Among all others, Georgian surnames are recognized quite easily. They have a characteristic structure and are easy to identify by the end. The surnames of Georgians are made up of two parts: the ending and the root. If you orient yourself a little in this, then in most cases you can tell from which region of Georgia this genus originates. In total, there are 13 types of endings for Georgian surnames.
General description of Georgian surnames and possible variants
The most common endings are "-shvili" and "-dze". "-dze" can be found in almost the entire territory of Georgia, especially in Adjara, Guria and Imereti, less often in the eastern part. But “-shvili”, on the contrary, is found mainly in the eastern part of Georgia: in Kakheti and Kartli. In Russian, this can be translated as "son" or "born", respectively. At present, it is generally accepted that “jo” is the ending of the oldest pedigrees, and “shvili” is more modern. According to unofficial statistics of people with such surnames, there are about three million people.
Some of the Georgian surnames originate from the names that a newborn receives at baptism. For example: Matiashvili, Davitashvili, Nikoladze, Georgadze, Tamaridze and many others. Another part of the surnames comes from Muslim or Persian words. A controversial moment arises when studying the roots of the Dzhaparidze surname. Perhaps it comes from Muslim name Jafar, and possibly from the Persian name of the profession - postman - dzapar. In addition to these two main types of Georgian surnames, a special group is represented by surnames ending in "-eli", "-iti", "-eti", "-ati". For example, we can cite the notorious of this world: Tsereteli, Rustaveli, and simply common Georgian surnames: Dzimiti, Khvarbeti, Chinati.
The next group of Georgian surnames is represented by surnames ending in "-ani": Chikovani, Akhvelediani, Dadiani. These genealogies originate from the rulers of Megrelia. Less common, but still existing, surnames of this group have the endings "-uri", "-uli", "-ava", "-ua", "-aya" and "-iya". There are even more representatives of this group of "star" surnames: Danelia, Beria, Okudzhava.
Many roots of Georgian surnames, as well as in the anthroponymy of other peoples of the world, bear a certain semantic load. They can often be used to trace the centuries-old ethnic processes that actively proceeded in the context of contacts between Georgians and neighboring peoples. For example, the roots of the surnames Khurtsidze and Sturua are clearly of Ossetian origin (respectively, Ossetian khurts “hot” and styr “big”, “great”); among the Georgian surnames of Abkhazian origin, one can indicate not only such as Abkhazava, which does not need etymology, but also Machabeli from the Abkhazian surname Achba; Surnames of Adyghe origin include Abzianidze, Kashibadze and some others. In Eastern Georgia, there are many surnames of Dagestan origin, for example, Lekiashvili from Leki - the common name for Dagestanis in Georgian language; Vainakh - Malsagashvili, Kistiauri; Azeri - Tatarishvili; Armenian - Somkhishvili from Somekhi - Georgian name for Armenians.
Georgian male patronymics are formed by adding the word dze "son" to the father's name in the genitive case: Ivan Petresdze. Women's patronymics in Georgian also retained archaic form in the form of joining the name of the father in the genitive case of the ancient Georgian word, almost obsolete in modern speech, -asuli (adequately for the old Russian daughter): Marina Kostasasuli. However, patronymics in live communication of Georgians are practically excluded. They are usually used in official documents. In party and Soviet institutions, often in official business situations, they use the word amkhanagi "comrade", while calling a person only by his last name. In family and everyday communication, as well as in academic circles, the address mainly contains the word batono (most of all equivalent to the Russian sudar and Polish pan) in combination exclusively with the name, regardless of age, rank, position and the person they are addressing.
Ossetian and Abkhazian groups and the Russian-speaking environment
In the 90s of the last century, part of the Ossetians who were on the territory of Georgia were forced to change their surnames to the Georgian manner. In remote villages and settlements, not very literate officials did not know how to correctly write Ossetian surnames, so they wrote them in the Georgian way. And there were those who wanted to among the Ossetians, who wanted to get lost among the local population, and changed their surnames to more harmonious for the Georgians. This is how new Georgian surnames appeared, with some accent: Mardzhanov, Tseretelev, Tsitsianov, Tsitsianov. The changes were enormous. For example, the Driaevs were registered as Meladze.
In Georgian "mela" means fox, in Russian it would be the surname Lisitsin.
The population of Abkhazia, and only about 15% of them are born Abkhazians, have surnames ending in "-ba": Eshba, Lakoba, Agzhba. These surnames belong to the North Caucasian Megrelian group.
Getting into the Russian-speaking environment, Georgian surnames, as a rule, are not subject to distortion, even despite the complex combination of sounds and significant length. But the influence of the Russian language in some cases is still there: Sumbatov came from Sumbatashvili, Bagration - from Bagrationi, Orbeli from Orbeliani, Baratov - from Baratashvili, Tsitsianov - from Tsitsishvili, Tseretelev - from the notorious Tsereteli.
V. A. Nikonov among colleagues from
Azerbaijan (Frunze, September
1986)About the author: Nikonov, Vladimir Andreevich(1904–1988). A well-known scientist, one of the largest specialists in onomastics. The author of numerous works on the most diverse areas and problems of this science: toponymy, anthroponymy, cosmonymy, zoonymy, etc. For more than 20 years, he led the group of onomastics at the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He was the initiator and organizer of several conferences on onomastics of the Volga region (the first took place in 1967).
The work shows versatility scientific interests V. A. Nikonov and is dedicated to Georgian surnames, the geography of their distribution. Known to a narrow circle of onomasts, this work is practically unknown a wide range people interested in Georgian surnames.
The red number in square brackets marks the beginning of the page in the printed version of the article. See the output after the text of the article.
[p. 150] Although Georgian surnames are several centuries older than Russian ones, the first of them arose in the 13th century. or even earlier. The bulk of the surnames appeared, probably when Georgia was fragmented into disunited and warring feudal estates. political, economic, cultural processes they proceeded differently, and the language developed differently. These differences have given rise to a variety of forms of surnames. Nevertheless, linguistic kinship and similar historical features united all Kartvelian ethnographic groups into certain family groups: they were formed by the addition of a second component, gradually turning into a suffix (i.e., losing its independent lexical meaning). In total, 7–8 such formants form the surnames of 3.5 million Georgians, repeating in grandiose numbers [p. 151] wah, each in a certain territory. Their statistical and geographical relationships show the historical formation of the Georgian nation. All calculations given are made by the author and are published for the first time*.
*G. S. Chitaya, Sh. V. Dzidziguri, A. V. Glonti, I. N. Bakradze, S. A. Arutyunov, V. T. Totsuriya, A. K. Chkaduya, G. V. Tsulaya, P. A. Tskhadia, as well as Sh. T. Apridonidze, M. Chabashvili, N. G. Volkova, R. Topchishvili, R. M. Shamedashvili, M. S. Mikadze, L. M. Chkhenkeli registry office archive.
Sources: 1) complete population census of 1886, the documents of which are stored in the Central Historical Archive of Georgia 1 (located in Tbilisi); 2) acts of registry offices; 3) lists of voters; 4) telephone and other directories; 5) lists of surnames in studies 2 , articles 3 , dissertations 4 . It is clear that not all of them can be summarized in a single statistical table. The calculations cover half a million Georgians in all regions (the eastern part of Georgia - completely, except for cities; there are fewer materials in the western regions - the census fund was lost in the Kutaisi branch of the archive) in an amount sufficient for statistically reliable indicators.
Both in terms of the number of carriers and in terms of territorial coverage, two forms of surnames absolutely prevail: with components -jo in the western part of the republic and -shvili- in the east. The original meaning of both formants is similar: -jo- "son, descendant"; -shvili- "child", "born". They are typologically identical to the surnames of other peoples: in the Germanic languages sep (sleep, sleep, zones) - "son"; in Turkic -ogly- "son", -kyz- "daughter, girl"; all formants attached to a stem denoting father indicate "whose son".
Surnames from canonical names - Giorgadze, Leonidze, Nikolayshvili, etc. - cover only a minority, more often surnames come from non-church names: Mgeladze, Mchedlishvili, etc. However, these surnames cannot be directly connected with common nouns mgeli- "wolf"; mchedli- "blacksmith". The original bearer of the surname Mgeladze, like his Russian “namesake” Volkov, was not the son of a wolf, but of Wolf, the bearer of the personal name Mgela.
Another necessary caveat. Surnames with an ethnonym in the base (Svanidze, Javakhidze, Javakhishvili) are especially attractive to historians and ethnographers, but it is dangerous to forget the principle of relative negative proper names: these surnames could not have arisen among the Sa[p. 152] mih Svans or Javakhs (where everyone was a Svan or Javakh), but only outside it. Their basis could not even denote a Svan or Javakh, but only a person who was somewhat similar to them (in clothes or in some other way) who visited them or traded with them.
Surnames formed from -jo(connected to the stem with the vowel a or and, depending on the vowels of the stem) are assumed to have arisen in the 13th century. They absolutely prevail in Imereti. In the districts of Ordzhonikidze, Terzhola, surnames on -jo cover more than 70% of all inhabitants. As they move away from this core, their frequency decreases. On the southwestern border of Imeretia, in the Vani region, more than 2/3 of the population belongs to them (1961), to the west, in Guria (Maharadze, Lanchkhuti districts), more than half. On the opposite northeastern flank, in Lechkhumi, almost half of the population wears them, as well as further - in Racha (now the Oni region). Only in the northwest, in Upper Megrelia, formants -jo infrequent: in the Gegechkori region - only 7%; it is also in the minority on the northwest coast. In Svaneti, surnames with a formant -jo are less than 1/10. Where lay the line, to the west of which prevails -jo, to the east - -shvili? The border between western and eastern Georgia is considered to be the Suramsky (Likhsky) ridge, transverse to the ridges of the Greater and Lesser Caucasus, it crosses Georgia at its narrowest point. But the dialectologists had to make a correction, finding that in the south, eastern dialects sound much west of Borjomi. And the names I collected showed that the predominance of Western -jo north of the Kura advanced "towards", east of Surami. In the south, the data for 1886 are scarce; in Borjomi and Bakuriani, there were few Georgians at that time. There are only 573 Georgians in Chobiskhevi, of which 435 have “Western” surnames beginning -jo. Even further southwest, in the Akhalkalaki region, according to documents from 1970–1971. (in Baraleti, Vachiani, Gogesheni, Diliska, Chunchkha), surnames in -jo cover even ¾ of the Georgian population. In a strip stretched along the middle course of the Kura (formerly part of Kartli), the formant -jo prevails only in the west - in the Khashur region and then cuts in a deep pointed wedge to the east through the Kareli region (in 1886 they also prevailed in the villages of Abisi, Arabulani, Arekheti, etc.) into the Gori region (the villages of Shertli and Arashenda ), where the surname with this formant breaks off (93 bearers of surnames lived in the village of Arashevi -jo and 91 on -shvili).
[p. 153] Having placed the data of 1886 on the map according to the modern administrative division, we get a strikingly clear profile of this strip from west to east (in brackets are the calculations according to the documents of the registry offices of 1970–1971), in%:
Acts of registry offices, in contrast to the census, cover only part of the population, but a clearly uniform trend with a fairly large amount of counting suggests that the quantitative expression of "rivalry" -jo And -shvili captured mostly correctly: the border of eastern and western Georgia, according to the forms of surnames, runs east of the Surami Range.
Thus, about the zone of static vibration -dze/-shvili one can speak in the language of numbers, but a diachronic comparison has to be made.
East of the Suram Range -jo is much less common: in Kakheti - only 3-7%. Somewhat more often they are between Tianeti and Telavi. In northeastern Georgia, surnames start with -jo made up only separate nests; several of these nests gravitated towards the Georgian Military Highway, between Kazbegi and Mtskheta.
But two large "islands" of surnames with a formant -jo should be considered in particular. In the extreme north-east of Georgia, in the gorges of the Main Caucasian Range near the borders with Chechen-Ingushetia and Dagestan, in a territory completely cut off from the entire zone of formant dominance -jo(former Omalo district, later included in Akhmeta), Tushins live. Almost 2/3 of them (1886) had surnames with the formant -jo, only 23% - -shvili and 10% - -uli, uri. The centuries-old isolation of Tusheti, all ties with which were interrupted annually for 6 months 5, affected everything, and isolation is understandable. Formant penetration -shvili from neighboring Kakheti [p. 154] is also natural: the tushins, whose basis of life was sheep breeding, could not exist without the summer driving of sheep to the valleys of the Alazani and its tributaries, supplying the king of Kakhetia annually with 500 warriors and 600 sheep. But from where, how and when could the West Georgian formant become predominant? -jo? The tushins came from the west. The surname model -jo not Kartli, but Imereti, however, researchers do not know such a distant focus of carcasses. Some pre-revolutionary researchers even surmised that the Tushin originated outside of Georgia, but science has no grounds for this. Dating is also difficult: the emergence of surnames cannot be attributed to the depths of centuries, and therefore it was difficult for historians to escape the distant migration of an entire people. Carcasses on your modern territory could bring with them not yet the names, but their future basis -jo.
A characteristic detail remained not only unexplained, but also unnoticed: in contrast to the different frequency of connecting vowels ( -i, a) in the names of Tushin appeared only And. For example, in s. Gogrulti are all eight surnames (81 people - Bukuridze, Jokharidze, etc.), in the village. Given - 82 people with -idze(Tataridze, Cherpeidze, etc.) and not a single surname with -adze. In 1886, 2660 Tushins had surnames with -idze and only 162 - with -adze. Such a ratio, excluding chance, requires the attention of researchers - it is essential for the history of the Tush and their language. Is it connected with the Megrelian-Imeretian law of appearance And after the basics with the final -A(Tushino surnames Bgardaidze, Tsaidze, Gochilaidze, etc.). Or are there other reasons? Perhaps this feature will help researchers in their search for an old source of carcasses. But still, most of the Tushino surnames - without a connecting -A-: Bakhoridze, Khutidze and others. And one more detail that no one pointed out: the combination -ai-(often spelled -ay-: Omaidze, Idaidze, Tsaidze and others - the census sheets are written in Russian) - Tushino surnames retained the ancient Georgian form. This was noticed by L. M. Chkhenkeli, to whom the author is grateful.
Another "island" of surnames on -jo- Tbilisi. Although the city is located in the territory dominated by surnames in -shvili, but each capital incorporates the features of all parts of the country. A curious paradox: in Tbilisi, surnames on -jo less than -shvili, and the number of their carriers is opposite: -jo about 45% at 30% -shvili. The most common surnames of the capital are Japaridze (there are more than 4,000 [p. 155]), Dolidze, Kalandadze, Lordkipanidze.
Most of eastern Georgia is dominated by formant surnames -shvili. It is also ancient, known since the 14th century. (Burdiasshvili in the "Monument of the Eristavis", but it is not known whether this is a surname or a sliding grandfather). In the surnames of Kakheti, according to the 1886 census, it has a monopoly: in the former Telavi district. formant -shvili covered more than 9/10 of all residents. In northeastern Georgia (former Dusheti and Tianeti counties), except for the slopes of the Main Caucasian Range, the surnames co -shvili belonged to 2/3 of the population, as well as to the west in Kartaliniya (Mtskheta and Gori districts) In the western part of Georgia, surnames with -shvili are also not isolated, in Racha and Lechkhum they are only slightly less common than with -jo. Even in the very center of dominance -jo surnames with -shvili today they cover almost ¼ of the population, and in the south-west (Guria) - about 1/5. But in the northwest they are rare: in Megrelia - about 5%, and in Svaneti they do not even reach 1%.
Formant -shvili several surnames were formed from female names: Tamarashvili, Shushanashvili, Zhuzhanashvili, Darejanishvili, Sulikashvili. It is impossible to associate all these surnames with illegitimate children; perhaps they arose when the widow endured the upbringing of children and the hardships of the household on her shoulders 7 . Apparently, the regional increase in the frequency of surnames from female bases is due to the historical and everyday features of the region (among the French, according to A. Doze, it is typical in Normandy).
In the west of Georgia, surnames with -ya, -wa: Tskhakaia, Chitana (a confluence of vowels avoided by the Russian language, in Russian the pronunciation is ioted, orthographically Tskhakaya, Reading). The formant comes from the Mingrelian language, which is closely related to Georgian. Researchers see this form as an earlier form -iani followed by truncation of the final part. Initially, such naming, apparently, served as definitions, similar in meaning to Russian adjectives 8 . There are a lot of words in the bases of surnames, actually Megrelian (Chkonia from Megrel. chkoni- “oak”, or Topypia from Megrelians. topuri- "honey").
In the territory between the Black Sea, Abkhazia, Svaneti and the lower reaches of the rivers Rioni and its right tributary Tskhenis-Tskali, surnames on -ya, -wa cover the majority of the population: in the Gegechkori region, according to documents from 1970–1971, they cover 61%, in the Kho region [p. 156] bi – 52%; among them are the names of -ia(Zhvania, Tskhadai) are found several times more often than on -ya(Dondua, Sturua). They are in Svaneti (Chkadua) and in neighboring Abkhazia. And south of Rioni, their frequency drops sharply: in Guria they do not exceed 1/10; -jo And -shvili- about 9%, i.e. more than 100 thousand people). Significantly less (both quantitatively and territorially) are surnames in -ava, also of Megrelian origin: Papava, Lezhava, Chikobava and others. Etymologies of many surnames with -ava unclear. The words from which they arose are lost and can only be restored by historical reconstruction(in particular, with the help of A. S. Chikobava's dictionary) 9 . On the Black Sea coast, north of the mouth of the Rioni, surnames from -ava ranks second, second only to the surnames on -ya, -wa; for example, in the Khobi region, they cover about 1/5 of the entire Georgian population (there are especially many of them in the village of Patara-Poti in Rioni, but their range is small). Even nearby, in Guria, they own only about 3%, to the east, throughout Imeretin, they do not reach even 1% everywhere, and further on they are represented only single families, with the exception of Tbilisi, where they account for 3-4%.
Formant -ava seemed to N. Ya. Marr a modified Abkhazian -ba. But such a connection (apparently inspired by territorial proximity) is illusory. She was convincingly rejected by S. Janashia, he suggested the origin -ava from Megrelian -van with truncation of the final -n. This was supported by GV Rogava 10 . However, another explanation was later put forward: Megrelian -ava comes from the Georgian-Svan email, transition l into a semivowel V- the result of labialization (rounding) l eleven . Due to the paucity of arguments, it is too early to recognize the dispute as resolved.
In the living speech of Megrelians, intervocalic V often falls out and -ava pronounced like a long A 12, but this is not reflected in the letter.
In Svaneti, more than 4/5 of the population have surnames formed by Georgian and Svan formants -ani, -iani. He developed various shades of meaning from “belonging to whom” to “having what”, as well as collectiveness - leliani- "reeds". This formant formed many Georgian words (mariliani- "salty" marili- "salt"; tsoliani from tsoli- "wife", etc.). In the inversion (“reverse”) dictionary of Georgians [p. 157] of the Russian language, 4197 words are given in -ani, of which 3272 - on -iani. The initial meanings of the surnames formed by him: Zurabiani - “belonging to Zurab” (i.e., a descendant of Zurab); Orbeliani - "belonging to the Orbeli clan"; Oniani - "arrived from Oni" (They are the center of the region adjacent to Svaneti).
Map 1. Zones of distribution of Georgian surnames with endings in:
1 - -jo; 2 - shvili; 3 - -ia, -ua; 4 – -ani(-iani); 5. - -ava; 6. - -uli, -uri; 7. - - (n) ty
Solid lines indicate the predominant form, dashed lines indicate a less frequent form.The most common surname of the Svans is Liparteliani. It is widespread in Lower Svaneti (the villages of Lentekhi, Kheledi, Khopuri, Chaluri, etc.). Its basis is liparizers(loss of the mean and natural due to reduction in Svan speech), in which -ate- “suffix of origin” (cf. the name Kuteli from the common noun wrappers- "Kutaisian", i.e., arrived from the city of Kutaisi). But the meanings of the suffix are not limited to indicating the place, but much wider, it joins both personal names and common nouns. Separating it, we find the basis liparit. Georgians have long known a male personal name Liparite and patronym from him - Liparity. The oldest example is Liparity at the court of Queen Tamara (1036). In 1615, Lipartian, the ruler of Megrelia, was known. For the first time about naming with -et Georgian scholar Brosse wrote in 1849: “The form Davidet, a surname, is very archaic and is found no more than two or three times in Georgian monuments [p. 158] kah: Liparitet, son of Liparit” 14 . This observation slipped by unnoticed. A hundred years later, S. Janashia mentioned in passing: "The form Liparitet is one of the forms of Georgian surnames" 15 . But only later did V. Dondua devote a meaningful note to it, collecting numerous examples from documents, mainly from the 13th century. (Kononet, Ionoset, Pavleet, etc.), rightly pointing out that they "are not noticed or interpreted incorrectly" 16 . He sees in formant -et multiplicity index (with which the formant is also associated -eti, common in the Georgian names of countries - Osseti, "country of wasps", i.e. Ossetians). But it is doubtful to recognize these examples as surnames: perhaps these are still generic names, so to speak, “great-surnames”, at best, “proto-surnames”. But most likely the appearance of the name on the basis of the Svan language, in which the prefix whether- extremely frequent, forming nouns and adjectives.
Surnames formed from -ani, -iani, are very frequent in Lechkhumi - in the mountain valleys of the southern slopes of the Main Caucasian Range near the borders of Svaneti. There, surnames with -ani cover 38% of the total population (second only to surnames with -jo). Of course, this is not the path of the Svans from the valleys to the mountains; on the contrary, they came from Colchis. But the Svans did not bring their surnames with them from the southwest, but acquired them already in their modern homeland, the southeastern flank of which was the territory of Lechkhumi.
Formant -ani- common for Georgians. It is not uncommon in surnames outside Svanetia (Abastiani, Mibchuani, etc.), but only in Tbilisi and Racha (neighboring Lechkhumi and Svanetia) does it reach 4%; throughout western Georgia, there are 1-3% of such surnames, and in eastern Georgia - less than 0.1%.
Other surnames sound in the mountains and foothills in the north of eastern Georgia. The Khevsurs, Pshavs, Mtiuls inhabiting it are dominated by surnames formed by the formant -uli (-uri), ancient Georgian, but still alive today ( rusuli- "Russian"). The bases of the surnames Aludauri, Tsiskariuli, Chincharauli and others are ancient Khevsur non-church male names, the meanings of some are lost, some are clear: Khevsur. chinchara- "nettle". Perhaps the surname was inspired by the formula, recently pronounced by the priest at the Mtiul wedding: “So that the offspring multiply like nettles” 17 . Among the foundations of all surnames with -uli, -uri there is not a single church name, although Christianity among the highlanders of the Central Caucasus is several centuries older than surnames. This is essential [p. 159] the contradiction was not noticed by the researchers. Certainly, church name everyone received, but Everyday life habitual, native dominated, in the same way as customs or clothes were stably preserved.
The time of occurrence of mountain surnames is unknown, but there is a relative date “not later”: the hero of folk tales Aptsiauri roused the people to fight against the feudal lords early XVII V. Choice r/l in these surnames is phonetically dissimilative with respect to the stem: if the stem contains l, then appears in the suffix R(Tsiklauri), and if the basis R, then in the suffix - vice versa l(Arabuli).
Among the Khevsurs, this form of surnames is almost monopoly. In the northernmost mountainous villages of Gudani, Guli, Shatili, it covered 95%: out of 2,600 people, only 130 had other surnames. In the zone of the Khevsur center Barisakho, seven villages (800 people) were only carriers of surnames on -uri (-uli), and in three smaller villages 202 bearers of the surname Lykokeli lived. On the Black Aragva (Gudamakari gorge) surnames with -uri accounted for 85% (all data 1886).
Map 2. Migration of parts of the Pshav and Khevsur
1 - Arabuli; 2 - Apuiauri; 3 - Tsiklauri; 4 - Chincharauli
surnames (according to 1886)To the south, among the Pshavs, who are more closely related to the Kakhetians than the Khevsurs, isolated by high ridges, the model of surnames with -uli, -uri less frequent than in Khevsureti; it covered a third of the Pshavs, like the Mtiuls on the river. White Aragvi. Along the Georgian Military Highway from Dusheti to Kazbegi, surnames with -shvili and even -jo, but also in the lower reaches of the Dushet Aragva, surnames on -uli still accounted for 20%. They also spread to the southwest - to the Kura: in the village. Shubati (now in the southern part of the Kaspi region), the 1886 census registered Bekauri, Tsiklauri, Aptsiauri, just like in Black Aragva, i.e. surnames [p. 160] directly indicate where and where the mountaineers migrated from.
The return of the highlanders to the valleys from the high-mountain gorges, where they were driven back by their former invasions, began a long time ago. Documents report repeated migrations in the second half of the last century. They were also made gradually, over short distances, but there were also long-distance transitions. R. A. Topchishvili collected considerable material about them in his dissertation, pointing out the literature of the question 18 . But even without a single document, it is enough to map the distribution of surnames to get a picture of migration in the lower reaches of the Aragva, Iori, Alazaia, and in some places further up and down the Kura. A story about this whole stream would take dozens of pages, but we have to limit ourselves to the example of two surnames, omitting the names of villages and the number of speakers. The surname Tsiklauri is recorded in 35 villages - from Kazbek along the Aragva and Iori to the south almost to Mtskheta, to the southeast almost to Telavi; surname Chincharauli - in 17 villages - from Shatili (near the borders with Checheno-Ingushetia) south to Dusheti and beyond Tianeti. In Tianetsky and northwestern part of Telavi district. carriers of surnames with a formant -uli, -uri in 1886 they made up from 20 to 30% of the population, near Telavi and beyond they barely reached 2%. Some also settled in Tbilisi.
In contrast to lowland Georgia, where the villages are multi-family, the northeast is characterized by an extremely high concentration: sometimes not only entire villages, but also groups of them are inhabited by namesakes. According to the 1886 census in the villages of Gveleti, Datvisi, Oherkhevi, Chirdili, all 73 households with 314 inhabitants bore the surname Arabuli, in the village. Guro, all 220 inhabitants were Gogochuri, in the village. All 192 residents are Gigauri. These are not exceptions. It is not surprising that often the name of the village is identical with the surname of the inhabitants. In the mountains, the mixing of the population is difficult, the influx from outside is weaker there. A similar phenomenon in Upper Megrelia was noted by P. A. Tskhadaia 19 . But another factor probably acted even more strongly: the pressure of the communal way of life, due to which they settled and moved not by individual families, but by whole groups of them - patronymics. Surnames form huge arrays: Arabuli were found in 20 villages - 1158 people, Chincherauli - in 17 villages - 885 people (1886), etc.
The families were extremely large. In the materials of the 1886 census, families of 20–30 people are not uncommon. Highlanders [p. 161] in the Gudamkar Gorge back in the 20s of our century, families of 30-40 people were preserved 20 . Decay process large families took place in the 19th century. - in the census sheets of 1886, there are constant notes: “they live separately for seven years without a society sentence” (in the village of Midelauri, where 49 residents had the surname Midelauri), i.e. the family separated itself without permission; the community refused to legitimize partition for many years.
The ratios of the components of surnames are historically variable. So, for pshavs recent centuries new surnames, arising from the splitting of large families, are formed by the formant -shvili, but not -ur or -st(reported by G. Javakhishvili and R. Topchishvili). By a happy coincidence, T. Sh. Tsagareishvili, an ethnographer of the GSSR Academy of Sciences, brought material about modern surnames on the Black Aragva and we were able to put our data next to each village. For 100 years, there have been significant changes in the life of the mountaineers - the liquidation of the exploiting classes, the shift of the population from high-mountain gorges to valleys, the disappearance of small high-mountain settlements. But the ratios of the forms of surnames are still close: in Kitokhi and the surrounding areas today the same surnames (Bekauri, Tsiklauri), as well as a hundred years ago, however, the surnames on -shvili, which were alluvial even 100 years ago.
On the whole, the isolation of surnames is noticeably decreasing everywhere. For comparison, consider the ratio of surname carriers to -uli, -uri in the named areas and in adjacent territories (in reduction to the modern administrative division) in relation to the entire population, in%:
1886 (census) 1970–1971 (marriage registry) Kazbegi area 42 26 North of Dusheti district 95 85 That is, visitors from different parts of Georgia are pouring into these areas to the indigenous population. The local population also does not remain motionless - all over Georgia you can find surnames with a formant -uli, -uri. Total their carriers are several tens of you[p. 162] thousand, of which approximately 15 thousand live in Tbilisi (1% of the city's residents).
The carriers of surnames formed by the formant are not very numerous. -ate(Mekhateli, Tsereteli), which has already been discussed, and these names themselves are only a few dozen. They are scattered nests in many places in Georgia. These surnames are based on toponyms (Mtatsmindeli from Mtatsminda - “holy mountain” over Tbilisi), ethnonyms (Pshaveli), anthroponym (Barteli) or common nouns. The largest nest of surnames on -ate meet at far north Eastern Georgia, in the center of Khevsureti. There, in the middle of a continuous mass of surnames with a formant -uli the 1886 census recorded 202 people with the surname Likokeli (in the villages of Chana, Kartsault, and others, where there was not a single person with a different surname). Other formant jacks -ate we find in the regions of Oni, Mtskheta, Tianeti, Telavi; in Tbilisi, bearers of surnames on -ate make up more than 2% - Tsereteli, Amashukeli, Veshapeli, Gamrekeli and others. -ate not the suffix that forms them. For example, the surname Amaglobeli is verbal - participle "elevating", and Gvardtsiteli from citeli- "red". Many surnames with this formant were completed with another formant (Gogeliani, Kvaratskhelia, etc.).
There are very few surnames -(n)ti, but they are very often repeated: Zhgenti, Glonti. Their focus is strictly defined territorially - Guria in the south-west of Georgia (the districts of Lanchkhuti, Makharadze, Chokhaturi). But even here they make up about 1%, except for individual villages, such as Aketi in the Lanchkhuti region, where there are especially many Glonti. This formant is of Zan (Laz) language origin, in it -n- connecting component. Alleged connection -(n)ti with the general Georgian -mt 21 does not clarify its origin and original meaning.
The Laz language dominated Colchis in ancient times. Back in the 19th century the holes there were numerous; most of them ended up in Turkey, some of them lived to the north at the beginning of our century - in Imereti and Abkhazia. I. R. Megrelidze cited 23 Laz surnames published in the Laz newspaper "Mchita Murtskhuli", published in 1929 in Sukhumi 22 - all with the ending -shi. Basically, the Laz merged with their closely related Mingrelians. From their language came the formant -shi, who in Guria formed the surname Tugushi, Khalvashi, Tsulushi, [p. 163] Kutushi, Nakashi, etc. (if the stem ended in sonorous consonants r, l, n, m, then instead of -shi sounded -chi). Mingrelians have these surnames ending in -shia(surname Janashia). In the Laz language, this formant formed adjectives with the meaning of belonging. Half a century ago, these endings were no longer perceived as a suffix, having completely merged with the base. There are many more of these surnames than with -(n)ti but by the number of carriers, the ratio is reversed. Today they are not uncommon in the Lanchkhut and Makharadze districts.
Borrowed surnames from Georgians are single from -ba(Abkhaz. ba- "child"), the only one - with the old Adyghe -qua (rare surname Ingorokva, she is a pseudonym famous writer I. Ingorokva), Armenian with -yang(from -yants).
In western Georgia, the forms of naming women were characteristic. In his work "Female family names in the South Caucasian languages and folklore" I. V. Megrelidze provided valuable, but, alas, very fragmentary information about them 23 . In the 30s of our century, the old men of Guria still remembered that married women used to be called by their maiden name; when referring to relatives or mentioning them in absentia, they replaced the endings -dze, -shvili, -ia, -wa and others on -phe. In the distant past, there were prominent Laz families of Zhurdaniphe, Kontiphe, Pochuphe, and others. i.e. -phe once served as a sign not of gender, but of nobility, with subsequent simplification in -heh(Lolukhe from the surname Lolua, Katsirihe from Katsarava), and its meaning was erased and even turned into the opposite. The researcher noted that in the 30s of our century -phe had a slightly disparaging connotation. married women usually called by the husband's last name, using in front maiden name, i.e. the name of the father in the genitive case - with an indicator -is: Dolidzis asuli Beridze - “daughter of Dolidze, by her husband Beridze” ( asauli or kali- "daughter"). There are striking social and linguistic processes that have so far eluded scientific study. Their significance is clear from broad parallels: the brightest heroine of ancient Russian poetry is called only by her patronymic - Yaroslavna; centuries later, the names of wives after their husbands were recorded in Novgorod - Pavlikha, Ivanikha (this is also known among the southern Slavs). Historically, the position of a woman has changed, and her naming has also changed.
[p. 164] According to the frequency ratio of surname forms in Georgia, 12 territories can be distinguished:
1. Houri. Southwestern Georgia between the Adzharian ASSR, the Black Sea and the lower reaches of the Rioni. Administrative regions: Lanchkhuti, Makharadze, Chokhatauri. Formant predominates -jo(more than half of the population; 20% - -shvili), surnames on -ia(more than 12%), -ava(3%), the only outbreak in the world -(n)ti(Zhgeiti, Gloyati), although they make up only 1%; There is -shi.
2. Megrelia. Northwestern Georgia, between the Abkhaz ASSR, the Black Sea and the lower reaches of the Rioni. Districts: Khobi, Mikha, Tskhakaya, Poti, Zugdidi, Gegechkori, Chkhorotsku, Tsalenjikha. Surnames absolutely dominate -ya, -wa covering from 50 to 60%; on -ava – 24%, -jo– from 10 to 16%; less often - -shvili(4–6%), visible -ani (2%).
3. Svaneti. Districts: Mestia and Lentekhi. Surnames absolutely dominate -ani, -iani– over 80%; is on -jo (9%), -ya, -wa(up to 5%).
4. Lechkhumi and Lower Racha. South of Svaneti, mainly the Tsageri and Ambrolauri regions. Surnames with formant predominate -jo(46%), a lot with -ani(38%), yes -shvili (8%), -ya, -wa (3%), -ava, -ate(by 2%).
5. Racha. Oni area. The flank of the "vibration zone" of surnames on -jo(48%) and -shvili(42%), not uncommon with -ate(6%) and -ani (4%).
6. Imereti. Other regions of western Georgia from Samtredia to Ordzhonikidze inclusive. Surnames with formants absolutely predominate -jo(over 70%); co -shvili cover about 1/4 of the population; With -ava(to the west) and -ani(to the north) - 1% each.
7. Kartli. The strip south of the South Ossetian Autonomous Region in the middle reaches of the Kura. Regions: Khashuri, Kareli, Gori, Kaspi, Mtskheta. "Vibration zone" of formants -jo(in the west they cover 3/4 of all inhabitants, in the east - 1/10) and -shvili(from 1/4 in the west to 2/3 in the east).
8. Northeast. Regions: Dusheti and Tianeti. In the northern part, inhabited for a long time by Pshavs and Khevsurs, surnames with a formant prevail -uli, -uri; in the southern part they covered 20–30% of the inhabitants; against, -shvili with a small number of them in the north, they make up to 2/3 in the south.
[p. 165] 9. Heavy. Kazbegi region, bordering the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and the South Ossetian Autonomous Okrug. More than 40% of surnames with -shvili, more than 25% - with -uli, -uri; in 1886 a lot of -jo.
10. Tusheti. Near the borders with the Chechen-Ingush and Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, the former Omalo district, now the northern part of the Akhmeta district. Absolutely dominated -idze(almost 2/3), the rest so -shvili, -uli, -uri.
11. Kakheti. All southeastern Georgia. Districts of Telavi, Sighnaghi, Kvareli, Gurjaani and others. Surnames from -shvili: for the most part they exceed 90%, in places interspersed with surnames -jo (3–4%), -uli, -uri (1–2%).
12. Tbilisi. As in every capital, features of all parts of Georgia are presented. Surnames dominate -jo(more than 40%) and -shvili(about 30%), and -ya, -wa(less than 10%), -ani (4%), -uli, -uri even more rarely a small amount of -nti
72 24 1 1 1 – – 1 Racha 49 41 4 – – – – 6 Mtskheta 16 72 – – – 7 7 5 Dusheti and Tianeti 14 43 – – – 37 – 6 Kazbegi 15 57 – – – 26 – 2 Tusheti 76 11 – – – 13 – – Kakheti 8 90 – – – 1 – 1 Tbilisi 45 30 4 9 4 2 . 6 *Dash means no last name, dot means less than 0.5%. The entire southern strip of Georgia was left out of consideration. In the 17th century it was completely devastated by the shah and sultan hordes. Georgians began to return there [p. 166] le joining Russia, but even in late XIX V. there were few of them. Later they moved there from different parts Georgia, and their names are a motley picture, the analysis of which requires too much great material which the author does not yet have. Another disadvantage of the material is the lack of data on the height of the areas. In such a mountainous country as Transcaucasia, vertical zoning plays the same role in any respect as horizontal zoning. In my works this is shown on the example of toponymy 25 . Of course, most of what has been said in relation to the spread of surnames refers to the passing past. The former disunity and enmity are finished forever. In present-day Soviet Georgia, Svans, Pshavs, Mingrelians work, study, and rest hand in hand in the workshops of Rustavi and the auditoriums of Tbilisi University, in the mines of Tkibuli and the beaches of Colchis. There are no former borders between them. Today, families are common in which a svai is married to a Kakhetian woman or a Megrelian woman is married to a Khevsur. Their child is growing up as a member of a single Georgian socialist nation. How and from what ethnic communities And ethnographic groups it has developed, they tell surnames that reflect the history of the people and their language.
19 Tskhadaia P. A. Toponymy of mountainous Megrelia. Tbilisi, 1975; Tskhadaia N.A. On the function of the prefix na in the anthroponyms of Mountain Megrelia // Mashne. Tbilisi, 1974. No. 1. For cargo. lang.
20 Panek L. Mtiuly. S. 11.
21 Megrelidze I. R. The Laz and Megrelian layers in the Gurian. L., 1938. S. 141.
22 Ibid. S. 140.
23 In memory of acad. N. Ya. Marra. M.; L., 1938. S. 152–181.
24 Ibid. S. 176.
25 Nikonov V. A. Introduction to toponymy. M., 1964. S. 103–104.
Although Georgian surnames are several centuries older than Russian ones, the first of them arose in the 13th century. or even earlier. The bulk of the surnames appeared, probably when Georgia was fragmented into disunited and warring feudal estates. Political, economic, cultural processes in them proceeded differently, and the language developed differently. These differences have given rise to a variety of forms of surnames. But nevertheless, linguistic kinship and similar historical features united all Kartvelian ethnographic groups into certain family groups: they were formed by the addition of a second component, gradually turning into a suffix (i.e., losing its independent lexical meaning). In total, 7-8 such formants form the surnames of 3.5 million Georgians, repeating in a grandiose numberwah, each in a certain territory. Their statistical and geographical relationships show the historical formation of the Georgian nation. All calculations given are made by the author and are published for the first time*. *G. S. Chitaya, Sh. V. Dzidziguri, A. V. Glonti, I. N. Bakradze, S. A. Arutyunov, V. T. Totsuriya, A. K. Chkaduya, G. V. Tsulaya, P. A. Tskhadia, as well as Sh. T. Apridonidze, M. Chabashvili, N. G. Volkova, R. Topchishvili, R. M. Shamedashvili, M. S. Mikadze, L. M. Chkhenkeli registry office archive. Sources: 1) complete population census of 1886, the documents of which are stored in the Central Historical Archive of Georgia1 (located in Tbilisi); 2) acts of registry offices; 3) lists of voters; 4) telephone and other directories; 5) lists of surnames in studies2, articles3, dissertations4. It is clear that not all of them can be summarized in a single statistical table. The calculations cover half a million Georgians in all regions (the eastern part of Georgia - completely, except for cities; in the western regions there are fewer materials - the census fund was lost in the Kutaisi branch of the archive) in an amount sufficient for statistically reliable indicators. Both in terms of the number of carriers and in terms of territorial coverage, two forms of surnames absolutely prevail: with the components -dze in the western part of the republic and -shvili - in the eastern. The initial meaning of both formants is similar: -jo - “son, descendant”; -shvili - "child", "born". They are typologically identical to the surnames of other peoples: in the Germanic languages, sen (son, son, zones) is “son”; in Turkic -ogly - "son", -kyz - "daughter, girl"; all formants attached to a stem denoting father indicate "whose son". Surnames from canonical names - Giorgadze, Leonidze, Nikolayshvili, etc. - cover only a minority, more often surnames come from non-church names: Mgeladze, Mchedlishvili, etc. However, these surnames cannot be directly connected with common nouns mgeli - "wolf"; mchedli - "blacksmith". The original bearer of the surname Mgeladze, like his Russian "namesake" Volkov, was not the son of a wolf, but of Wolf - the bearer of the personal name Mgela. Another necessary caveat. Surnames with an ethnonym at the base (Svanidze, Javakhidze, Javakhishvili) are especially attractive to historians and ethnographers, but it is dangerous to forget the principle of relative negative proper nouns: these surnames could not have arisen among Samih Svans or Javakhs (where everyone was a Svan or Javakh), but only outside of it. Their basis could not even denote a Svan or Javakh, but only a person who was somewhat similar to them (in clothes or in some other way) who visited them or traded with them. Surnames formed with -jo (connected to the stem with the vowel a or and depending on the vowels of the stem) are believed to have originated in the 13th century. They absolutely prevail in Imereti. In the districts of Ordzhonikidze, Terzhola, surnames in -dze cover more than 70% of all residents. As they move away from this core, their frequency decreases. On the southwestern border of Imeretia, in the Vani region, more than 2/3 of the population belongs to them (1961), to the west, in Guria (Maharadze, Lanchkhuti districts), more than half. On the opposite north-eastern flank, in Lechkhumi, almost half of the population wears them, as well as further - in Racha (now the Oni region). Only in the northwest, in Upper Megrelia, the formant is dzenechast: in the Gegechkori region - only 7%; it is also in the minority on the northwest coast. In Svaneti, surnames with the formant -dze are less than 1/10. Where did the line lie, to the west of which -dze prevails, to the east - shvili? The border between western and eastern Georgia is considered to be the Suramsky (Likhsky) ridge, transverse to the ridges of the Greater and Lesser Caucasus, it crosses Georgia at its narrowest point. But the dialectologists had to make a correction, finding that in the south, eastern dialects sound much west of Borjomi. And the names I collected showed that the predominance of the western -jo north of the Kura was advanced “towards”, east of Surami. In the south, the data for 1886 are scarce; in Borjomi and Bakuriani, there were few Georgians at that time. There are only 573 Georgians in Chobiskhevi, 435 of them have "Western" surnames in -dze. Even to the south-west, in the Akhalkalaki region, according to the documents of 1970-1971. (in Baraleti, Vachiani, Gogesheni, Diliska, Chunchkha), surnames in -dze cover even ¾ of the Georgian population. In a strip stretched along the middle course of the Kura (formerly part of Kartli), the formant -dze prevails only in the west - in the Khashur region and then cuts into a deep pointed wedge to the east through the Kareli region (and in 1886 they prevailed in the villages of Abisi , Arabulani, Arekheti, etc.) in the Gori region (the villages of Shertli and Arashenda), where the surname with this formant breaks off (93 carriers of surnames -dze and 91 - on -shvili lived in the village of Arashevi).
Having placed the data of 1886 on the map according to the modern administrative division, we get a strikingly clear profile of this strip from west to east (in brackets are the calculations according to the documents of the registry offices of 1970-1971), in%:
The acts of the registry offices, unlike the census, cover only part of the population, but a distinctly uniform trend with a fairly large amount of counting suggests that the quantitative expression of “rivalry” -dze and -shvili is caught mostly correctly: the border of eastern and western Georgia, according to the forms of surnames, passes east of Suramsky ridge. Thus, one can speak about the zone of statistical vibration -dze / -shvili in the language of numbers, but a diachronic comparison remains to be made. To the east of the Surami Range, -dze is much less common: in Kakheti - only 3-7%. Somewhat more often they are between Tianeti and Telavi. In northeastern Georgia, surnames in -dze comprised only separate nests; several of these nests gravitated towards the Georgian Military Highway, between Kazbegi and Mtskheta. But two large "islands" of surnames with the formant -jo should be considered separately. In the extreme northeast of Georgia, in the gorges of the Main Caucasian Range near the borders with Checheno-Ingushetia and Dagestan, on a territory completely cut off from the entire zone of dominance of the formant -dze (the former Omalo district, later included in Akhmeta), live the Tush. Almost 2/3 of them (1886) had surnames with the formant -dze, only 23% - -shvili and 10% - -uli, uri. The centuries-old isolation of Tusheti, all ties with which were interrupted annually for 6 months5, affected everything, and isolation is understandable. Penetration of formant -shvili from neighboring Kakhetia [p. 154] is also natural: the tushins, whose basis of life was sheep breeding, could not exist without the summer driving of sheep to the Alazani valleys and its tributaries, supplying the king of Kakhetia annually with 500 warriors and 600 sheep. But from where, how and when could the Western Georgian formant -dze become predominant? The tushins came from the west. The model of surnames in -dze is not Kartli, but Imereti, however, researchers do not know such a distant focus of tushins. Some pre-revolutionary researchers even surmised that the Tushin originated outside of Georgia, but science has no grounds for this6. Dating is also difficult: the emergence of surnames cannot be attributed to the depths of centuries, and therefore it was difficult for historians to escape the distant migration of an entire people. The Tushins could bring with them to their modern territory not yet surnames, but their future basis - dze. A characteristic detail remained not only unexplained, but also unnoticed: in contrast to the different frequency of connecting vowels (-i, a), only i appeared in the surnames of Tushin. For example, in s. Gogrulti are all eight surnames (81 people - Bukuridze, Jokharidze, etc.). d.), in s. Given - 82 people with -idze (Tataridze, Cherpeidze, etc.) and not a single surname with -adze. In 1886, 2660 Tushin had surnames with -idze and only 162 with -adze. Such a ratio, excluding chance, requires the attention of researchers - it is essential for the history of the Tush and their language. Is it connected with the Megrelian-Imeretian law of appearance and after the bases with the final -a (Tushino surnames Bgardaidze, Tsaidze, Gochilaidze, etc.). Or are there other reasons? Perhaps this feature will help researchers in their search for an old source of carcasses. But still, most of the Tushino surnames - without a connecting -a-: Bakhoridze, Khutidze, etc. And one more detail that no one pointed out: the combination -ai- (often written -ai-: Omaidze, Idaidze, Tsaidze, etc. - census sheets are written in Russian) - Tushino surnames retained the ancient Georgian form. This was noticed by L. M. Chkhenkeli, to whom the author is grateful.
Another "island" of surnames on -dze is Tbilisi. Although the city is located on the territory dominated by -shvili surnames, each capital incorporates the features of all parts of the country. There is a curious paradox: in Tbilisi, there are fewer surnames in -dze than in -shvili, and the number of their carriers is the opposite: -dze is about 45% with 30% -shvili. The most common surnames of the capital: Japaridze (their there are more than 4 thousand), Dolidze, Kalandadze, Lordkipanidze. Most of eastern Georgia is dominated by surnames formed by the formant -shvili. It is also ancient, known since the 14th century. (Burdiasshvili in the "Monument of the Eristavis", but it is not known whether this is a surname or a sliding grandfather). In the surnames of Kakheti, according to the 1886 census, it has a monopoly: in the former Telavi district. formant-shvili covered more than 9/10 of all residents. In northeastern Georgia (the former Dusheti and Tianeti counties), in addition to the slopes of the Main Caucasian Range, 2/3 of the population belonged to the co-shvili surnames, as well as to the west in Kartalinia (Mtskheta and Gori counties). In the western part of Georgia, co-shvili surnames also not isolated, in Racha and Lechkhum they are only slightly less common than with -dze. Even in the very center of the predominance of -dze surnames with -shvili today cover almost ¼ of the population, and in the south-west (Guria) - about 1/5. But in the northwest they are rare: in Megrelia - about 5%, and in Svaneti they do not even reach 1%. The formant -shvili formed several surnames from female names: Tamarashvili, Shushanashvili, Zhuzhanashvili, Darejanishvili, Sulikashvili. It is impossible to associate all these surnames with illegitimate children; perhaps they arose when the widow endured the upbringing of children and the hardships of the household on her shoulders. Apparently, the regional increase in the frequency of surnames from female bases is due to the historical and everyday features of the region (among the French, according to A. Doze, it is typical in Normandy). In the west of Georgia, surnames with -ia, -ua make up a noticeable amount: Tskhakaia, Chitana (a confluence of vowels avoided by the Russian language, in Russian the pronunciation is ioted, orthographically Tskhakaya, Chitaya). The formant comes from the Mingrelian language, which is closely related to Georgian. Researchers see in this form an earlier form - iani with subsequent truncation of the final part. Initially, such naming, apparently, served as definitions, similar in meaning to Russian adjectives8. There are many words in the bases of surnames, actually Megrelian (Chkonia from Megrel. chkoni - “oak”, or Topypia from Megrel. Topuri - “honey”). On the territory between the Black Sea, Abkhazia, Svanetia and the lower reaches of the rivers Rioni and its right tributary Tskhenis-Tskali, surnames in -ia, -ua cover the majority of the population: in the Gegechkori region, according to documents from 1970-1971, they cover 61%, in Ho area[p. 156]bi - 52%; among them, surnames in -ia (Zhvania, Tskhadai) are found several times more often than in -ua (Dondua, Sturua). They are in Svaneti (Chkadua) and in neighboring Abkhazia. And south of Rioni, their frequency drops sharply: in Guria they do not exceed 1/10, to the east, in Imereti, even less - 3%, further they are only single (except for Tbilisi, where they take third place after -dze and -shvili - around 9% i.e. e. more than 100 thousand people). Significantly less (both quantitatively and territorially) are surnames with -ava, also of Mingrelian origin: Papava, Lezhava, Chikobava, etc. The etymologies of many surnames with -ava are unclear. The words from which they arose have been lost and can only be restored through historical reconstruction (in particular, with the help of A. S. Chikobava’s dictionary)9. On the Black Sea coast, north of the mouth of the Rioni, surnames with -ava take second place, second only to surnames with -ia, -ua; for example, in the Khobi region, they cover about 1/5 of the entire Georgian population (there are especially many of them in the village of Patara-Poti in Rioni, but their range is small). Even nearby, in Guria, they own only about 3%, to the east, throughout Imeretin, they do not reach even 1% everywhere, and further on they are represented only by single families, with the exception of Tbilisi, where they make up 3-4%. The formant -ava seemed to N. Ya. Marr to be a modified Abkhazian -ba. But such a connection (apparently inspired by territorial proximity) is illusory. It was convincingly rejected by S. Janashia, he suggested the origin of -ava from Megrelian -van with the truncation of the final -n. This was supported by G. V. Rogava10. However, a different explanation was put forward later: the Mingrelian -ava comes from the Georgian-Svan el-a, the transition of l into the semivowel v is the result of the labialization (rounding) of l11. Due to the paucity of arguments, it is too early to recognize the dispute as resolved. In the lively speech of the Megrelians, the intervocalic in often falls out and -ava is pronounced as a long a12, but this is not reflected in writing. In Svaneti, more than 4/5 of the population have surnames formed by the Georgian and Svan formants -ani, -iani. He developed various shades of meanings from "belonging to whom" to "possessing what", as well as the collective - leliani - "reeds". This formant formed many Georgian words (mariliani - "salty" from marili - "salt"; tsoliani from tsoli - "wife", etc.). In the inversion ("reverse") dictionary of Georgians4197 words are given in -ani, of which 3272 are in -iani. The initial meanings of the surnames formed by him: Zurabiani - “belonging to Zurab” (i.e., a descendant of Zurab); Orbeliani - "belonging to the Orbeli family"; Oniani - "arrived from Oni" (They are the center of the region adjacent to Svaneti)
The most common surname of the Svans is Liparteliani. It is widespread in Lower Svaneti (the villages of Lentekhi, Kheledi, Khopuri, Chaluri, etc.). Its basis is liparites (the loss of the middle one is natural due to reduction in Svan speech), in which -eli is the “suffix of origin” (cf. the name Kutateli from the common kutateli - “Kutaisi”, i.e., arrived from the city of Kutaisi) . But the meanings of the suffix are not limited to indicating the place, but much wider, it joins both personal names and common nouns. Having separated it, we find the basis of liparite. The Georgians have long known the male personal name Liparit and the patronym from him - Liparitet. The oldest example is Liparity at the court of Queen Tamara (1036). In 1615, Lipartian, the ruler of Megrelia, was known. For the first time, Georgian scholar Brosse wrote about the naming of s-et in 1849: “The form Davidet, surname, is very archaic and is found no more than two or three times in Georgian monumentskah: Liparitet, son of Liparit. This observation slipped by unnoticed. A hundred years later, S. Janashia mentioned in passing: “The form Liparitet is one of the forms of Georgian surnames”15. But only later did V. Dondua devote a meaningful note to it, collecting numerous examples from documents, mainly from the 13th century. (Kononet, Ionoset, Pavleet, etc.), rightly pointing out that they “are not noticed or interpreted incorrectly”16. He sees in the formant -et an indicator of plurality (which is also connected with the formant -éti, which is common in the Georgian names of countries - Osseti, "country of wasps", i.e. Ossetians). But it is doubtful to recognize these examples as surnames: perhaps these are still generic names, so to speak, “great-surnames”, at best, “proto-surnames”. But most likely the origin of the name on the basis of the Svan language, in which the prefix li- is extremely frequent, forming nouns and adjectives. Surnames formed from -ani, -iani are also very common in Lechkhumi - in the mountain valleys of the southern slopes of the Main Caucasian Range near the borders of Svaneti. There, surnames with -ani cover 38% of the total population (second only to surnames with -jo). Of course, this is not the path of the Svans from the valleys to the mountains; on the contrary, they came from Colchis. But the Svans did not bring their surnames with them from the southwest, but acquired them already in their modern homeland, the southeastern flank of which was the territory of Lechkhumi. Formant -ani - common for Georgians. It is not uncommon in surnames outside Svanetia (Abastiani, Mibchuani, etc.), but only in Tbilisi and Racha (neighboring Lechkhumi and Svanetia) does it reach 4%; throughout western Georgia there are 1-3% of such surnames, and in eastern Georgia - less than 0.1%. Other surnames sound in the mountains and foothills in the north of eastern Georgia. The Khevsurs, Pshavs, and Mtiuls inhabiting it are dominated by surnames formed by the formant -uli (-uri), ancient Georgian, but still alive (rusuli - “Russian”). The bases of the surnames Aludauri, Tsiskariuli, Chincharauli and others are old Khevsur non-church male names, the meanings of some have been lost, some are clear: Khevsur. chinchara - "nettle". Perhaps the surname was inspired by the formula, recently pronounced by the priest at the Mtiul wedding: “So that the offspring multiply like nettles”17. Among the foundations of all surnames from -uli, -uri there is not a single church name, although Christianity among the highlanders of the Central Caucasus is several centuries older than surnames. It's essentialthe contradiction was not noticed by the researchers. Of course, everyone received a church name, but in everyday life the usual, native dominated, just as customs or clothes were stably preserved. The time of the emergence of mountain surnames is unknown, but there is a relative date “not later”: the hero of folk tales Aptsiauri raised the people to fight against the feudal lords at the beginning of the 17th century. The choice of r/l in these surnames is phonetically dissimilative with respect to the stem: if the stem contains l, then r (Tsiklauri) appears in the suffix, and if the stem is r, then vice versa l (Arabuli) appears in the suffix. Among the Khevsurs, this form of surnames is almost monopoly. In the northernmost mountainous villages of Gudani, Guli, Shatili, it covered 95%: out of 2,600 people, only 130 had other surnames. In the zone of the Khevsur center Barisakho, seven villages (800 people) were only carriers of surnames in -uri (-uli), and 202 bearers of the surname Likokeli lived in three smaller villages. On the Black Aragva (Gudamakari Gorge), surnames with -uri accounted for 85% (all data from 1886).
Further south, among the Pshavs, who are more closely related to the Kakhetians than the Khevsurs, isolated by high ridges, the model of surnames with -uli, -uri is less frequent than in Khevsuretia; it covered a third of the Pshavs, like the Mtiuls on the river. White Aragvi. Along the Georgian Military Highway from Dusheti to Kazbegi, surnames in -shvili and even -dze are not uncommon, but even in the lower reaches of the Aragva, surnames in -uli still accounted for 20%. They also spread to the southwest - to the Kura: in the village. Shubati (now in the southern part of the Kaspi region), the 1886 census registered Bekauri, Tsiklauri, Aptsiauri, just like in Black Aragva, i.e. surnamesdirectly indicate where and where the mountaineers migrated from. The return of the highlanders to the valleys from the high-mountain gorges, where they were driven back by their former invasions, began a long time ago. Documents report repeated migrations in the second half of the last century. They were also made gradually, over short distances, but there were also long-distance transitions. R. A. Topchishvili collected considerable material about them in his dissertation, indicating the literature on the issue18. But even without a single document, it is enough to map the distribution of surnames to get a picture of migration in the lower reaches of the Aragva, Iori, Alazaia, and in some places further - up and down the Kura. A story about this whole stream would take dozens of pages, but we have to limit ourselves to the example of two surnames, omitting the names of villages and the number of speakers. The surname Tsiklauri is recorded in 35 villages - from Kazbek along the Aragva and Iori to the south almost to Mtskheta, to the southeast almost to Telavi; surname Chincharauli - in 17 villages - from Shatili (near the borders with Checheno-Ingushetia) south to Dusheti and beyond Tianeti. In Tianetsky and northwestern part of Telavi district. carriers of surnames with the formant -uli, -uri in 1886 constituted from 20 to 30% of the population, in Telavi and beyond they barely reached 2%. Some also settled in Tbilisi. In contrast to lowland Georgia, where the villages are multi-family, the northeast is characterized by an extremely high concentration: sometimes not only entire villages, but also groups of them are inhabited by namesakes. According to the 1886 census in the villages of Gveleti, Datvisi, Oherkhevi, Chirdili, all 73 households with 314 inhabitants bore the surname Arabuli, in the village. Guro, all 220 inhabitants were Gogochuri, in the village. Blo all 192 inhabitants - Gigauri. These are not exceptions. It is not surprising that often the name of the village is identical with the surname of the inhabitants. In the mountains, the mixing of the population is difficult, the influx from outside is weaker there. A similar phenomenon in Upper Megrelia was noted by P. A. Tskhadaia19. But another factor probably acted even more strongly: the pressure of the communal way of life, by virtue of which they settled and moved not by individual families, but by whole groups of them - patronymics. Surnames form huge arrays: Arabuli were found in 20 villages - 1158 people, Chincherauli - in 17 villages - 885 people (1886), etc. Families were extremely large. In the materials of the 1886 census, families of 20-30 people are not uncommon. HighlandersIn the Gudamkar Gorge back in the 20s of our century, families of 30-40 people were preserved20. The process of disintegration of large families proceeded already in the 19th century. - in the census sheets of 1886, there are constant notes: “they live separately for seven years without a society sentence” (in the village of Midelauri, where 49 residents had the surname Midelauri), i.e. the family separated itself arbitrarily; the community refused to legitimize partition for many years. The ratios of the components of surnames are historically variable. So, among the Pshavs over the past centuries, new surnames, arising from the fragmentation of large families, are formed by the formant -shvili, and not -ur or -ul (reported by G. Javakhishvili and R. Topchishvili). By a happy coincidence, the ethnographer of the Academy of Sciences of the GSSR T.Sh. For 100 years, there have been significant changes in the life of the mountaineers - the liquidation of the exploiting classes, the shift of the population from high-mountain gorges to valleys, the disappearance of small high-mountain settlements. But the ratios of the forms of surnames are still close: in Kitokhi and the surrounding areas today the same surnames (Bekauri, Tsiklauri), as a hundred years ago, however, the surnames in -shvili, which were alluvial even 100 years ago, are gone. On the whole, the isolation of surnames is noticeably decreasing everywhere. For comparison, let's consider the ratio of surname bearers in -uli, -uri in the named areas and in adjacent territories (in reduction to the modern administrative division) in relation to the entire population, in%:
That is, visitors from different parts of Georgia are pouring into these areas to the indigenous population. The local population also does not remain motionless - all over Georgia you can find surnames with the formant -uli, -uri. The total number of their carriers is several tens of youthousand, of which approximately 15 thousand - in Tbilisi (1% of the city's residents). The carriers of surnames formed by the formant -eli (Mekhateli, Tsereteli), which has already been discussed, are not very numerous, and there are only a few dozen of these surnames themselves. They are scattered nests in many places in Georgia. These surnames are based on toponyms (Mtatsmindeli from Mtatsminda - “holy mountain” above Tbilisi), ethnonyms (Pshaveli), anthroponym (Barteli) or common nouns. The largest nest of surnames on -spruce is found in the far north of eastern Georgia, in the center of Khevsureti. There, in the midst of a continuous mass of surnames with the formant -uli, the 1886 census recorded 202 people with the surname Likokeli (in the villages of Chana, Kartsaulta, and others, where there was not a single person with a different surname). We find other nests of formant-spruce in the areas of Oni, Mtskheta, Tianeti, Telavi; in Tbilisi, the carriers of surnames in -el make up more than 2% - Tsereteli, Amashukeli, Veshapeli, Gamrekeli and others. For example, the surname Amaglobeli is verbal - participle "elevating", and Gvardtsiteli from tsiteli - "red". Many surnames with this formant were completed with another formant (Gogeliani, Kvaratskhelia, etc.). There are very few surnames in -(n)ti, but they are very often repeated: Zhgenti, Glonti. Their focus is strictly defined territorially - Guria in the south-west of Georgia (the districts of Lanchkhuti, Makharadze, Chokhaturi). But even here they make up about 1%, except for individual villages, such as Aketi in the Lanchkhuti region, where there are especially many Glonti. This formant is of Zan (Laz) language origin, in it -n is a connecting component. The supposed connection of -(n)ti with common Georgian -mt21 does not clarify its origin and initial meaning. The Laz language dominated Colchis in ancient times. Back in the 19th century the holes there were numerous; most of them ended up in Turkey, some of them lived to the north at the beginning of our century - in Imereti and Abkhazia. I. R. Megrelidze cited 23 Laz surnames published in the Laz newspaper Mchita Murtskhuli, published in Sukhumi in 192922, all with the ending -shi. Basically, the Laz merged with their closely related Mingrelians. From their language came the formant -shi, which in Guria formed the surname Tugushi, Khalvashi, Tsulushi,Kutushi, Nakashi, etc. (if the base ended in sonorant consonants p, l, n, m, then -chi sounded instead of -shi). Among Mingrelians, these surnames end in -shia (the surname Janashia). In the Laz language, this formant formed adjectives with the meaning of belonging. Half a century ago, these endings were no longer perceived as a suffix, having completely merged with the base. There are much more of these surnames than with - (n) ti, but the ratio is inverse in terms of the number of carriers. Today they are not uncommon in the Lanchkhut and Makharadze districts. Borrowed surnames from Georgians with -ba (Abkhaz. ba - “child”) are single among Georgians, the only one with the old Adyghe -kva (a rare surname Ingorokva, she is also the pseudonym of the famous writer I. Ingorokva), Armenian with -yan (from -yants). In western Georgia, the forms of naming women were characteristic. In his work “Female family names in the South Caucasian languages and folklore”, I. V. Megrelidze provided valuable, but, alas, very fragmentary information about them23. In the 30s of our century, the old men of Guria still remembered that married women used to be called by their maiden name; when addressing relatives or mentioning them in absentia, they replaced the endings -dze, -shvili, -ia, -ua, etc. with -phe. In the distant past, there were prominent Laz families Zhurdaniphe, Kontiphe, Pochuphe, and others.24. i.e., -phe was once a sign not of gender, but of nobility, with subsequent simplification in -he (Lolukh from the surname Lolua, Katsirihe from Katsarava), and its meaning was erased and even turned into the opposite. The researcher noted that in the 30s of our century, -phe already had a slightly disparaging connotation. Married women were usually called by their husband's surname, using their maiden name in front, that is, the father's name in the genitive case - with the indicator -is: Dolidzis asuli Beridze - "daughter of Dolidze, after her husband Beridze" (asauli or kali - "daughter"). There are striking social and linguistic processes that have so far eluded scientific study. Their significance is clear from broad parallels: the brightest heroine of ancient Russian poetry is called only by her patronymic - Yaroslavna; centuries later, the names of wives after their husbands were recorded in Novgorod - Pavlikha, Ivanikha (this is also known among the southern Slavs). Historically, the position of a woman has changed, and her naming has also changed.
According to the frequency ratio of surname forms in Georgia, 12 territories can be distinguished:
1. Guria. Southwestern Georgia between the Adzharian ASSR, the Black Sea and the lower reaches of the Rioni. Administrative regions: Lanchkhuti, Makharadze, Chokhatauri. The formant -dze prevails (more than half of the inhabitants; 20% - shvili), surnames ending in -ia (more than 12%), -ava (3%) are not uncommon, the only hearth in the world is - (n) ti (Zhgeiti, Gloyati), although they make up only 1%; there is -shi.
2. Megrelia. Northwestern Georgia, between the Abkhaz ASSR, the Black Sea and the lower reaches of the Rioni. Districts: Khobi, Mikha, Tskhakaya, Poti, Zugdidi, Gegechkori, Chkhorotsku, Tsalenjikha. Surnames ending in -ia, -ua absolutely predominate, covering from 50 to 60%; on -ava - 24%, -dze - from 10 to 16%; less often - shvili (4-6%), noticeable -ani (2%).
3. Svaneti. Districts: Mestia and Lentekhi. Surnames in -ani, -iani absolutely prevail - over 80%; there is on -dze (9%), -ia, -ua (up to 5%). 4. Lechkhumi and Lower Racha. South of Svaneti, mainly the Tsageri and Ambrolauri regions. Surnames with the formant -dze prevail (46%), a lot with -ani (38%), there are -shvili (8%), -ia, -ua (3%), -ava, -eli (2% each).
5. Racha. Oni area. The flank of the “vibration zone” of surnames in -dze (48%) and in -shvili (42%), with -eli (6%) and -ani (4%) are not uncommon.
6. Imereti. Other regions of western Georgia from Samtredia to Ordzhonikidze inclusive. Surnames with the formant -jo predominate (over 70%); so-shvili cover about 1/4 of the population; from -ava (to the west) and -ani (to the north) - 1% each.
7. Kartli. The strip south of the South Ossetian Autonomous Region in the middle reaches of the Kura. Regions: Khashuri, Kareli, Gori, Kaspi, Mtskheta. The “vibration zone” of formants -dze (in the west they cover 3/4 of all inhabitants, in the east - 1/10) and -shvili (from 1/4 in the west to 2/3 in the east).
8. Northeast. Regions: Dusheti and Tianeti. In the northern part, inhabited for a long time by Pshavs and Khevsurs, surnames with the formant -uli, -uri predominate; in the southern part they covered 20-30% of the inhabitants; on the contrary, shvili, with a small number of them in the north, amount to 2/3 in the south.
9. Heavy. Kazbegi region, bordering the North Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and the South Ossetian Autonomous Okrug. More than 40% of the surnames are from -shvili, more than 25% - from -uli, -uri; in 1886 a lot with -jo.
10. Tushetiya. Near the borders with the Chechen-Ingush and Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics, the former Omalo district, now the northern part of the Akhmeta district. Absolutely dominated -idze (almost 2/3), the rest -shvili, -uli, -uri.
11. Kakheti. All southeastern Georgia. The districts of Telavi, Sighnaghi, Kvareli, Gurjaani, etc. The surnames so-shvili are almost monopoly: for the most part they exceed 90%, in places interspersed with surnames so-dze (3-4%), -uli, -uri (1-2%) .
12. Tbilisi. As in every capital, features of all parts of Georgia are presented. Surnames in -dze (more than 40%) and -shvili (about 30%) prevail, as well as -ia, -ua (less than 10%), -ani (4%), -uli, -uri, even less often a small number of - nti.
The frequency ratios of surname forms are as follows:
The entire southern strip of Georgia was left out of consideration. In the 17th century it was completely devastated by the shah and sultan hordes. Georgians began to return there [p. 166] after joining Russia, but even at the end of the 19th century. there were few of them. Later they moved there from different parts of Georgia, and their names represent a motley picture, the analysis of which requires too much material, which the author does not yet have. Another disadvantage of the material is the lack of data on the height of the areas. In such a mountainous country as Transcaucasia, vertical zoning plays the same role in any respect as horizontal zoning. In my works, this is shown by the example of toponymy25. Of course, most of what has been said in relation to the spread of surnames refers to the passing past. The former disunity and enmity are finished forever. In present-day Soviet Georgia, Svans, Pshavs, Mingrelians work, study, and rest hand in hand in the workshops of Rustavi and the auditoriums of Tbilisi University, in the mines of Tkibuli and the beaches of Colchis. There are no former borders between them. Today, families are common in which a svai is married to a Kakhetian woman or a Megrelian woman is married to a Khevsur. Their child is growing up as a member of a single Georgian socialist nation. How and from what ethnic communities and ethnographic groups it developed, they tell the surnames that reflect the history of the people and their language.
Vladimir Nikonov "Georgaffia of surnames - ethnohistory of Georgians"
Georgian surnames among all others, it is quite easy to recognize. They differ in their characteristic structure and conspicuous ending. Georgian surnames are formed using two parts. They are root and ending. With a good orientation in this topic, in most of the cases presented, it is possible to say exactly which region of Georgia this or that surname belongs to. Only thirteen types of different endings belonging to Georgian surnames are known.
Georgian surnames - the origin of Georgian surnames
The history of Georgia has several millennia. When there were times of antiquity, the country did not possess common name, but was divided into two parts. Western Georgia was called Colchis, and Eastern Georgia was called Iberia. Iveria was in contact with Iran and Syria, she had little contact with ancient world. In the fifth century AD, Georgia turned into a Christian country. By the thirteenth century, Georgia had become a powerful state in the region, it had reliable trade relations with both the East and Europe. The whole history of Georgia is filled with the struggle for independence. At the same time, the population of Georgia created a unique and high culture.
It is believed that true Georgian surnames end in "dze". Such surnames occur with the help of the genitive case. People whose last name ends in "shvili" often belong to people who do not have quite Kartvelian roots. From the Georgian language, this suffix means "son". If the Georgian surname of a person ends in "ani", then you have a person with a very noble birth. Such surnames by origin are very ancient. Armenians also have such surnames. Only they end in "uni". Georgian surnames that end in "ua" and "ia" are of Mingrelian origin. There are many more family suffixes, but they are rarely used.
Georgian Surnames - List of Georgian Surnames
Still, the most common among Georgian surnames are those that end in “dze” and “shvili”. On almost the entire territory of Georgia, you can find surnames with "dze". Very often they are found in Guria, Adjara and Imereti. Rarely they are found in the eastern part of the country. Surnames ending in "shvili" are predominantly found in Kartli and Kakheti, which are located in the eastern part of Georgia. Translated from Georgian into Russian, these endings mean "born" or "son", respectively. Now, in modern times, it is customary to consider the ending “jo” as belonging to the oldest genealogies. The ending "shvili" is considered to belong to more modern genealogies. Unofficial statistics number about three million people with such surnames.
When a newborn is baptized, he is given a name. The beginning of some part of Georgian surnames begins with this name. Several such examples can be given. These are Matiashvili, and Davitashvili, and Nikoladze, and Georgadze, and Tamaridze. There are many examples. Another part of Georgian surnames takes its origins from Persian and Muslim words. When studying the roots of surnames, small controversial points arise. For example. If you study the roots of the name Japaridze. This surname can come from both the Muslim name Jafar and the Persian dzapar, which means "postman" in this language.
Georgian surnames - endings of Georgian surnames, meaning of Georgian surnames
A special group of surnames includes Georgian surnames that end in "hit", "ate", "ati" and "iti". You have probably heard such Georgian surnames as Rustaveli and Tsereteli. The most common Georgian surnames are Khvarbeti, Dzimiti, Chinati. Another group of Georgian surnames includes surnames that end in "ani". Many examples can also be given. These are Dadiani, and Akhvelediani, and Chikovani. The pedigrees to which these surnames belong begin from the famous rulers of Megrelia. Not so common, but still there are surnames belonging to this group, which end in "uli", "uri", "ava", "aya", "ua" and "iya". Among them are many representatives of star families, such as Beria, Danelia and Okudzhava.
Very rarely there are Georgian surnames that end in "nti". They are of Chan or Svan origin. For example, such surnames as Zhgenti, Glonti. Among such surnames, one can find surnames that contain the name of the profession and the participial prefix "me". Examples: Mdivani. This surname comes from the Persian word nodivan, translated as advice. Mdivani means clerk. The surname Amilakhvari is of interest. It is of Persian origin and is a familiar non-suffixal formation. The Georgian surname Mebuke is translated from Persian as a bugler, and the surname Menabde is a burka maker.
Georgian surnames - Russification of Georgian surnames
When Georgian surnames penetrated into Russian onomastics, they were not distorted, even despite the unusual combination of sounds and their length. But you can meet individual cases of Russification of Georgian surnames. For example, the Georgian surname turned into the surname Orbeli, and the surname Muskhelishvili into the surname Muskheli. Some Georgian surnames contain the suffixes "ev", "ov" and "v" attached to them. There are many examples of such surnames: Sulakadzev, Panchulidzev. During Russification, Georgian surnames are often abbreviated, which end in "shvili". The surname Avalov is formed from the Georgian surname Avalishvili, Andronnikov - Andronikashvili, Sumbatov - Sumbatoshvili, Tsitsianov - Tsitsishvili, Baratov - Baratashvili, Manvelov - Manvelishvili and many other surnames that we used to consider Russian.
It is worth adding the Abkhaz surnames to the Kartvelian surnames that were considered. The Abkhazian language belongs to the North Caucasian group. In modern times, fifteen percent of the population of all of Abkhazia are Abkhazians. This is in most cases due to the fact that more Abkhazians have Megrelian or Georgian surnames. There are also specific Abkhaz surnames, the final element of which is “ba”. This is Eshba, and Lakoba, and Agzhba.
Before the revolution, due to circumstances, Ossetian surnames in South Ossetia, with rare exceptions, were written with Georgian endings (“-shvili”, “-dze”, “-uri” (*), etc.), moreover, they were often deformed beyond recognition . This is confirmed by many historical documents, as well as inscriptions on gravestones. For employees of the Georgian diocese, such distortions of Ossetian surnames were in the order of things.
Here is what the historian G. Togoshvili writes in the book "Georgian-Ossetian Relations in the 15th-18th centuries:" On the territory of Georgia, especially in the regions where the plain prevailed, the Christian religion of Ossetians was one of the reasons for their substantiation on these lands. In the books of salaries, the fact is often emphasized that this or that Ossetian is a “new Christian”, “naosari” (coming from Ossetians) or “oskhopila” (former Ossetian). In all three cases, this means belonging to Christian faith the Ossetian to whom these concepts refer. This also means that the residence of such an Ossetian among the Christian Georgian population is natural and even very desirable, because if he is a Christian, then he is no longer an Ossetian in the full sense of the word, he is already considered a Georgian (Published by Sabchota Sakartvelo, Tbilisi, 1969, p. 205).
The clerical officials of Georgia also contributed to the transformation of Ossetian surnames into Georgian ones, in order to speed up the process of assimilation of Ossetians. To this should be added the lack of the necessary literacy of some deacons and registrar officials in remote Ossetian villages, who simply did not know how to adequately write this or that Ossetian surname in Georgian, since the phonetic laws of these languages differ significantly from each other. And another important reason for the transformation of Ossetian surnames is the desire of a certain part of the Ossetians, who ended up among Georgians as a result of migration processes, to be recorded under Georgian surnames. Perhaps they thought that the Georgian sound of their surnames would give them certain privileges, it would be more honorable. This is tantamount to how the Georgians themselves thought Russian sound their surnames (Tsitsianov, Tseretelev, Andronnikov, Mardzhanov, etc.) are more honorable.
There is evidence that as a result tragic events In the early 1990s in South Ossetia, some of the Ossetians who remained in Georgia were also forced to change their surnames. All this has led to the fact that many Ossetian surnames today are so distorted in the Georgian nomenclature that it is difficult to establish their authenticity. The surname of the Driaevs especially got it - more than half of them were recorded as "Meladze" (Georgian "mela" - "fox", that is, in translation into Russian, the surname means "Lisitsyn"). (See also "Okroperidze" and others).
Georgian surnames have a characteristic structure and are easily recognizable due to their final elements. In most cases, the etymology is unclear. The most common elements are "-dze" and "-shvili". The first of them originally meant "born", the second - "son". At present, however, the semantic differences between them have disappeared, and both of them play the role of patronymic suffixes. There is also a chronological difference between them: "dze" is found in more ancient surnames, "-shvili" - in more modern ones. In general, it can be said that surnames on “-dze” and “-shvili” are not formed in parallel from the same stems.
Some of the surnames are formed from baptismal names, i.e. given at birth: Nikoladze, Tamaridze, Georgadze, Davitashvili, Matiashvili, Ninoshvili, etc. There are surnames formed from Muslim names various origins: Japaridze (“jafar”, unless this surname is formed from the Persian dzapar - “postman”), Narimanidze and others. Most of the surnames (especially on “-dze”) are formed from other less clear bases: Vachnadze, Kavtaradze, Chkheidze, Enukidze, Ordzhonikidze, Chavchavadze, Svanidze (from “Svan”), Lominadze (lomi- “lion”), Gaprindashvili, Khananashvili Kalandarishvili (from Persian kalantar - “the first person in the city”), Dzhugashvili (“dzug” - “flock” , “flock” / Ossetian / G. Kolodaev, Ch. Bagaev “Who are you, Stalin?”, 1995, p.5) In addition to these two main types (patronymic in origin), there are other, less common, but so but very fully represented types of surnames, indicating the place or family from which their carrier comes. One of these types are surnames with "-eli" (rarely "-ali"): Rustaveli, Tsereteli, etc. A number of surnames end in "-eti". "-ati", "-iti": Dzimiti, Oseti, Khvarbeti, Chinati, etc.
Another type is made up of surnames in “-ani”: Dadiani (rulers of Megrelia), Akhvelediani, Chikovani, etc. Megrelian surnames are characterized by specific endings “-iya”, “-aya”, “-ua”, “-ava”, “-uri "("-uli"): Beria, Kvirkelia, Danelia, Zhordania, Gulia, Shengelaya, Dondua, Sturua, Khuchua, Okudzhava, Lezhava, Eliava, Tsiklauri, Sulakauri.
Surnames starting with "-nti", quite rare, are of Svan or Chan origin: Glonti, Zhgenti. Among them, a group of profession names with the participial prefix “me-” (“m-”) stands out: Mdivani
- "clerk" (from the Persian "divan" - "advice"); Mebuke - "bugler" ("buki" - "horn"); Menabde - "maker of buroks" ("nabadi" - "burka"). Surname "Amilakhvari" - "stable", Persian
origin, is also a non-suffixal formation.
Penetrating into Russian onomastics, Georgian surnames usually did not undergo distortions, despite their length and unusual combinations sounds. However, individual cases of their "Russification" still occur: Orbeliani - Orbeli; Shengelaya (Shengelia) - Shengeli; Muskhelishvili - Muskheli; Bagrationi - Bagration; Iashvili - Yashvili; Eristavi (“literally “head of the people”) - Eristovs. The suffixes “-ov”, “-ev”, “-v” were attached to some Georgian surnames: Panchulidzev, Sulakadzev, In surnames “-shvili” is often abbreviated during Russification: Avalishvili - Avalov, Andronikashvili - Andronnikov, Javakhishvili - Javakhov, Sumbatoshvili - Sumbatov, Tsitsishvili - Tsitsianov, Manvelishvili - Manvelov, Shalikoshvili - Shalikov, Baratashvili - Baratov.
Abkhaz surnames should be added to the considered Kartvelian surnames. Abkhaz language belongs to the North Caucasian group. Currently, Abkhazians make up only about 15% of the population of Abkhazia. This is probably due to the fact that, in addition to everything, many Abkhazians wear Georgian or Megrelian surnames. However, there are also specifically Abkhaz surnames with the final element "-ba": Lakoba, Eshba, Agzhba.
