Lake Kivi or Kivijärvi:: complex place names of Karelia on maps and in the State Catalog

Abstract

The article raises the problem of recording non-Russian toponyms by origin on topographic maps and in official reference books, which is relevant for cartography, as well as for the regulation of geographical names in general, including the State Catalog of Geographical Names. The authors analyze the models for the transmission of complex geographical names of Karelia, which arose on the basis of the Karelian language, which, together with a number of languages of the eastern Baltic area (Finnish, Estonian, Vepsian, etc.), belongs to the Baltic-Finnish group. Objective difficulties caused by the typologically different structure of the Baltic-Finnish and Russian languages, as well as the dialectal heterogeneity of the Karelian language are noted. However, incorrect spelling is often caused by cartographers` ignorance of the language and the peculiarities of local toponymy, as well as the lack of instructions for transmission Karelian place names into Russian. Three problems are considered in the transfer of a geographical term in Karelian complex toponyms. A large variability in the appearance of Karelian topographic terms is revealed, caused by the presence of not so much dialectal phonetic forms (-суари, -шуари `island`), as variants that appeared as a result of their incorrect display in Russian (-сари, -шари, -шаари, -сварь). The unlawful removal of the nomenclature term from the complex toponym is noted, leading to a change in the appearance of the whole layer of the original Baltic-Finnish names of the republic, and, as a result, a rethinking of their linguistic origins and meaning (Lake Kuarniz|järvi ‘Crow Lake’ → KarnIz ‘Cornice’). There is also an inconsistency in the spelling of compound complex toponyms