On Fig Names in Russian

The paper analyses the names of Ficus carica L. in diachronic aspect in the Russian language. As many other imported plants, in the 11th — 18th cc. common fig as the whole tree and its fruit had plenty of names of various origin. The earliest records of the plant names — смокы (smoky) and смоковьница (smokovnitsa) go back to the one of the oldest dated East Slavic book Ostromir Gospels (1056–1057). These words and their cognates were highly used in written texts up to the 17th century, when many others penetrated the Russian language: вавцына (vavtsyna), винное дерево (vinnoe tree), винная ягода (vinnaia berry), еик (eik), олинфа (olinfa), сика (sika),фига (figa), фиговое дерево (figovoye tree). The word инжиръ (inzhir), which is common nowadays, appeared late in the 18th century only, and later replaced almost all synonyms but smokva and figa, rarely used and contextually determined.

We presume that the choice of a plant name was partly caused by the tradition formed in specific genres as well as the topic of the literary works. The analysis is illustrated by citations from the PhytoLex database, which is the result of two projects: “Russian phytonyms in diachronic aspect (11th — 17th c.)” at the Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences and “Plants and people in the Russian Empire of the 18th century: knowledge and practice distribution among social classes” at the European University at St. Petersburg.