Names of strong alcoholic drinks in the Russian North: Etymological and ethnolinguistic analysis

The article deals with names of strong alcoholic drinks found in the territory of the Russian North. The material of the article includes data from the dialects of the Arkhangelsk and Vologda Regions, as well as the northeast of the Kostroma Region (northern part of the Sharya District, Vokhomsky, Oktyabrsky, Pavinsky Districts, formerly belonging to the Vologda Region). The main sources of the material were the lexicographic files of the Ural Federal University Toponymic Expedition. The work aims to carry out an etymological and ethnolinguistic interpretation of the dialect vocabulary of the Russian North that nominates strong alcoholic drinks. The author examines the ways of strong alcoholic drinks names creation in the Northern Russian dialects, determines the area of their distribution and genetic links. Such methods as semantic-motivational, geographic-linguistic analysis, comparative analysis of the vocabulary of various forms of the language are used to build a complex eth-nolinguistic research. The article analyzes the lexemes of Arkhangelsk, Vologda hanzha, Vologda, Kostroma chemerges, Arkhangelsk suchok, Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Kostroma chacha, Arkhangelsk punsh, Kostroma rakezh and others: for each of them the author defines the dialects, in which these lexemes function and a version of the origin. Historical and cultural commentaries are also given. During the study it was established that most of these words are borrowed from the common language or jargon. So, Arkhangelsk, Vologda hanzha, shanga, hanyga ‘alcoholic drink' are regarded as related to the jargon word hanzha 'diinese raw vodka, surrogate alcohol', borrowed from the Chinese language. Vologda, Kostroma chemerges ‘bad, low-quality wine, braga; moonshine’, as well as the jargon chemerges, are associated with the slang term reduction of the diemer State Alcohol Factory. The author concludes that the intensity of the lexical expansion of the alcoholic drinks group was seriously influenced by extra-linguistic socio-economic factors. These factors were becoming more numerous during any change in the legislation regulating the production and sale of alcoholic drinks. During the “dry law” and anti-alcohol companies, names of illegally produced or smuggled alcohol appear; with the abrogation of the “dry law”, the language includes the names of new alcoholic drinks. In the Russian North, the spread of strong and surrogate alcohol was incited by the discovery of hydrolytic alcohol distilleries in the 1930s-1950s. Many names that appeared in the anti-alcoholic period are perceived as conspiratorial: they were meant to conceal the talks about alcohol from outsiders and official authorities, for example dymnaya vodichka, rzhanoye maslo, golbeshnaya, etc.

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