Onion in the North Russian linguistic and cultural tradition

Abstract

The article is devoted to the North Russian (especially Vologda and Arkhangelsk) vocabulary related to the practice of growing onions: these are words that name species and parts of this plant, peculiarities of its growth, methods and units of its storage, dishes that are prepared from it. The abundance of “onion” vocabulary in the dialects of the Russian North is not accidental and relates to the extensive ethnographic and folklore materials collected by the Toponymic Expedition of the Ural Federal University mainly in the central and eastern districts of the Vologda region: they are ethnographic information about the time to plant and harvest onions, elements of magical practices that promote good crop of onions, etc.; “onion” folk beliefs; folklore small magic texts accompanying the planting of onions. Together with lexical data, they make up a rich linguistic and cultural tradition associated with the cultivation of onions in the Russian North. This article considers the ideographic originality of the “onion” vocabulary. In particular, the dialects present onion “anatomy” – words naming parts of the vegetable (e.g., Arkhangelsk volos’ya ‘onion roots’, Arkhangelsk osota ‘onion leaves’, Kostroma chiv ‘the lower part of the onion leaf’, etc.). The features of onion “behavior” during its growth is characterized: its ability to expand while growing, to grow into a hard stem, to form several bulbs, etc. (cf. Vologda gryazdit’sya ‘grow by nests (about onions)’, Vologda napyatit’ ‘expand while growing (about onions)’, Arkhangelsk botovik ‘onion that grows as a hard stem’, etc.). Units of storage are designated: usually it is a bunch, in which bulbs are woven together with their leaves, for which they are convenient to hang (cf. Vologda pleten’e, Vologda batman, Vologda medvedko ‘bunch of onions for drying’, etc.). Dishes from onions that are very popular are named (cf. lukovatik ‘onion pie,’ Vologda kislukha, Vologda chipulya, Vologda zvarets ‘onion soup with kvass’, etc.). Some words (namely those that are particularly interesting from a motivational point of view, or “dark” in origin, or represent a curious semantic shift and so on) are accompanied in the article by a semantic-motivational commentary: their belonging to a particular etymological word-formation family is indicated, semantic connections with other words of the family are shown, the history of their origin in the language is presented, assumptions about their motivation are made. Some reasons for the increased attention to the onion in the Russian North are suggested. Among them are those that are relevant not only in the considered spatial boundaries. The main local reason for this tradition reflected in the ethnographic, folklore and lexical materials about the onion seems to be the fact that there are extremely scarce – for climatic reasons – opportunities for growing other “vitamin-rich” vegetables or fruits that can be stored during the long winter period. A wish to linguists regarding the field recording of the information about the tradition of growing onions is expressed in the form of lexical, ethnographic and folklore data. © 2019 Tomsk State University. All rights reserved.