VENE ÕIGEUSU EESNIMED VADJA, ISURI JA SETO KEELES; pp. 167–186

Russian Orthodox given names in Votic, Ingrian and Seto Votes, Ingrians and Setos, all Finnic people, have for centuries been orthodox Christians. With accepting Christianity, a new language stratum appeared in their languages: canonical forenames. As the pronunciation of canonical forenames has been difficult for Finnic peoples, the names have been adapted with quite systematic changes. The phonetical and morphological adaptations are rich in variation, but at the same time are quite regular within a particular language. The comparison of the adaptation of orthodox canonical names into Votic, Ingrian and Seto reveals one of the common targets: the attuning of the names to the languages’ own sound system and derivational system. The common means of name adaptation are placing the primary stress onto the first syllable of the name, avoiding foreign sounds and sounds in inconvenient positions, and avoiding initial consonant clusters. However, these languages differ in the ways they have adapted the canonical names, e.g. the f-initial names have been adapted as h-initial in Seto, predominantly v-initial in Ingrian, and have been preserved in many cases as f-initial in Votic. Some of the differences appearing in name adaptation implicitly follow the characteristics of the particular language. For instance, the languages under investigation differ with regard to vowel harmony: Votic and Seto represent the vowel harmony type of ä-, ü- and õ-harmony with the neutral vowel i, while in Ingrian there is ä-, ü- and ö-harmony and the neutral vowels e ja i. These differences are also reflected in the adapted names. In addition to sound changes, there are also characteristic developments in name derivatives. In all three languages the diminutive suffix *-oi, -e̮i is a productive affix, which appears with apocope in Votic, Lower Luga Ingrian and Seto; in Soikkola Ingrian, however, it appears as -oi with a back vowel derivational base and -öi with a front vowel derivational base. Among the languages under investigation, characteristic only to Seto is the usage of the suffix ‑ts/-ds, and the developments of the Russian suffix -ška, which is compounded to a monosyllable derivational base as -śka, and to a disyllabic derivational base as -sk. The knowledge of the main principles of Russian forename adaptation in Votic, Ingrian and Seto broadens the alternative interpretations both in family name research (e.g. Seto Ivask, Karask) and place name research (e.g. Ingrian Voloitsa).