The names of rivers and mountains in Kalmyk folk songs
67th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Gotemba 2025
Proper names are a special linguistic category. They have been created by peoples for hundreds of years. Names arise and live by their own laws. This is the memory of the people about the events of the long and recent past, about victories and defeats. Various oronyms and hydronyms are found in the folklore art of the Kalmyk people. Nomadic peoples have long worshipped the forces of nature, the sun, the blue sky, mountains, mounds, and water bodies. Wherever a nomad lived – in the mountains, on the expanses of the wide steppes, near the shores of the seas and oceans – through songs he expressed his love for his homeland. Among this thematic group, songs celebrating natural objects significant to the Kalmyks stand out: mountains, rivers, lakes. In Kalmyk song folklore, the most popular oronyms and hydronyms can be distinguished. Oronyms are often found in songs – Altai, Bogdo, Ergeni. The most popular hydronyms are Volga, Sal, and Ural.
The image of their native land, native nomads in Kalmyk folk songs is often associated with their historical homeland – Altai. The image of Altai has been formed over many centuries. It is present in the oral folk art of the Turkic-Mongolian peoples as a symbol uniting the tribes and peoples of Central Asia. In Kalmyk song folklore, the image of Altai is inseparable from the concept of homeland, where they roamed until the beginning of the 17th century. After the events of 1771, the part of the Kalmyks remaining on the banks of the Volga found themselves separated from “their Altai.” In this regard, an even more active process of substantial saturation of new geocultural images, figurative and geographical modeling of new lands has begun. The most stable and key images of the historical and mythological space, localized in the corresponding area, penetrate into the song culture of the Kalmyks.
Thus, the Volga, Ural, Mount Bogdo, Ergeni hills and other natural objects become symbols of the new geographical self-identification. In the folk song of the Kalmyks, an important place is given to the singing of the Volga River (Il), along the shores of which the Kalmyk people have found a new homeland since their appearance in the European part of Russia at the beginning of the 17th century.