Academic literature on the topic 'Shona language – Etymology – Names'

Introduction: hydronyms due to their specificity have a high linguistic and cultural significance. They reflect different aspects of human society. Semantic and etymological analysis is a necessary stage in the development of regional toponymy and an effective way to obtain diverse information leading to an understanding of the cultural code of the nation. Objective: semantic and etymological description of the substrate hydronyms of the Lower Konda. Research materials: names of water geographical objects identified in written sources, geographical maps. Results and novelty of the research: as a result of the study, it was found that the substrate hydronymy of the Lower Konda includes russified names of Khanty and Mansi origin with the absolute predominance of the Khanty names. The polylinguality of toponymy is determined by the ethnic composition of the population of the Lower Konda. The semantics of hydronyms reflected the worldview of the indigenous ethnic groups. The principles of nomination of the onyms are typical: according the properties of geographical object, related objects, and connections with people. They reflect a universal feature of human thinking to identify the typical and the unique in an object, to perceive the totality of names as a system, to see their connections and relationships. The specifics are the semantic content of onyms, the presence of hybrid lexemes, and names with double motivation. The scientific novelty of the work consists in the fact that for the first time the hydronymy of the Lower Konda is subjected by complex semantic and etymological analysis, and its specific features are revealed.

The Buddha considered names of things and people to be arbitrary designations, with their meaning created by agreement. The early suttas show clearly that inter alia, names, perceptions, feelings, thinking, conceptions and mental proliferations were all conditioned dhammas which, when their nature is misunderstood, led to the creation of a sense of ‘I’, as well as craving, clinging and afflictions. Although names were potentially afflictive and ‘had everything under their power’ (N?ma Sutta), this did not mean that they were to be ignored or even neglected; words were to be penetrated and thoroughly understood, as an essential instrument for liberation. One of the problems of transmitting the Buddha’s teachings was the large number of disciples who did not speak an Indo-Aryan language as their first language or spoke a dialect different from that of the Teacher. This also led to altered transmission of the Vinaya and Suttas by disciples who could not hear certain phonological distinctions not present in their own language or dialect. Hundreds of these anomalies are preserved in the different editions of the canon, testifying to these transmission ambiguities. The passages dealing with this problem provide a valuable insight into the phonological issues that the early sa?gha had to deal with to try and preserve the integrity of the s?sana. At the same time the etymological practices of Brahmanism were imported into Buddhism very early, probably from the time of the Buddha himself, to demonstrate the intellectual superiority of the Buddha and his teachings. Despite the Buddha’s teachings on the arbitrary nature of language, the commentarial and grammatical traditions developed a sophisticated theoretical framework to analyse, explicate and reinforce some of the key Buddhist doctrinal terms. Also, an elaborate classification system of different types of names (n?man) was developed, to show that the language of the Buddha was firmly grounded in saccika??ha, the highest truth, and that some terms were spontaneously arisen (opap?tika), even though such a concept — that words by themselves could arise spontaneously and directly embody ultimate truth — was quite foreign to their Founder.