The component “boat” in the geographical names of Karelia: motives for denomination

The article considers toponyms of Karelia, which contain stems with the meaning “boat”. The author reveals a set of toponymie stems of Karelian, Russian and substrate origin, analyses them from the semantic and motivational perspective, identifies geographic objects whose names reflect information about water vehicles, interprets the toponymic areas of the revealed denomination models, and identifies possible motives for denomination. During the analysis, the author widely uses the field research card files of names of the Institute of Language, Literature and History (Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences), Toponymy of Karelia geographic information system (GIS), the database of the Ural University Toponymic Expedition (Ural Federal University, Ekaterinburg), mapping sources, and a number of dialectal dictionaries. The study demonstrates the areal confinement of certain toponymic stems. The Finnic model Vene(h)- is widely represented in the northern and central Karelia, and its absence in the south probably should be explained by the landscape features and the pattern of settlement along the river banks. The area of the Лодей- toponymic model of Russian origin has been revealed in Zaonezhye, which may be due to the specific type of boat brought here by the Novgoro-dians. Data from Toponymy of Karelia GIS, cartographic sources and the informants comments enable to determine the necessity of marking waterways or their important parts as a key factor for using lexemes meaning “boat” in the geographical names of Karelia.