Bichen Kyrgyzovna Ondar and her contribution to the study of the toponymy of Tuva
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25178/nit.2018.3.1Keywords:
Bichen Kyrgyzovna Ondar; Tuva; toponymy of Tuva; toponymy; Tuvan language; biographyAbstract
This article analyses the general contribution philologist and compiler of toponymical dictionaries of Tuva Bichen Kyrgyzovna Ondar (1948 – 2013) made to the study of the region’s toponymy.
We outline the stages of the scholar’s biography and provide fragments of her personal recollections that she had shared with the author of this article. She graduated from school with honors, and later from philological faculty of Kyzyl State Pedagogical Institute. She then entered graduate school at Kazan state University. In 1993 she successfully defended PhD thesis “Hydronymy of Tuva” at the Institute of linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences under the supervision of the famous Turkologist I. V. Kormushin.
Bichen Kyrgyzovna Ondar wrote textbooks and compiled teaching aids on the theory and methods of teaching Russian language for students and school teachers in Tuva.
Her entire research career was devoted to the study of Tuvan place names. She had travelled all parts of the region since 1980s, with her husband helping her gather the materials. Among her main works is “A Toponymical Dictionary of Tuva” (1st edition, 2004 and 2nd edition, 2007), which contains 3200 toponymical entries from all around the region. The author attempted to trace the etymology of every place name, provide complete information about geographical objects, and explained naming motivation, which she recorded from the words of informants, always referring to the works of scholars.
In her later works, B.K. Ondar raised the issues of place names in general, proposing her own solutions, analyzed the sources of the Tuvan place names - ancient Turkic, Chinese-Mongolian, Russian and others. A special place among stratigraphy of Tuvan place names belongs to Russian as the newest layer in the toponymic system.
After the untimely death of B. K. Ondar, this area of Tuvan toponymical studies has weakened. Scholars and early career researchers have limited their scope only to certain problems of toponymy. The author of this article hopes that this area will see a new impetus for development.
References
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Nadezhda D. Suvandii, Tuvan State University
Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor, Department of Tuvan Philology and General Linguistics, Tuvan State University.
Postal address: Office 118, 5 Studencheskii Kvartal St., 667004, Kyzyl, Republic of Tuva, Russian Federation.
Tel.: +7 (394-22) 5-22-50.
E-mail: suvandiin@mail.ru
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