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Latvian vocabulary of the seaand fishing in the context ofthe Baltic seaBenita Laumane aa Latvian Academy of SciencesPublished online: 01 Mar 2007.

To cite this article: Benita Laumane (1995) Latvian vocabulary of the sea and fishingin the context of the Baltic sea, Journal of Baltic Studies, 26:4, 329-334, DOI:10.1080/01629779500000111

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01629779500000111

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L A T V I A N V O C A B U L A R Y O F T H E SEA A N D F I S H I N G IN T H E C O N T E X T O F T H E B A L T I C SEA

Benita Laumane, Latvian Academy of Sciences

As is well known, Baltic tribes---Prussians, Couronians, Semigallians---were living on the shores of the Baltic already in the first millennium AD. The land inhabited by Prussians, Couronians, and Semigallians, was not "terra incognita" to its immediate neighbors, to neighbors across the sea, to medieval Europe, or to Rome. This is confirmed by historical sources and the personal names and place names listed in them; as well as by ancient maps) With the intent to trade or plunder, the Baltic Sea was crossed--certainly around 500 AD--by Vikings from the West--Gotlanders, Danes, Swedes, and (later) by Vikings from the East--Sembians, Couronians, Livonians, and Estonians. 2

Even though the coastline inhabited by Latvians and Lithuanians is some 600 km long, linguistic research about it has remained in the scholarly periphery. To date there are no comprehensive monographs about the lexicon of seafaring and fishing for either nation. In articles that explore the relationship of Baltic to Indoeuropean, we get a glimpse of occasional lexical items that have some bearing on this topic. Fish names that have cognates in other IE languages are examined, as well as those that have no such affiliations. A typical cognate mentioned in this literature is the name for salmon in Baltic and other IE languages: Li. lagig~ LaW. lasi~ Pr. lassaso, Russ. losos; Pol. toso~, M H G lah~ Olsl. lax, etc. Another such cognate is the name for eel: Li. ungurfi6 Pr. angurg¢6 Russ. ugor; Pol. w¢gorz, etc. Other fish names bear witness to differences between Baltic languages: thus, Lith. menkd 'cod,' Latv. (Couronian) m¢Bca, meBce, but Pr. sweiki~ or, Lith. vdgOl~, 'burbot, ' LaW. vddzel~ but Pr. vdlnix It should be mentioned here that Fi. lohi & ankerias and Est. 16hi& angerjas are Baltic loans.

In works that deal with loanwords, sea and fishing terms are taken out of the native context, and the foreign influence tends to get generalized: "Seafaring, fishing, and social terms are borrowed from Finnic into Baltic. Thus, I take Li. larvas'boat,' and Latv. larva to be of Finnic origin. "3

JBS, Vol. XXVI,, No 4 ( Winter 1995) 329

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330 Benita Laumane

Endzelins' generalization about sea and fishing vocabulary is similar: "Among words of Livonian origin are terms for boating and fishing, e.g. andrus 'keel,' jade 'row of nets,' ka]]a ' round pole to roll a boat across land,' tceksis 'boat hook,' murds'fish-trap; purga 'stick with a knob at the end, for driving fish into the net,' rinduksis'net component , ' vaba 'stake'; names of winds: idis 'nor'easter, ' launags'wind from the south,' luodes v~f~"north-wester,' and s~menis ibid.; terms of geography:juoms'deep water between two sandbanks,' kangars'high path in a swamp,' rava 'reef, sand-bank, ' selga 'horizon at sea,' urga 'rivulet,' and Valgums ' landing place'; and some bird and fish names: kaifa 'gull,' kamba 'halibut,' lcTsis 'ruff,' kugra 'crucian carp,' luca 'eelpout, ' salaka 'smelt. '4

Examples like the above now have become stock examples, traveling from one publication to another, with small variations, often without indications were these words were attested. This creates the impression that all the important seafaring and fishing words are of Finnic origin)

One cannot ignore statistics, of course. Latvian loanwords on sea and fishing have been most completely inventorized by Zeps. 6 He lists 100 such loans from Livonian and Estonian (a fifth of all Finnic loans into Latvian), giving their areal distributions in local Latvian dialects.

At the same time we must recognize the German impact on Latvian fishing terminology--the loans from German are almost double those from Finnic---ca. 180. 7

A similar situation pertains to Kashubian. In its vocabulary of sea and fishing some 300 loans from German have been noted. ~

Analogous observations can be made about NW Lithuanian dialects, where some of the fishing lexicon pertaining to terrain, winds, fishing implements, etc., has been borrowed from German and Latvian dialects: aastrinis 'nor'easter, ' jurmala 'beach, seashore,' lagnagis 'south wind,' s6minis 'nor'wester,' kdkgis'boat hook,' and keselfs'creel. '9

Documents from Prussian present a limited list of words that pertain to the sea: acc. sg. i~rin 'sea,' mary' lagoon, ' names for amber--*gentars & *gles(um), deities Autrimp(a)s'der Gott des Mehres vnd der/grossen/ See,' Ban~uttis 'ist ein Gott des Sturms,' Bardoayts'der Schiffe Gott, der Schiff-leut Gott, ' seafaring terms: artwes 'Schiffreise,' nassute 'Transportschiff, ' and some saltwater fish names, among them the Swedish loan for herring: s21ecke (< Sw. sillake). 1°

Loanwords in the Baltic sea-and-fishing lexicon testify to cultural contacts in space and time, without having a bearing on "primacy on sea." The sea in those times served as a highway for all peoples, being much faster than land routes (if available). Thus, the sea voyage from Gotland to Liepaja (actually Grobi0a) took two days for 166 km. I~

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Latvian Vocabulary of Sea and Fishing 331

In Latvian linguistics these contacts across the sea have not received adequate attention. Not always have we been able to differentiate old loans from inherited words or zero in on the source of the loan. Thus, is LaW. maks'monk, ' from Danish or Swedish munk?. And is LaW. kugis 'ship,' from MLG kogge or from Swedish koog? At times, Scandinavian sources are left out of the equation. LaW. Mints 'high cliff at seashore' is unquestioningly assumed to be from MLG klint, ~2 even though identical correspondences exist with Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian (whereby this geographic feature is typical of the West Latvian seashore, which was not the first interest of German traders).

It is likely that examining the Latvian lexicon in the light of Scandinavian culture we shall be able to add new etyma to the few placenames of putative Scandinavian origin from various periods, and to the few appellatives that are known. ~a

One such word of obscure origin is Latv. nTdas 'pebbles or stones worn smooth by the sea, '~4 attested in Liep~ja. It is possible that this word is of Scandinavian origin, of. Norw. nyding'road marker, border stone.'

Some loans from Scandinavian languages must be r e c e n t n t h e end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century. Thus, in Western Kurzeme we find the word pi[lds'metal fish lure,' elsewhere known as b[itkaor 2ibulis. No etymology is offered in ME, nor (s.v. pi/lce) in EH. The word is known all along the western shoreline, and is probably of Scandinavian origin: Swedish, dial. Danish, Norwegian pilk'metal lure,' pilke ' to fish with a metal lure, to yank' (cf. also Danish pilke ' to fish [with a rod] ')Y

Correspondences in word-formation in different languages present another point of interest. Often dry-land words are transfered to describe the characteristics of the bot tom of the sea. Cf. Latv. kalva 'mound, shallow place in the sea' with Norwegian berg 'mountain, egg 'ridge,' hauss'skull, mound,' rygg'spine, peak' all used to also designate features of the bot tom of the sea. ~6

Widely distributed in the Baltic Sea region are fishing-place names with a preposition: Latv. Paplekstdm 'At the Halibut,' Pie di2d akmeea 'By the Big Rock,' Uz eepli'To the Furnace,' Uzl_ielkalnu 'To Lielkalns'; Est. IO'tse malle Ml'Under Goat's ?'; Pol. O Steinbergu, Pod Kruszwice (Laumane, 13-4); Norw. Utfor Krabbasskjeret, Ved Fiskholmen, Pd Sandvikm In toponymy in general, prepositional constructions become archaic or are lost; they are conceivably best preserved in fishing-place n a m e s .

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332 Benita Laumane

Some other name-formation patterns no longer seem isolated when viewed in a wider context. Creek names in Dundaga (the northernmost county in Kurzeme) are formed with ordinals: Pirmais valks'First Creek,' Otrais valks 'Second .... " TreYais valk6' with exact correspondences in Livonian, this model of name-formation is not restricted to Livonian---cf. fishing-place names in Zemgale: Pirmais ol#js, Otrais ol#f~ and Pirm# kalv~ Otr#kalva in extreme SW Kurzeme, as well as fishing-place names in Polish: Pierwsey bagier, Drugi bagier, Trzeci ba~ef . 17

In order to display independent and genetically related parallels in the lexicon, word-formation and semantics, as well as cross-linguistic influences (loans, caiques) a linguistic atlas of Baltic sea seafaring and fishing terms would be of great value.

The first to anticipate such an atlas are Scandinavian linguists I. Modeer, TM P. Hovda, 19 and D. Kornhall 2° In their monographs they discuss the history and geographic spread of fishing implements, as well as the naming of fish and fishing-places.

The Atlas can become reality only by comparable research along the entire coastline of the Baltic Sea, since comparative and contrastive studies can be done only if there is sufficiently complete information about the languages in contact. Now that, along with the Scandinavian studies, a number of publications have analyzed Lithuanian, Latvian, Kashubian, and Estonian data on flora and fauna, fish names, 2~ names of shore- and seabottom-terrain, names of fishing places, etc., we can plan a detailed atlas-oriented program, so that language data that represent regions of the Baltic could not only show the geographic spread of individual words, but become a source of further studies, e.g., in semantics.

Along with problems arising from contacts of attested languages, the Atlas could isolate the oldest problematic layer (substratum) connected with the sea, its shoreline and its inhabitants, etc., in Baltic, Germanic, 22 and Balto-Finnic 23 languages.

Until the atlas project is firmly in place, we need coordinated preparatory work in all the states of the Baltic. Meanwhile, we can keep the projected atlas in mind as a model (method, program) for individual research, viewing linguistic phenomena within the wider context of our region.

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Latvian Vocabulary of Sea and Fishing 333

NOTES

1. Y~ Aksn~s, Slavisch-baltisches in altnor~h'schen Beinamea (Uppsala, 1937); Arnolds Kursis, "Latvijas vietv~rdi Zviedrijas rfinakme~os," ArcMvs 8.79-96 (Melbourne) 1968); Arnolds Spekke, Baltijasjgfa senaj~s kart~s (Stockholm, 1959); Spekke, The Baltic Sea in Ancient Maps (Stockholm, 1961); & Spekke, Senie dzintara celi an Austrum-Baltijas ~eografisl~ atldMana (Stockholm, 1962).

2. The topic just mentioned has been explored in great detail, complete with sources, by the late Edgars Andersons in his "D~nijas sakari ar Baltijas zem~m no IX lidz XIII gadsimtam v~stures avotu gaisnfi," Latvijas ZindtQu akaddmijas v~stis 1990(1).30-46 & 1990(2).16-32.

3. Ernst Fraenkel, Die baltischen Sprachen (Heidelberg, 1950), 70. 4. J~nis Endzelins, "Par latviegu un l~iegu valodas savstarp~jo ietekmi," / ~ u

izlase v. 3, pt. 2(Riga, 1980), 426-7. 5. E.g.: "Loans from Livonian and Estonian pertain to many walks of life. Many

such loans have to do with the sea and fishing ... . Among them are words like paisums, b'cdags, selga, loms, joma, vaba, murds, ~eksis, ~esele, ~'das, ~J-sis, salaka, vz~nba, kal.)a,/c~." Alise Laua, Latvie~u leksikolo~ija(Riga, 1981), 108. Or: "Since Finnic tribes mostly lived by the sea and earned their living from fishing and seafaring, many of these words were borrowed [in Latvian]: burn, laiva, liedags, luoms, paisumg se~g& etc." Jonas Kabelka, Balt~ filologijos [vadas (Vilnius, 1982), 96.

6. Valdis J. Zeps, Latvian and Finnic Linguistic Convcrgences (Indiana Univ. Publications, Uralic and Altaic Series 9; Bloomington, 1962).

7. Johannes Sehwers, SpracMich-kulturhistorische Untersuchungen, vornehmlich iiber den deutschen Einllul3 im Lettiscben (Leipzig, 1936).

8. Friedhelm Hinze, W~rterbuch und Lautlehre der deutschen Lebnw~rter im Pomoranischen (Kaschubischen) (Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin: VerSffentlichungen des Instituts fiir Slawistik 37; Berlin, 1965).

9. Algirdas Sabaliauskas, Labtuvi~ kalbos leksika (Vilnius, 1990), 271-2. 10. Lauri Posti, "On the Origin of the Word sillaka," Stua~'a Fennica

12(1965), 58-65. 11. Konstantins Karulis postulates four contact periods--first an interaction

period among IE tribes; second (first millennium AD) among adjacent peoples of various origin, but prior to the times of Vikings; third--Viking period in second half of the second millennium; and fourth--post-Viking period. See VModas aktuMitdtes 1988 (Riga, 1989).

12. K~trlis Milenbachs & J~nis Endzegns, Latvie~u valodas vdrdnfc& 4 v. (Riga, 1923-32). Abbr.: ME

13. V. P~vul~ns, SkandinSvijas kugniec~a agrajos viduslaikos (Riga, 1987), 15. 14. Jfinis Endzelius un Edite Hauzenberga, Papilc~n3jumi un labojumi K.

M~lenbacha Latvie~u valodas v~rdMcai, 2 v. (Riga, 1934-46). Abbr.: EH. 15. Elof Hellquist, Svensk etymologisk ordbok, 2 v. (Lund, 1936). 16. Benita Laumane, Zvejvietu nosaukumi Latvijas piekrastd(Riga, 1987), 116 17. R. Klim, "O toniach rybackich jeziora Druzno," ]antarorve Szla~ year 22,

no. 1(1979)

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334 Benita Laumane

18. Ivar Mod~er, Norska ordstudier (Uppsala universitets ~Irskrift 1954:2; Uppsala, 1953).

19. Per Hovda, Norska fiskem~d (Skrifter frtt Norsk stadnamnarkiv 2; Oslo, 1961).

20. David KornhaU, Sydsvensk fisknanm (Skrifter utg. genom Landsm~ls- arkivet i Lurid 18; Lurid, 1968).

21. Benita Laumane, Zi~u nosaukumi latvie~u valod~ (Riga, 1973); Vincas Urbutis, "Kur~ininky ~uvy pavadinimai," 135-180 in his Balt~ etimologijos etiudai (Vilnius, 1981); and M. Miiger, Juhendja nimestik kalanimetustekogumisel~[a program for gathering fish names] (Tallinn, 1973).

22. Gtinter Neumann, "Substrate im Germanischen?" Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gdttingen, L" Philologisch-Historische Klasse (G6ttingen, 1971), no. 4, 78-99.

23. Paul Ariste, Keelekontaktid: Eesti keele kontakte teiste keeltega (Tallinn, 1981).

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