Dėl upės vardo „Danė“ („Danija“, „Dangė“)

LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, III LIETUVOS TSR MOKSLŲ AKADEMIJA ON THE NAME OF THE RIVER DANĖ (DANIJA, DANGĖ) A. VANAGAS The river that flows through the Kretinga and Klaipėda districts and empties into the Curonian Lagoon near Klaipėda has two names: from its source to and including Kretinga it is called Akmenė; from Kretinga to its mouth, local residents call it Danė or Dānija (dialectally danė, dānij), while some written sources and people from elsewhere use the form Dangė for this river. The form Danė or Dānija is used by local residents of the villages of Egliškiai, Toliai, Valėnai, Kėkštai, Trakai, Triušeliai, Paupuliai, Vitiniai, Šimkai, Slengiai, Kibelkščiai, Raišiai, Lankuččiai, Potrai, and Kalotė. All the villages mentioned here lie on both banks of the Danė River, between Kretinga and Klaipėda. In addition, the form Danė is also found in the speech of local residents of Kintai, Mantvydai, Stakliškės, and Suvernai (Šilutė district). Thus, local pronunciation unequivocally attests to the form Danė or Dānija. So where did the form Dangė come from? To answer this question, we must also touch on the historical spelling of this name. Since the river flows through western Lithuania, its name entered German-written documents relatively early. For instance, in 1252 the Kronike von Pruzinlant. Beilage 2 spells the river’s name Dangen, Dange; the 1256 Chronicon Livoniae3 gives Dagna4; and the 1454 Die jüngere Hochmeisterchronik5 has Dangen, Dandandghen6. All the documents mentioned here that use the name Danė were written by German chroniclers in the 13th–15th centuries. There is no doubt that they reflect, to some extent, the spelling and pronunciation features of that period. During this period, in German, voiced g between vowels was pronounced like j7: Sigifrid was pronounced *Sijifrid >; Sviri, megidi — *mejidi > meide, and so on. This phenomenon was especially characteristic of the sequences -ige-, -ege-. German Low German dialects— 1 The form Danė is also found in a folk song: Across the stream, across the stream, my dear mother sent me to the Danė to fetch water... See V. Kalvaitis, Prusijos Lietuvių dainos, 190, Tilžė, 1905. 2 Scriptores rerum Prussicarum (hereafter SRP), 1, 629, Leipzig, 1861. 3 SRP, 2, 40, Leipzig. 1863. 4 Here, the interchange of g and n is most likely a transcription error. 5 SRP, 5, 146, Leipzig, 1874. 6 M.: Daer Danghen (this explanation is given in the document itself). 7 Н. И. Филипцева, История немецкого языка, 169, Издат. Московского Университета, 1959. 21. Kalbotyros klausimai, III 317 the pronunciation of g and j varied even more and continues to vary to this day. Here, even in the New High German period, g at the beginning of a word was always pronounced as j8; in the middle of a word, between vowels, g following back vowels was pronounced as γ, while after front vowels and after the sonorants l, r—as j9. Later, as the German literary language took shape, when g began to gain ground in the cases mentioned above in place of j, the pronunciation and spelling of g and j in German varied enormously for a long time, and g often appeared even where it had never existed (Jahr — gar, Joseph—Gosef10). Changes in the pronunciation of j and g led to obvious inconsistency in the spelling of j and g not only in German but also in the written forms of some other languages. For instance, the inconsistency in the spelling of j and g is very pronounced in written monuments of the Prussian language: Pomedien, 1405 and Pomedigen, 139611—cf. Prussian median ‘forest’; Twogarge, 133112—cf. Lithuanian yvas and Prussian garian ‘tree’; Kyhien 1314 and Kyigen, 1318 = *Kilija13; Gedilie, 1339, Gedylve, 1357 and Gedilege, Gedilige, 1387, Gedilge14; Cupieny, 1339, Kupigien, 1330 < *Kup+ij+ein15, etc. From what has been said here about the pronunciation and spelling of j and g in German, it should be clear that although German chronicles of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries wrote Dange < *Danige < Danija16 and the like, they pronounced j in place of g (Danje). Here g is merely a matter of spelling. Once the German literary language had taken shape and g was again pronounced in the cases mentioned above, then: 1. the spelling Dange < *Danige in the German literary language must also have been pronounced with g; 2. the local inhabitants’ Dānija (pronounced dāņī) must likewise have been written with g in the German literary language. Since the German colonists of the Klaipėda Region came not from one but from various parts of Germany, no single dialect could have developed in the areas they colonized; instead, a motley mixture of various dialects prevailed17. However, official institutions, the school, and the church used only literary German. Consequently, the name of the river in question was officially written and pronounced Dange. The German pronunciation apparently influenced some Lithuanians, and therefore, when the Klaipėda Region was returned to Lithuania, the river’s name remained officially German, although local people knew only Dānė || Dāņija. Its similarity to familiar words with the roots dang-, deng- may have helped spread this inaccurate name for the river among Lithuanians. Indeed, at first glance it may seem to some that the old Baltic root could have been dang-, and that the pronunciation dāņī used by present-day local inhabitants arose under the influence of Low German. It is known that inhabitants of the former Klaipėda Region sometimes pronounce the name Pagėgiai as Pagėgiai, Gėniškė as Jėniškė, and so on. However, such cases are uncommon. It is hardly possible that such a widely used form 8 B. M. Жирмунский, Немецкая диалектология, 569, Москва — Ленинград, 1956. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., 569; 290—293. B. M. Жирмунский, История немецкого языка, 70, Москва, 1948. 11 G. Gerullis, Die altpreussischen Ortsnamen (toliau Ger. AO), 130, Berlin und Leipzig, 1922. 12 Ibid., 50. 13 Ibid., 63. 14 R. Trautmann, Die altpreussischen Personennamen (toliau Tr. APn.), 30, Göttingen, 1925. 15 Ger. AO, 76. 16 Cf. Prussian Gedilye, Gedilie > Gedilege, Gedilige > Gedilge (Tr. APn. 30). 17 W. Penzlau, Die deutschen Formen der litauischen Orts— und Personennamen des Memelgebiets, 1, Halle/Saale, 1936. 318 Dãnė || Dãnija would have arisen under the influence of another language. Moreover, the transformation of Dãnija into Dange is not an isolated or exceptional fact. It is well known that Germans have long rendered the river name Giliją as Gilgę, and Miniją as Mingę, yet today no one would think of calling them that. Most importantly, however, the reason why the root dang- cannot be posited in this case is the local people’s pronunciation dãnį18. If the older form had been dang-, local people would pronounce it that way today, since the change of g to j after n is impossible even in the Low German dialect, where j and g alternate most often19. Thus the Baltic form should be Dãnė or Dãnija20. Among Baltic languages, the place name Dãnė || Dãnija is not unique. We also find the root dan- in Lithuanian Danýs (a pond in the vicinity of Laukagaliai, Ramygala district), Daniùkas (a lake in the village of Vainiūniškis, Alizava vicinity, Kupiškis district); Latvian Dana, Danas—dīķis, Danava, Danų—markė21, and so on. J. Endzelīns22 rightly compares these Latvian place names with the river name Dãnė, which concerns us here. Regarding the root dan-, cf. also Latvian danava ‘a rivulet, a muddy patch on a road, a dirty place’23. The suffix -ija is also quite common in Lithuanian river names: Ak-ija (Šaukėnai), Ašv-ija (Kaltinėnai), Gliv-ija (Kvėdar­na), Iou-ija (Plokščiai), Juod-ija (Jiez̄nas), Nõt-ija (Plateliai), Or-ija (Šakiai, Vabalninkas), Ryk-ija (Batakiai), Rūd-ija (Viduklė), Šir-ija (Meškučiai), Šatr-ija (Šaukėnai), Vilk-ija (Skaisgiris), Vižd-ija (Birštonas). With regard to the coexisting forms Dãnė || Dãnija, it should be noted that the form Dãnė is probably secondary, shortened from Dãnija. There are other examples of this kind of shortening: Glivija||Glivė, Minija||Minė, Nõtija || Nõtė. 18 Cf. Minija — Mėrij. 19 For example, in the word gegangen, in the Low German dialect, i changes to j only in the first and second instances of g, while g after n remains unchanged; ifangen. 20 In identifying the root dan-, we do not mean at all to say that the root dang- is altogether impossible in the Baltic languages. Place names with dang- do occur in both Lithuanian and Latvian (cf. Lithuanian Dangė — a river in the vicinity of Nemakščiai, Skaudvilė district; Dangaičius — a river in the vicinity of Krakės, Kėdainiai district; Latvian Danga, Dangas-plava, and so on — see J. Endzelīns, Latvijas PSR vietvārdi, I daļa, 1. sējums, 194, Rīgā, 1956); however, in this case we have the root dan-, which, as we shall see below, also has counterparts in both Lithuanian and Latvian. Our sole concern here was to give the authentic name of this river, which may prove useful for practical purposes and, especially, to researchers of toponymy. 21 J. Endzelīns, Latvijas PSR vietvārdi, I daļa, 1. sējums, 193, Rīgā, 1956. 22 Ibid. 23 K. Mühlenbacha Latviešu valodas vārdnīca, Rediģējis, papildinājis, turpinājis J. Endzelīns, 1, 438, Rīgā, 1923—1925. ON THE NAME OF THE RIVER DANĖ (DANIJA, DANGĖ) А. П. ВАНАГАС Summary The form Dangė of the name of the river in the Kretinga and Klaipėda districts, which is used by many people today, is secondary; it arose under the influence of the German language. The correct Baltic form of this river’s name is reflected in the pronunciation of the local population: dãńi || dãńij~ Dānē || Dānija.