The Ethnonym Kalmak in Bashkir Onomastics

Abstract

The article considers Bashkir onomastics (ethnic, personal and place names) associated with the ethnonym Kalmak (Qalmaq). The lexeme is present in 18 Bashkir clans and tribes. The peculiar feature here is that among some tribal groups there are over 10 names of clan subdivisions bearing the stem Kalmak that gives testimony of once intensive Bashkir-Kalmyk contacts. It should be noted that in some tribal groups there are not one but several Kalmak/Kalmyk-stemmed clan names, e.g., among the Burzyan Bashkirs there are 13 such clans; among Kotays - 10, Kipchaks - 7, Ailins - 5, Kudeys, Kushsys, Szyzgys, Katais, Balyks, Tamyans, Kanglys, and Tabyns - 5, Tangaurs - 4, Jurmats and Serbs - 3 generic units named Kalmak/Kalmyk respectively. The article also notes the wide dissemination of the ethnonym Kalmak/Kalmyk in other groups of onomastic vocabulary, namely in toponymy and anthroponymy. The article contains toponyms with the basis of Kalmak both in modern and historical toponymy. Many historical Kalmak-stemmed toponymic names have disappeared due to the growth (and mergers) of settlements. The same is the case with anthroponymy: in the 18th and early 19th centuries there were many more Kalmak-stemmed personal names and surnames than there are nowadays. These facts testify of the intensive contacts between Bashkirs and Kalmyks in the 17th-18th centuries. Proceeding from folklore and documentary materials, the article reveals the reasons and mechanisms explaining how the ethnic name Kalmak became that widespread in Bashkir onomastics. The paper stresses the fact that a number of Kalmak-stemmed names go back to the Kalmyk people as such when certain groups or representatives of the Kalmyk ethnos joined and were, thus, incorporated by the Bashkir people. Another part of such onomastics is probably associated with patronymic appellatives which came into being as a result of some residual part (be they Bashkirs or other nomads) of a clan or a tribe, i.e. the name derived from the gloss Kalmak/Kalmyk < qalγan ‘the remaining one’.