Ethnonymic and toponimic names of the North-West Caucasus in historical sources: on example of portal an (nautical map) of Pietro Veskonte, 1318

The first map of the Black Sea that adequately reflected the outlines of its shores, was the one established by Genoese Pietro Veskonte in 1311-1318. It contained a number of names of settlements and harbors, which were the main points of the Genoese-Caucasian trade. Instead of the single "country" - Zikhia, the largest ethno-territorial union of the North-West Caucasus during that period, Veskonte pointed two Zikhias -Black Zikhia and White Zikhia. The colour symbolism of the territorial structure of the one space was based on the nature of the relationship with supreme authority of the khan of the Golden Horde. Beside that main criterion there was the criterion of political order: areas under the princes’ ruling were considered as white ones, and mountain communities administrating in democratic ways - as black areas. The author proposes a new etymology of the toponym “Anapa”, which had been used for the first time in 1479 by Ottoman historian Kemalpashazade. Anapa, presumably, was a Turkish distortion of the Italian name “Mapa”. That latter form was used in numerous Italian sources of the XIV-XV centuries and quite probably related to the Greek primal word - “emporia” or “Emporion” ("market square", "commercial city") through the Latin (Italic) form “Maparium”, which was occasionally used as the full name of Mapa. During the XVI-XVIII centuries Circassians learned the Ottoman form of the toponym and it began to be perceived as the typical for Circassian language compound word due to the full compliance of its morphemic structure to the word formation rules of Circassian language.