Ethnonymics as a Historical and Philological Discipline: General and Specific Solutions, Chance and Pattern

This article addresses key methodological issues in the study of ethnonymy, focusing on new hypotheses on the origins of Finno-Ugric ethnonyms. The singular nature of ethnonyms, and the apparent lack of opportunity for statistical validation of etymologies — as is more common in toponymy — has led, on the one hand, to a proliferation of speculative and arbitrary explanations, and on the other, to a reliance on the availability of historically verifiable data to support or reject such proposals. Despite widespread acknowledgement of this challenge, the article argues that ethnonymic analysis can function as a methodologically distinct branch of historical and philological research. It demonstrates that conclusions in this field can be systematically verified, provided four key conditions are met. These are as follows: 1) Linguistic accuracy in the proposed etymology, with close attention to both phonological and semantic detail, and to historical plausibility, including the need to identify the etymon as precisely as possible within a specific source language, rather than settling for generalized solutions. 2) Consideration of ethnonymic “universals” and the support of etymological proposals through typological analogies — while recognizing that such parallels are always shaped by specific ethnohistorical circumstances. 3) Awareness of the distinctive naming conventions present in the ethnonymic tradition under study, which themselves reflect particular historical conditions. 4) An understanding that both the application of universals and the functioning of naming traditions are context-dependent, and that any proposed etymology must either align with or help to revise the reconstructed ethnohistorical setting in which the ethnonym likely emerged. The article illustrates this approach through examples from Balto-Finnic, Sámi, Mordvin, Mari-Meryan, Permic, and Ugric ethnonymy. In comparative historical and typological terms, it also draws on ethnonymic material from Samoyedic, Siberian, European, and Amerindian languages.