Dėl kai kurių Lietuvos miestų vardų etimologijų

This is possible only after a deeper and comprehensive study of the Baltic languages, an examination of the differences between the Baltic and Slavic languages, and keeping in mind the Baltic-Germanic parallels. A. Vračius’s articles undoubtedly contribute to the solution of these important problems. Vilnius S. Karaliūnas ON THE ETYMOLOGIES OF THE NAMES OF SOME LITHUANIAN CITIES Raymond Schmittlein, Quatre toponymes germaniques en Lituanie, “Revue International d’Onomastique”, Paris, 1949, pp. 15—20. This article is one of R. Schmittlein’s many works on Lithuanian place names. In its method, its investigative approach, and the nature of its linguistic analysis, it is characteristic, broadly speaking, of most of R. Schmittlein’s studies of Lithuanian toponymy and patronymy. In the article, R. Schmittlein asserts, without much argument or explanation, that four Lithuanian settlement names — Alsėdžiai, Kėdainiai, Raseiniai and Šiauliai — are supposedly of Germanic origin. 1. R. Schmittlein connects the name of the small town Alsėdžiai with the Germanic personal name1 Elisaidis. At first glance this parallel seems at least possible, since the name of the town Alsėdžiai, whose dialectal form is alsėdė, is written in historical documents as Aliseiden, Alizeyde, Alizeide2 in 1253. This superficial resemblance, however, says nothing about the origin of Alsėdžiai. First of all, the diphthong ei after s(z) in old documents seems not to be a fact of spoken language, but an artifact of writing, which could, among other things, have arisen through folk etymology based on the personal name Elisaidis cited by R. Schmittlein. Second, the fact that there was no ei here is shown by a Polonized variant of this name from the same period, Olsiady3; compare the lake’s name in the 1421 Latin text, Olsedy4, and in a sixteenth-century Russian text, Ольсягы5. Third, the present-day dialectal form alsėdė also indicates the same: the Samogitian (dounininkai) ie, corresponding to literary-language ė, can only derive from Baltic ē (Alsėdžiai, dialectal alsėdė < *alsēdjai). Consequently, deriving Alsėdžiai from Elisaidis is already doubtful on account of -sed- versus -said-. The fact that the town’s name actually has nothing to do with the Germanic personal name Elisaidis is shown by the entire body of Lithuanian settlement names, in their struc- 1 The abbreviations used are the same as those in the toponymic articles published in other volumes of “Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai”. 2 The boundaries of the Latvian people and the Latvian language in the present day and in the 13th century... by Dr. A. Bielenstein. St. Petersburg, 1892, p. 241. 3 Ibid. 4 Codex diplomaticus ecclesiae cathedralis necnon dioeceseos Vilnensis, Krakow, 1948, p. 741. 5 I. Ya. Sprogis, Geographical Dictionary of the Ancient Samogitian Land of the Sixteenth Century, Vilna, 1888, p. 212. 330 …ture similar to the place-name Alsėdžiai in type. We present other settlement names of similar formation: Medsėdžiai village, Ežaičiai district, Klaipėda district; Genčių Medsėdžiai village, Vaineikiai district, Klaipėda district; Barzdižių Medsėdžiai village, Kalnalis district, Salantai district; Jakštaičių Medsėdžiai village, Jakštaičiai district, Salantai district; Daukšių Medsėdžiai village, Tumplaukė district, Skuodas district; Nausėdžiai village, Meilūnai district, Biržai district; Nausėdžiai village, Pelutava district, Ariogala district; Naujasėdžiai village, Meilūnai district, Ukmergė district; Traksėdžiai village, Traksėdžiai district, Šilutė district; Varsėdžiai small town, Vytogala district, Šilalė district; Mosedis small town, Skuodas district; Traksėdis village, Drobukščiai district, Šilalė district; Traksėdis village, Bartasiškė district, Šilalė district; Trimėsėdis village, Mitkaičiai district, Telšiai district. Compare settlement names with a different stem: Medsėdai village, Gergždeliai district, Kuršėnai district; Nausėdai village, 1. Pagėgiai district and region; 2. Darbėnai district, Kretinga district; 3. Gardamas district, Šilutė district. Also compare personal names Nausėdas, Nausėdą. The structural similarity between the -sėd- settlement names listed here and the name of the small town Alsėdžiai is obvious. Thus, to say anything certain about the place-name Alsėdžiai, we must examine it not in isolation, torn from the entire Lithuanian naming system, but as part of that system. And the system shows first of all that all the settlement names with -sėd- mentioned above are compounds with two stems: (Med-sėdžiai, Nau-sėdžiai, Nau-j-ā-sėdžiai, Trak-sėdžiai, Vār-sėdžiai, Al-sėdžiai). Their second component, -sėd-, <*-sēd-, is connected with the root -sēd-, widely known among the Balts, Slavs, Germans, and other Indo-European language families, from which comes the Lithuanian verb sėdėti ‘to sit’, which, besides its direct, concrete meaning, can also mean in Lithuanian ‘to be somewhere, to live’⁶; compare Lithuanian vien-sėdis ‘a solitary farmstead’, vien-sėdis ‘one who lives in a solitary farmstead’. Also compare Old North Germanic sitja ‘to sit, to live’⁷. In some place-names with the second component -sėd-, the first element is also clear: Med-sėdžiai: the root med- is connected with Lithuanian medis, which means ‘forest’ in Samogitian; Trak-sėdžiai: trak- derives from Lithuanian trākas ‘thicket, clearing, higher ground in a forest’; Nau-sėdžiai, Nau-j-ā-sėdžiai: nau(ja)- derives from the adjective naujas ‘new’. Thus, Med-sėdžiai may mean ‘those who are in the forest, those who live in the forest’. Trak-sėdžiai means ‘those who live in the thicket or clearing’. Nau(ja)sėdžiai means ‘those who have newly settled somewhere’, or something similar. The first component al- of the place-name Alsėdžiai seems comparable with Lithuanian place-names Alỹs || Lake Alioniai, lake, Širvintos district; Aliai bog, Švenčionys district; Alėja river, Kupiškis district; compare Lithuanian alėti ‘to run, flow, drip’ and Latvian aluots, avuots ‘spring’⁸. Thus the place-name Al-sėdžiai's se- 6 Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian, Vilnius, 1954. 7 Russisches etymologisches Wörterbuch von Max Vasmer, II, 1955, p. 622. 8 Dėl šaknies al- dar žr. K. Būga, Lietuvių kalbos žodynas, Kaunas, 1924, p. 53; H. Krahe, Fluss- (und Orts-) Namen auf -mana/-mina, „Beiträge zur Namenforschung“, Heidelberg, 1957, Heft 1; H. Krahe, Der Flußname Salantas, ten pat, 1960, Heft 3, p. 259—262; H. Krahe, Der Flußname Ausa und sein Zubehör, ten pat, 1961, Heft, 2, p. 154; B. Savukynas, Ežerų vardai, „Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai“, t. 3, Vilnius, 1960, p. 293. Be kita ko, ir pats R. Smitleinas kiek anksčiau, daug teisingiau (žr. R. Schmittlein, La toponymie lituanienne, Bade, 1948, p. 149). 331 The semantics could be explained as follows: ‘those who live near waters, in a damp place’. K. Būga considers the name of the small town Alsėdžiai to be Curonian9. 2. R. Schmittlein derives the city name Kėdainiai from the Germanic personal names Hathu, Hedan. In drawing this parallel, Schmittlein fails to take account of one of the largest Lithuanian personal-name families containing kėd-, ked-: Kėdãinis, Kėdą, Kėdas, Kėdỹs, Kėdžius, Kėdaitis, Kėdikis, Kėdãinis, Kėdas, Kedỹs, Kėdis, Kedžius, Kėdaitis, Kedėnis, Kederỹs, Kėdikas, Kedūtis. It seems to us that the place-name Kėdainiai, whose older form is Kėdainys10, derives from the Lithuanian personal name Kėdainis (compare the personal name Kėdãinis). To claim that the personal names Kėdainis, Kėdainis and all the other personal names mentioned containing kėd-, ked- could be borrowings from Germanic is a fundamental methodological error which, among other things, has led R. Schmittlein to clearly erroneous conclusions11. R. Schmittlein ignores the axiomatic truth that the commonality of word stems—and especially of the oldest place-name and personal-name stems—in various Indo-European languages by no means always signifies borrowing, but often merely shows that the languages or language groups are children of the same family. The similarity between some ancient Germanic and Baltic personal names still awaits further study; however far the science of anthroponymy may advance, it is unlikely that the conclusion that borrowing is the cause of this similarity will ever be reached. For this reason, there is currently no basis for considering the numerous group of Lithuanian personal names with kėd-, ked- to be borrowed from Germanic. Moreover, the root kėd-, ked- in personal names can also be explained using Lithuanian evidence; compare kėd-a-roti ‘to branch out irregularly’, ked-énti ‘to muss, loosen, tear’, etc.; kėd-oti ‘to scatter, spread out’, etc.; kėd-ulti ‘to card’; kėd-uoti ‘to mix, card’12. Compare also place-names with this root: Lithuanian Kėd-ilės homestead, Skuodas district; Kėd-iškė village, Šilutė district; Kėd-žiakalnis hill, Kapsukas district; Ked-ónys village, Jieznas district; Kėdž-balė13 bog; Cedusai < *Ked-asai, Latvian Cede stream; Cedes14 village. 3. R. Schmittlein links the city name Raseiniai with German personal names containing Ras-, for example: Raspert, Rasmar, Rasimund, Resino. At present, the city name Raseiniai is pronounced by people in the surrounding area as Resėiniai || Resėinys. Res- here may be a dialect form, since in the Raseiniai dialects the consonant r is often palatalized in other instances as well, for example: riáugėti ~ ráugėti, išibróvė ~ išibróvė, sriaunùs ~ sraunùs, sriové ~ srovė, sriáu- 9 K. Būga, Rinktiniai raštai, III, Vilnius, 1961, p. 418. 10 K. Būga, Rinktiniai raštai, I, Vilnius, 1958, p. 427; III, p. 148. 11 For example, in the article “Voies et impasses de la toponymie lituanienne”, “Revue International d’Onomastique”, Paris, 1958, No. 2, pp. 107–138. R. Schmittlein considers the Lithuanian personal names Daugailis, Buvydas, Daujotas and others to be Germanic. 12 Lietuvių kalbos žodynas, I, Vilnius, 1959, p. 480 ir kt. Dėl kėd-, kėd- žr. Litauisches etymologisches Wörterbuch von Prof. Dr. Ernst Fraenkel, Heidelberg-Göttingen, 3, p. 233. 13 K. Būga, Selected Writings, III, p. 275. 14 J. Endzelīns, Place Names of the Latvian SSR, Part I, Vol. 1, Riga, 1956, p. 156. On Kėdainiai, see also K. Būga, Selected Writings, I, p. 427; III, p. 148. 332 that ~ current, cf. Latvian strauls, flowing ~ flow ing. Forms found in historical documents include: in a Latin text of 1253, Rassevene15; in a German text of 1385, Rossyeyn16; in a Latin text of 1421, Rosseyni17; and in a Russian text of the 16th century, Посейны18, which also show that there must be an a after I. The place name Raséiniai is not alone in the Lithuanian name inventory. The root ras- is also found in such place names as Rãsupis || Raséika, a river in Raseiniai district, a tributary of the Reizgu-pis; Ras-a-kilas, a hill in Petrikiškės village, Kavarskas district; Ras-a-kilýnė, a meadow in Raguva village, Ukmergė district; Ras-a-krytynė, a stream in Pariškiai village, Pandėlys district (cf. rasakilė, “a meadow herb of the rose family”); Ras-ių daubà, a ravine in Bartninkai townlet, Vilkaviškis district; Ras-ón-pjaunis, a meadow in Pryšmantai village, Ariogala district; and Ras-ýtė, a townlet in the Kaliningrad region. The root ras- is also quite common in Lithuanian personal names, e.g.: Ras-ỹs, Ras-iūnas, Ras-eliūnas, Ras-iūkas, Ras-iūlis. The root ras- in place names has already been compared with the Lithuanian appellative rasą19, cf. Latvian rasa, Russian роса, and the Avestan river name Ranha20. 4. R. Schmittlein considers the city name Šiauliai to derive from Germanic personal names with sav-: Savaricus, Savalo, Savilis, Saul. As in the three cases mentioned above, R. Schmittlein says nothing about the abundant Baltic material for this root. Admittedly, the introduction to his book “Toponymie lituanienne”21 and, especially, his onomastic articles make it clear that the author has too little Baltic material. In this case, however, R. Schmittlein acts entirely inappropriately. K. Būga22 has convincingly explained the place name Šiauliai several times, but R. Schmittlein makes no mention of Būga’s etymology. It should only be emphasized that the place name Šiauliai is derived from a personal name, namely the Lithuanian personal name Šiaulys. At present, about 150 families in Lithuania bear the surname Šiaulys. A. Vanagas Vilnius 15 A. Salys, Die žemaitischen Mundarten, Kaunas, 1930, p. 231. 16 Scriptores rerum Prussicarum, II, Leipzig, 1863, p. 677. 17 Diplomatic Codex..., p. 74. 18 Н. Я. Спорис, cited work. 19 G. Gerullis, Die altpreussischen Ortsnamen, Berlin und Leipzig, 1922, p. 144. 20 For details, see M. Vasmer, cited work, p. 537. For the suffix -ein-, see K. Būga, Rinktiniai raštai, I, p. 427. 21 See Raymond Schmittlein, Etudes sur la nationalité des Aestii, vol. 1, Toponymie lituanienne, Bade, 1948, p. 15. 22 K. Būga, Rinktiniai raštai, II, pp. 98, 349, 588.