I could be wrong in some ways, but I could not resist the temptation to “roll” this “toponymic boulder” on the mountain of knowledge. I hope you will be interested.

The soft sound “l’” or where does a hobby start?

Once in 1971, I returned from the army and got a job at Chelyabinsk television. I met a TV journalist, Samuel Gershuni. We went to the city of Zlatoust to shoot a video about the local watch factory. We lived in a hotel and spent long evenings talking about various topics. Samuel Matveyevich was a sociable man who liked to talk about his front life.

But one day we talked about his jewishness, biblical stories, and the languages which the ancient Jews spoken. It was the moment then I heard his explanation of the soft sound “el’”. We talked about the meaning of the word “Israel”, and Samuel Matveyevich explained that the soft sound “el’” means “God”, and the words “Israel’”, “Samuel’”, “Ariel’” are the names of various jewish tribes. For example, Israel is the God of the “Izra” tribe, and Michael is the God of the “Micah” tribe. Next we found words from other languages: for example, El’ Greco, El`brus, Hel`ius, Ol`ympus. My relatives – first of all my father and cousins – were Crimean Greeks and always emphasized that they were El`liny (Hellenes) And this name also begins with “el’”.

We had neither dictionaries at hand, nor the Internet to look at. So we didn’t get far that night, but the desire to find out what the Hellenes and Israel had in common came just then. I promised Samuel Matveevich that I would go to the library when I returned to Chelyabinsk. He smiled slyly and said that the answer should be found in the ancient jewish books, and in the Soviet Union they will not be found. However, I went to our public library and read all weekend. Thus, my fascination with etymology began.

The first discovery of the secret of the sound “el’” I made accidentally. Once I saw a little girl who was eating a chocolate bar. The chocolate was melting in her mouth, dripping on her bib, and she was laughing, trying to say something, and I distinctly heard that soft sound “el’”. I tried to collect my own saliva, but I couldn’t make the “el’” sound. Then I realized that it is not important the amount of saliva for this sound, but its release is. I filled my mouth with chocolate and waited for my mouth to drool, but it didn’t work either. Then the next day I ate nothing, drank only water, and, being hungry, put the chocolate back in my mouth. And the sound “el’ " took place!

This small discovery led me to believe that the first sounds that a person began to utter were related to his physiology. The state of pleasure, in which saliva is released and the sound “el’” appears, is remembered, fixed in memory or at the genetic level, and in the future, people transmitted the pleasure of life with this sound. Soft sound “el’” is a natural sound that was formed involuntarily, without meaning, expressing pleasant moments of eating.

So it was remembered once and the soft sound “el’” became “stronger, “matured” in languages and sounded like our usual “l”, although the meaning of pleasure, enjoyment remained for it. On its prehistoric “base” appeared a huge number of words, the meaning of which can somehow be reduced to the “common denominator”– joy, pleasure, delight, euphoria. What words could form this sound, this protoroot? Probably, the word “lubov” (love) comes to mind immediately— and quite justifiably! Laska (caress), ulybka (smile), lest’ (flattery), l`zya (permission), legko (easy), lizat’ (to lick), l`nut’ (to cling)—all go back to pleasure and delight. Including when the image of the highest bliss discloses a person. Hence the concept of divinity in different languages: this is Helios, and the Bible, and Israel, and Arabic word Allah, where the sound “l’” has not lost its softness.

It became clear to me that the soft sound “el’” is an involuntary sound, which was born in the depths of human feelings. And the usual “l” is the sound is already meaningful, introduced into the ancient communication system. This meaningful sound formed the protoroot, which combined with other sounds to create words. Knowing the semantic source, it is easy to understand how later meanings appeared.

The soft sound of “l’”, of course, was not the only one that participated in the multi-faceted “meaning-making”. But after that, it was easier for me to understand how other meaningful sounds developed.

Feelings, sounds and protoroots

Language was born out of feelings and meanings. The sense organs gave a person a multi-colored palette of such creative associations. “Everyone hears how he or she breathes”—it is not surprising that a number protoroots originated from the breath sounds. Even in the very word “dykhanie” (breath) this ancient semantic intuition remains. Really, what do we hear when we breathe? The natural, independent of our will, breathing sound is the sound “kh”, combined with various vowel sounds:" kha”, ” kho”, ” khe”, ” khi”, ” akh”, ” okh”, “ukh”. The sound “kh” has become a language protoroot with common meanings related to breathing.

Later, the sounds of breathing became associated with the soul of a person. Breathing means that you are alive. If he\she doesn’t breathe it means that his\her soul has left. For example, when I was a child, my mother would often tell me when she was buttoning the top buttons of my clothes: “You are open-hearted.” And I knew that “soul” is my breathed chest. And to give up the ghost means to lose the “kho”, the air. You can easily remember the words formed by the simplest sounds of breathing: “dykho” (“trachea”), “tikho” (quiet), “ukho” (ear), “ekho” (echo), “likho” (evil\trouble). Even God—“bhoga”—grants breath. This group includes interjections: “akh”, “okh”, ” ukh”, “ekh”. Even the particle “ish” has its physiological origin in the respiratory.

But everything evolves and in the process of evolution protoroots also found new meanings. There is a simple example. At rest, a person breathes easily, freely: inhale and then exhale. Sounds are simple, ordinary. And if a person moves for a long time, and even uphill, and even with the luggage, and even in the “formation” of his fellow tribesmen, who set a certain rhythm – what happens to the breath? There’s not enough air. Breathing becomes “heavy”. And the sounds of breathing also change – instead of a light sound “kh”, you can already hear a heavy, slightly “hoarse” combination of sounds “kh” and “g”.

Let’s complicate the situation. Imagine that our ancient ancestors were walking along the mountains and valleys, and suddenly the path ends – where must they go next? Tired and out of breath, people started looking around and presumably showing each other where to go. What sounds would they use to support their gestures? It is clear – sounds of “heavy” and “open” breathing, with sound “ga” at the base. This sound, mixed with hoarseness and fatigue, received the meaning of way\path, movement and direction.

Protoroot “ga” “grows” everywhere with a variety of pronunciation. On the map of our planet you will find hundreds and hundreds of names formed by this protogoot in the meaning of “way”: Gava, Hanover, Hamburg, Kaluga, Prague, Go, Volga, Riga, Malaga and hundreds of others. In Russian, the first thing that comes to mind is the word “doroga” (road). In addition to it, there are a variety of options: “gat’” (swamp road), “gatit’” (build a road through a swamp, a swampy place), “gay” (pave the way through the forest), “poganyy” (nasty\bad (what is lying along the road)) and even “gad” (reptile). The words formed by this protoroot can be found in both English and German: “go”, “gehen” (to go) and others.

However, the evolution of breath sounds did not end with the meaning of “way” or “direction”. Gradually, the sound “ga” became associated with those who lead the way, with those who go ahead – and therefore know where to go. The leading becomes the knowing. Next comes a reinterpretation of protoroot – the basis remains the same, but the pronunciation from the sounds “kh” and “g” becomes closer to the consonant “k”. And there are new diverse meanings of this sound: “leading”, “knowing”, “main”, “smart”, “thinking”. Although these meanings may seem varied at first glance, they all indicate the ability to think. So, the name of the Chinese game “Go” combines several meanings of this sound. At first I was surprised at the speculative nature of my conclusions, but than I immersed in this speculation more, that I understood my rightness again and again.

What words were formed with protoroot “ka” in its various shades? First of all, they touched the head, which is not only to wear a hat (by the way, this is also reflected in the words). For example, “kapusta” (cabbage)—in Russian it means “empty head”, “kaun” (melon), “kachan” (head of cabbage), “kalgan” (head), “kapa” (kind of hat), “kapyushon” (hood), “kepka” (cap) and others. The words “khalif” (the khalif), “kagan” (a title of imperial rank in the Turkic and Mongolic languages), “kasta” (caste) and the Capitol have the same protoroot. In Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, you can find the same root word “kapata”, which has the meaning “trick”, “deception”, but comes from the same meaning: “the ability to think.” And in the maloyanisol dialect of my ancestors has a word “gaka”, which means “big brother”. How could such word appear? —I think that this is “the first-born”, “going ahead”. And there are a lot of such interesting phenomena in the language.

There is another meaning derived from the sounds of breathing – the Greek word “ego” (εγώ), which translates as “I”. In the older maloyanisol dialect, the word “I” sounds simpler— “go”. Moreover, my grandmother did not pronounce a solid “go”, but again mixed sounds “g” and “kh”, closer to “kho”. The “e” sound in the Greek word “ego” is the sound of “belonging”. Literally, it means “this is me.” If we compare the Greek “ego” and the Russian word “ekho” (echo), it will be clear that it is the same. The echo is a returning sound of my voice, “this is me.”

All the basic sounds and protoroots associated with human physiology and its primary needs. You don’t have to go far – just remember your basic needs. What is the most important thing for a person? It needs air to breathe, it needs food to keep from starving, and it needs water. In addition, he\she needs to continue the family line, needs security, a roof over head, and other needs that are reflected in the language. Therefore, it is objective that besides the sounds of breathing, the first roles in the meaning-making had the “sounds of food”.

Man is a mammalian creature, breastfed. This is why, from infancy, from unconscious memory, we reproduce this deep key sound of the compressed lips —“m” and the following sound of the opening lips—“ma”. In almost all languages the word “mama” (mother) includes this ancient, imbibed with mother’s milk, protoroot. But with feeding, the child uses not only the lips but also the tongue. The tongue presses the nipple of the breast to the palate, and the milk falls on the taste buds of the child’s tongue under pressure. What sound is formed when the tongue pressed to the roof of the mouth? It is a sound “n”. In some languages this sound forms the word “nana” with the meaning “mother”. Nurses are traditionally called “nyanyas” (wet-nurses). And the famous “nyam-nyam” (yum-yum) is just a fusion of two feeding sounds “n” and “m”. By the way, when it is especially delicious, children like to click their tongue and pronounce the famous children’s word “naka”, which means “delicious”. In English this word sounds a little different: “nice”. Among the Greeks, “nostimo” (νόστιμο), although it has the same meaning “nice”.

However, there was not always enough food. Sometimes it was necessary to eat anything spoiled or fermented fruit or carrion. How does the body react to harmful food? It rejects it. And what is the sound produced while vomiting? The sound is complex: both growling and plaintive. Over time, the sound formed is one of the oldest protoroot “mr” with meaning “mertvyy” (dead).

There are a huge number of words with this root in the world. In Russian, this word is “smert’” (death) with all its derivatives: “smrad” (stench), “merzost’” (abomination) and others. This is the word “moroz” (frost) that kills all living things. This is the “more” (sea), the famous “mertvaya voda” (dead water), which is not suitable for drinking, but has nevertheless healing properties, and has retained its name in Russian folk tales about “living” water and “dead” water. This is the Greek God of dreams “Morpheus” and even the science “morfologiya” (morphology). Surprisingly, the word “mir” (peace) is also formed by this protoroot. But the interpretation of this word is a little creepy: mir is when everyone is killed, all are dead, there is no one to fight and the war ends.

The sounds of the food include protoroots “gr”, “kr”, “hr”. Their meaning goes back to the concept of “krepkiy” (strong)—this is the sound of “krosheniya” (crumbling), “khrusta” (crunching). It appeared when a person had to chew bones, or sand and stones enter into his mouth with food. And the sand khrustel (crunched), and the teeth “kroshilis’” (crumbled)! Next to them growling sounds of aggression appear. Growling, as a rule, was accompanied by a demonstration of teeth, and the sound warned that the enemy will stratch. Hence the whole galaxy of “rvanyh” (torn) words: “rychat’” (to growl), “ristat’” (to fight), “rvat’” (to tear), “rubit’” (to hack), “rezat’” (to cut), “rana” (wound).

Another palette of protoroots formed the sounds of drinking. In ancient times, there were no glasses and mugs, so our ancestors drank either from reservoirs, or, to get running water into the palm of their hand, they drew it in, as sometimes children or tourists do. What kind of sound is produced by such a drink? Only the sound of “ms”. “M” is the sound of food, but in this case it is liquid food, the consumption of which is accompanied by a “whistling” sound – the sound “s”. It formed protoroot with the meaning “drinking water”. It can be found everywhere in the names of localities, where water is suitable for drinking. There are a lot of such toponyms\place names on the planet – I found more than three hundred of them on the map, although I assume that there are many more. This is our Moskva reka (Moscow river), the Mississippi, the “Temza” (the Thames), and lake Michigan. This root has been preserved in various languages – for example, in Japanese, where there is still the word “mizi” with the meaning “water” and there is the word “mizimi” with the meaning “lake”.

Like all protoroots, “the sounds of drinking” too, lived their own lives, grew up and changed. So, in a number of languages, the sound of closed lips, the sound of eating “m” disappeared, and only the whistling “s” remained. For example, in the Turkic languages “su” means water. The English word “sea” is similar. And somewhere the whistling “s” evolved into hissing sounds.

The sounds of drinking can also include the sound of slurp in thick, hot and delicious food. Imagine that you have made soup, but instead of eating it with a spoon, you try to drink it directly from the pot. What kind of sound is produced? It is mixed sound “khl’”. Many words were formed from this sound: “khl`ebat’” (to slurp), “khl`upat’” (to slurp), “khl`eb” (bread), “khal`va” (halva), “kha`lyava” (freebie), and even “khl`yabi nebesnye” (“heavenly bread or slush”), which are heard in the name of the city where I have lived all my life and which I love— Chelyabinsk…

“Unnecessary knowledge” or two words about entropy

Why am I telling it for you? I want that it will be clear: there are no meaningless words or meaningless sounds in the world. Words didn’t fall from the sky. When the first sounds appeared, they already had some meaning, carried a semantic load. In other words, all the ancient phonemes were already morphemes in their own way. This semantic load has not disappeared – we just stopped noticing it. But even in those words that we borrow from other languages, when parsing it turns out that these words have returned to us like a boomerang, preserving their root basis, their sound history, which goes back to ancient times. And if you want to learn and to understand words, you need to be able to look into this story.

What do we know from the history of the language? I remind it very briefly. We know that Russian language belongs to the Indo-European language group. The concept of “Indo-Europeans” was formed relatively recently, when India was colonized. A little later, the English philologist William Jones, studying Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language, and comparing it with European languages, was one of the first to suggest that before the appearance of all these languages there was one, common to them, more ancient, some proto-Indo-European language. And then scientists came to the conclusion that there were even older languages, so-called Nostratic languages, common not only to Indo-Europeans, but also to other language groups.

But this is only the top layer of the story. Russian scientist Svetlana Burlak experimentally proves that even ants have their own language, and they are able to exchange information. The development of language is directly related to the evolution of man with the development of his brain, improving from simple to complex. But if we automatically inherit the brain with all its potential from our parents, from nature, then it is impossible to inherit knowledge. Knowledge is accumulated, but not inherited. I did not complain for nothing that the Greeks had lost the meaning of the metaphor of the myth of Sisyphus. For every new inhabitant of the planet, civilization begins with a void, from scratch. Every new inhabitant of the planet has to repass all the way that humanity has passed for hundreds, thousands and even millions years.