Происхождение самоназвания вепсов в контексте этнической истории Восточной Прибалтики

Abstract

The self-designation of the Veps, *vepsä is considered in the article as a result of interaction of Lappish, Scandinavian and Baltic-Finnic groups in Finland in end of the 1st mil. BC – beginning of the 1st mil. AD. On the first stage, when the aboriginal Lappish tribes of the Southern Finland had immediate close contacts with the Germanic incomers from Scandinavia to their land (which was called by the last Finnland, i. e. originally ‘land of the Lapps’), the most southern Lappish groups had to know their Scandinavian name, Finnar ‘Lapps’ (< Germ. *fenþ- ‘to look for, to find’), which they confused with Germanic *fenne ‘finn’. Thank to this paronymy, the name Finnar could be understood by the Lapps as ‘fins’ and therefore could be adopted by some of their groups as a self-designation in translated Lappish form *vеpsē lit. ‘fin’. As later the first Baltic-Finnic groups began coming to Finland from the southern cost of the Gulf of Finland and settling around the country, they assimilated the southernmost Lapps and borrowed the name, Lap. *vеpsē > Fin.*vepsä as a pure ethnonym. This name became the self-designation of the Veps, the tribe, which probably was the pioneer among the Baltic-Finns moving north- and north-eastwards into the formerly Lappish lands.