Semantic portrait of water-sprites in the north Russian dialects

The article deals with the analysis of the inner form of the names of the water-sprites based on the dialect vocabulary of the North Russian dialect. There are formulated the four lexical and semantic groups motivated by the semes: 1) ‘water' or ‘water reservoir'; 2) ‘devil'; 3) relating to house sprite and wood spirit; 4) ‘external characteristics'. The result of the research is the semantic portrait of the water-sprite composed on the basis of the collected semes.