Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Stefan Pajović
University of Novi Sad
Faculty of Philosophy Novi Sad
Abstract: The goal of the research presented in this paper is to provide a linguistic
base for the comparison of Irish and Serbian language (and culture) through the
study of place names. The base for comparison was the phonological and semantic
resemblance of common words found in place names in both languages. The scope
of the research was comprised of one hundred and twenty-nine different morphemes
found in place names in Ireland. Root words of place names were compared
semantically and phonologically so as to discover the ones that matched entirely in
both languages (both their meaning and pronunciation had to be identical). After a
common base was confirmed, examples of place names in both countries were
provided. The results were divided into three categories: stems that match
semantically and phonologically, stems that match either semantically or
phonologically and stems with no similarity whatsoever. The results of the research
reveal the nature of the similar base words in Irish and Serbian toponyms, which
was corroborated by a short etymological overview. The research’s main value is
that it was focused on the meaning of base words found in toponyms, rather than the
toponyms themselves, which gives a linguistic insight into the comparative study of
place names.
Key words: Toponym, place name, Celtic, Ireland, Serbia, stem, etymology
1. Introduction
In the time when there is an Irish pub in almost every Serbian city, it is
of great importance to assert the bonds between the Serbian and Irish nation.
Both of their lands have been in the past populated by Celts whose legacy is
still alive today. In Ireland, one of the official languages today is a Celtic
language: Irish, but in Serbia the Celtic influence is less strong since it was
supplanted by Slavic and subsequent ones (Roman, Turkish, German etc.)
However, when it comes to the issue of place names, it is a fact that
numerous place names in Serbia have pre-Slavic origins. In Ireland, almost
The paper was a research project which was part of the course Contrastive Lexicology at the
Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad, under the supervision of Professor Tvrtko Prćić, PhD.
all places have Celtic roots, which were later either altered or supplanted by
their English variants. Having this in mind, we have conducted a research to
prove from the linguistic point of view which places in both countries can be
doubtlessly deemed as having the same root word, i.e. sharing the same
etymology. The possible similarity would be a great asset not only to
linguists, but also to scholar of other fields of humanities.
The topic of place names is the spearhead of most Irish-Serbian
culturological research. The most renowned researcher was Ranka Kuić, a
Belgrade professor of English literature, 1 who has spent a significant amount
of time of her life in Wales where she has researched extensively on the
similarity of Welsh and Serbian toponymy. The result of her study was a
book entitled Crveno i belo: srpsko-keltske paralele,2 which contains a
multitude of etymologies for place names. However, in terms of linguistics,
many of the explanations require a great deal of conjectures. i.e. they do not
follow the principle of Occam’s razor. On the other hand, culturologically
speaking, the etymologies provided in the book are plausible. Our research is
a continuation of Kuić's research, with one major difference: it is firmly
based on the linguistic data, namely semantic and phonological similarities.
We do not conjecture nor use hypothesis but exclusively the linguistic data
readily available. For instance, Kuić writes for the Welsh word bwth the
following:
“Bwth (читај: брус, значи: збрка), док BRWS (читај: брус) значи: четка,
метла. Отуда назив Русничка река тумачимо као: ускомешана река, или река
која брише све пред собом“ (2000: 28).
1
For more on Ranka Kuić the reader can watch the episode of the show Raskršća about her,
hosted by Raša Popov and aired on RTS.
2
Red and White: Serbo-celtic Parallels. The monograph has not been translated into English.
2. Methodology
The research was conducted based on the one hundred and twenty-
nine most common words found in Irish place names. The source for these
words was an online database in the public domain at the following Internet
address: www.logainm.ie. The site was created by the Placenames Database
of Ireland in collaboration with The Placenames Branch (Department of
Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht) from Dublin City University (DCU). It is:
Basically, the site was created exactly for the type of research we have
conducted. It is sponsored by the Republic of Ireland and the National
Lottery, and conducted by university researchers, which shows great care by
the state for the issue of place names in Ireland. Moreover, it is a guarantee
that the project, which began in April 2007, is valid enough so that we could
base the methodology of our research on it. The most useful page on the
website is the „Glossary of words commonly found in Irish placenames” in
which most common words found in toponyms are listed alphabetically.
There are one hundred and twenty-nine of them in total and all of them have
been the subject of our research. We have compared the meaning and
pronunciation of each of these words with their Serbian counterparts.
The Serbian sources for the comparison were various etymology
dictionaries and general dictionaries listed in the reference list. Additionally,
we have used several general purpose geographical maps of the Balkans and
the index lists on their backsides to corroborate the existence of the
toponyms, and to get a better overview of their location.
In terms of geography, in this research the terms “Irish” and “Ireland”
encompass the territory of the Republic of Ireland. The same toponymy can
be found in Northern Ireland as well, but the source website for our research
has yet to add that areas to their online database. On the other side, the terms
“Serbian” and “Serbia” are used more elaborately in our research. Namely,
they encompass historical areas where the Serbian nation lives or has lived.
We have opted for this solution for toponyms do not change immediately if
an ethnicity leaves a certain area. Because of this, the aforementioned terms
do not only apply to the territory of the Republic of Serbia, but to
Montenegro and parts of FYR Macedonia, Croatia and Bosnia and
Herzegovina as well.
In terms of methodology, the bases of place names found at
www.logainm.ie were compared semantically and phonologically to any
existing Serbian counterparts. The aim was to found which root words match
in entirety. This meant that they had to be pronounced roughly the same, i.e.
to have at least 80% exact pronunciation and that their meaning in both
languages, respectively, had to be the same with the 20% error margin, same
as in the pronunciation. Based on these criteria the results were divided into
three categories:
- Complete matches
- Partial matches
- Phonologically and semantically unrelated words.
For the first category of results, and partially for the second category,
after the stem was listed, we have provided in the results a shortlist of place
place names in both countries which contain this word. This list is by no
means exhaustive, unless stated otherwise, and primarily serves as an
example of the frequency and the importance of a given stem.
Besides Irish and Serbian, we have used the English language as a sort
of a mediator tongue. English is the lingua franca of today’s world and as
such has many words from both Irish and Serbian. In addition, we have
checked the target word in other languages as well, but including those
results would surpass the scope of this paper. Therefore we only
occasionally provide an example in a fourth language beside the three listed
(German for example).
In order to phonologically compare the two languages, we have had
to set down (transcribe) the Irish pronunciation into Serbian, which we have
accomplished with the help of the audio section of logainm.ie and Prćić’s
dictionary: “The principles of phonological and graphological adaptation”
(2004: 10–20).
Finally, we would like to point out that our research was primarily
synchronic since we have observed the present-day toponyms of Serbia and
Ireland. However, in explaining the connections between words, it was
impossible to bypass their etymologies and their diachronic features. But
again, these are only auxiliary. The results of the research were based on the
current toponymy, which can be seen through the examples of place names
provided after each entry in the following section.
3. Results
- caiseal / kaštel
English, like Irish, uses the same word to describe a large fortified
building with thick walls, usually dominating the surrounding country. The
word comes from Latin castellum, mening „a fort, or a fortified village.“ The
Serbian word for castle is zamak, or dvorac, but here is also a third, least
common word: kaštel or kastel. The word has the same etymology and the
meaning (Vujaklija 1980: 407) as both the English and Irish words.
Most of the Serbian toponyms with this base are located in the north of
present-day Serbia (the province of Vojvodina) or in Dalmatia, regions
which have throughout centuries been under the influence of the Catholic
Church, whose official language is Latin. In Ireland, literacy was spread by
missionaries sent by the Pope and they wrote in Latin.
Irish place names: Cashel, Caiseal, Caiseal na gCorr, Gleann Chaisil,
Cnoc na gCaiseal
Serbian place names: Kaštel Ečka, Kaštel, Kaštel Lukšić, Kaštel
Gomilica
- mulieann / mlin
The word for a “mill” is also a Latin word, that has entered both Irish
and English. The original molina, mollinum has spread to all of European
languages, including Serbian. Furthermore, the word has its origin in Proto
Indo-European (PIE) (OED: mill), and Telebak lists that in PIE the root word
is mel- and in Old Slavonic mol- (2003: 88; Hlebec 2010: 111). Online
Etymology Dictionary (OED) lists that in Old Church Slavonic the word for
“mill” was mulinu, which is pronounced like the word provided by
logainm.ie: mulin or malin. Modern Serbian has lost the /u/ sound between
the m and l sounds,3 but the evidence still remains of the word’s etymology
and the same meaning it has in Irish and the place names there.
Irish place names: Mullinahone, Mullinavat, Mullingar
Serbian place names: Ćatovića mlin, Stari mlin, Mlin, Kmečki mlin
- mainistir / manastir
The Irish word for “monastery” had entered the language directly from
Latin: monasterium, and its origins are Greek: monasterion (OED:
monastery). Vujaklija confirms the same etymology for the Greek word
manastir or monastir in Serbian (1980: 579), with the exception that the
word entered Serbian directly from Greek, due to religious and geographical
proximity of the two countries. In Irish, the second sound can be pronounced
both as /ɑ/ and as /ɒ/, which is the case in Serbian as well, but /ɑ/ is more
common. In Serbian the word is usually associated to another, more precise
toponym.
Irish place names: Mainistir Laoise, Dún na Mainistreach
Serbian place names: Manastir Studenica, Manastir Ostrog, Manastir
4
Obala comes from the verb obaliti, which means to knock over, because river coastlines are
prone to erosion (Telebak 2013: 24).
The final word that our research yielded as a complete match is the
word cross, originating in Latin crux, and found in Early Irish as cross.
(OED: cross). The word has two meanings, a religious one, and a literal one,
as a “crossroads” and both are used in Irish and Serbian. When it comes to
toponymy, the latter etymology is more frequent. Vavić-Gros points out that
even before Christian times the word was used to denote a crossroads, or a
place where there is a border between pieces of land (Serbian: međa) (2014:
305).
Irish place names: Crois Mhaoilíona, Cros Doire
Serbian place names: Mala Krsna, Velika Krsna, Krstac, Krstur,
Krstin, Krstaj, Krstan
- áth / gaz
The place where the river is the shallowest and can be crossed has a
fairly similar pronunciation in Irish and Serbian: /ɑ:θ/ and /gɑ:z/ both have a
long /ɑ/ as a monosyllabic word. It is interesting to mention that the English
ford, with the same meaning as Irsih áth is pronounced similarly as the
Serbian synonym for gaz: brod. Despite the semantic match, the
phonological similarity is not conclusive and therefore the two words do not
match entirely.
- loch / lok(va)
Irish and Scottish loch, meaning “lake” in English, correspond to
Serbian lokva which means „a small pond,“ or „a lake“ in some regions of
Serbia. Moreover, it is more commonly found in its contracted form lok,
which is phonologically closer to Irish loch (Vavić-Gros 2014: 133).
However the word is quite rarely used in the meaning of “lake,” since the
primary Serbian word is jezero. When it comes to place names, the word is
more frequent, and is usually associated with a place where there used to be
a small lake of some kind: Lokva, Lokar, Lokas, Lokin, Lokma, Loknar,
Lokner (Ibid.). In this case, the Serbian frequency of use renders the pair
unsuitable for a complete match.
- bun / bunar
In Irish, bun marks “an estuary or a confluence,” or in general, “low
ground, bottomland” (Fiontar 2008). A Turkish loan word in Serbian, bunar,
has a similar meaning since it signifies “an artificially dug out hole in the
ground from which water is extracted” (Rečnik: 304). Furthermore, the word
bun is present in Persian, and one its variants in Persian as well (MacBain
1982), languages which Turkish owes its origins. Both meanings are in
relation to something low and in proximity to water, but the semantic scopes
of the respective meanings do not match to a sufficient degree, although their
pronunciation coincides.
- páirc / park
The Irish word páirc stands for a “field,” and is similar to the word
park which is present in Serbian, but with a slightly different meaning: “a
garden in a city with trees and flowers” (Rečnik: 337). The latter can be
found in rural areas in Ireland according to the distribution map
accompanying the entry on logainm.ie, while in Serbia the toponym is found
mostly in urban areas, as is the case with other European languages the word
originally came from (Vujaklija 1980: 670).
- nua / nov
The word for “new” is present in PIE and the meanings are the same in
both Irish and Serbian, but because it is monosyllabic word, the
pronunciations do not match to a sufficient degree since only the first sound
is the same /n/.
- ceathrú / četvrt
The Latin word quartarius is present in Irish, English and Serbian with
the same meaning, but the Irish pronunciation varies significantly and cannot
be rendered as a complete match. It a curiosity though, that if the written
form of the word were to be set down according to Serbian orthographic
standards, the word would sound similar to number four in Serbian: /tʃetru/ :
četiri.
- Béalgrád / Beograd
The name of the Serbian capital is spelled Béalgrád or Bhéalgrád in
Irish. The morpheme béal means “an approach, mouth of a river” (Fiontar:
2008), which coincides with the location of Belgrade, which is situated at a
confluence of two big rivers. In Serbian, beo signifies the color “white”
which is bán in Irish. All in all, Beograd is a Slavic word meaning “a white
city,” but the similarity to the Irish variant still remains interesting, although
semantically impossible to corroborate.
- ava / reka
In Irish, abha /ɑvɑ/ or abhainn stands for “a river.” The suffix –ava is
present in the names of numerous Serbian rivers: Morava, Mlava, Sava,
Tamnava, Drava etc. Although the suffix could be of Celtic origin, the
sememe ava has no meaning in Serbian. When it comes to the name of the
biggest Serbian river, mor in Morava is the contracted form of modar (“dark
blue”) and is the same as Irish mór, but with a different meaning: “big.” If
we were to etymologically rename Morava river it would be called: “The
Big River.”
The stance that names of rivers in the Balkans region are of Celtic
origin had been claimed before. Miloš Crnjanski, a renowned Serbian writer
who has spent time in exile in London claimed that “av[a] is one of the
Celtic roots in river names meaning ‘water’” (Novaković 1997: 44). We
quoted his translation of Morava in our paper, which he claims is similar to
place names of “Marav” and “Marava” (Ibid.: 76), which we were not able
to find anywhere in Ireland nor on the British Isles. Furthermore, we could
not find any meaning of the –av suffix in Serbian, except the one Vavić-Gros
lists, relating it to as “a suffix used mainly to form adjectives” (2014: 43). As
one of the examples, the author lists morav, which she translates as “being of
a dark blue color,” thus straightening the Slavic etymology of the
aforementioned Morava river in Serbia.
5
The website www.logainm.ie has over 750 toponyms listed with the word abha or its
variants contained in them.
References
Fiontar (DCU) and The Placenames Branch (Department of Arts, Heritage and
the Gaeltacht). 2008. Placenames Database of Ireland [Online]. Available at:
http://www.logainm.ie/ [2015, August 20].
Harper, D. 2015. Online Etymology Dictionary [Online] Available at:
http://www.etymonline.com/ [2015, August 20].
Хлебец, Б. 2010. Српско-енглески речник етимолошких парова. Београд:
Београдска књига.
Куић, Р. 2000. Црвено и бело: српско-келтске паралеле. Бања Лука: Глас
српски.
MacBain, A. 1982. An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language
[Online]. Available at: http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2/index.html [2015, August
20].
Новаковић, Р. 1997. Непознати Црњански: древни Срби на британском
тлу. Београд: „Мирослав“.
Prćić, T. 2004. Englesko-srpski rečnik geografskih imena. Novi Sad: Zmaj.
Група аутора. 1967–1976. Речник српскохрватског књижевног језика: од
књиге прве до књиге шесте. 2. фототипско изд. 1990. Нови Сад; Загреб:
Матица српска; Матица хрватска,.
Вавић-Грос, З. 2014. Топоними су чувари нашег језика. Нови Сад;
Обреновац: Прометеј; Библиотека „Влада Аксентијевић“.
Вујаклија, М. 1980. Лексикон страних речи и израза. Београд: Просвета.
Stefan Pajović
Rezime
stefan@capsred.com