On the origin of some Russian words from the sphere of material culture. I. Water transport: «коч», «бат», «ветка»

The article opens a series of publications on the origin and history of Russian (including Russian-Siberian) designations for ships and boats. The author considers the words коч , бат and вéтка . Коч ( коча ) is the name of an old type of ships. There are several variants of the explanation of this word, but there is no a quite reliable one. It is impossible to accept the comparison of коч ( a ) with Estonian kuut ‘scow, boat’. It is necessary to reject the popular opinion that коч ( a ) originates from коца ‘ice cladding, ice coat’. It remains to think about the comparison of коч ( a ) with the name of vessels as German Kogge, well-known in Northern Europe. According to the Russian dictionary of M. Vasmer, коч ( a ) is the result of the reverse word formation from * кочка < * кока , a loan-word from a source as Middle-High-German kogge , Dutch kog , kogge . Another way of overcoming the formal problems of comparing коч ( a ) and kog ( ge ) is to allow the action of folk etymology. While explaining the Russian dialecticism бат ‘boat dug from a tree; trough’ the author rejects its Proto-Slavic origin. The borrowing from a Scandinavian source such as Old Norse bátr ‘boat’ is accepted. J. Kalima derived Russian dialecticism вéтка ‘shuttle, light boat dug from a tree’ from the name of the river Витка , also Вѣтка and Вятка in the Вятка Province of Russia. Formal difficulties may be solved with the help of the new data (V. L. Vasil’ev) on the variation of the hydro- and toponymic stem, reconstructed in the form * Větъka , literally ‘branch’. The oscillation вят - / вѣт - / вет - / вит -, caused by the variation of the reflexes of * ě , also affected the appellatives. The variant with вет- (< вѣт -) was entrenched in the name of the ветка -boat.

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