Die Hydronymie des Vardarsystems als Geschichtsquelle by I. DuridanovReview by: H. LeemingThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Jul., 1978), pp. 431-432Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4207679 .

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Reviews

Duridanov, I. Die Hydronymie des Vardarsystems als Geschichtsquelle. Slavis- tische Forschungen, herausgegeben von R. Olesch, Band I7. Bohlau Verlag, Cologne and Vienna, I975. 417 pp. Bibliography. Map. Index. DM 68.

RISING south of Gostivar the Vardar river first flows north by Tetovo, then turns south at the Sar Planina mountain barrier to follow a course south by east through Skopje and Veles, emerging into the sea near Salonika. Most of the rivers of Macedonia flow into the Vardar except for those which feed Lakes Ohrid and Prespa. With the exception of some fifty Serbian names for tributaries in the upper course of the Lepenec and Pcinja and about thirty Greek tributaries of the lower Vardar, Duridanov's 754 items come from Macedonia, so that one could regard his work as a study of the Macedonian hydronymic system.

The author's aim is to consider this material from a historical stand- point, concentrating on the linguistic interpretation, offering etymological explanations of the more difficult names and seeking to identify their origin. Such a study, he believes, may help to clarify ancient ethnic and linguistic relationships in the area and throw light on migration and settlement both in the pre-Slavonic and Slavonic periods.

The work falls into two main parts, the first being a dictionary of names arranged geographically in nine sections covering the upper and lower Vardar and seven main tributaries. Each separate item is numbered so that it may be located on the accompanying map. Information given includes length of tributary, source, direction of flow, variants of the name, early documentation where available and discussion of the etymo- logy. This is the main body of the book, occupying about 250 out of 360 pages of expository text.

The second section is devoted to an onomastic analysis of the material. Topics covered here are: alterations of pre-Slavonic names; form and structure of pre-Slavonic names; formation of the Greek, Latin, Albanian and Turkish names; formation and history of the Slavonic names; obscure names. A final chapter considers the significance of the names for linguistic history and as evidence for migration and settlement. The author adds an extensive bibliography and a number of indexes, firstly, of recorded hydronyms in the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets, and secondly, of reconstructions under four headings: Indo-European, pre-Slavonic, Common Slavonic or Old Bulgarian, particular languages.

The book, printed by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, is well conceived and produced. The bibliography is exhaustive, the indexes - the linguist's necessary key to the material - are most helpful. Three omissions were noted. These were Slowenia, a most unlikely Polish place- name, and the reconstructions *Slo5vne and *SloveYnja (p. 208). As the derivation of Sloeltica from *Slovindtica which they are meant to support

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432 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

seems rather dubious, perhaps little is lost by their omission. While in general agreement with the proposition that onomastics, like other branches of lexicology, has much to offer the historian, one feels a nagging doubt as to the use as evidence for the events of the distant past of local names with a poorly documented history. However, it is a pleasure to handle such a book in which sound and careful scholarship is matched by technical excellence. London H. LEEMING

Isacenko, A. V. Opera Selecta. Forum Slavicum, 45. Fink Verlag, Munich, 1976. 440 pp. DM 98.

IT is a very great pleasure to have a volume with selected articles by one of the most outstanding Slavists now alive - a scholar whose fertile brain has ranged widely and dug deeply for many years. Professor Isacenko has written some 2oo articles to date, and the thirty-two in the present volume have been selected by the author just from those written in Russian, French, German or English between 1935 and 1970 - a cut-off date which unfortunately excludes much important work, e.g. the morphophonological interpretation of [s,:] and [z,:] (I971) and the revision of Havlik's law (1972). However, Professor Birnbaum, who contributes an admirable brief review of the contents as an introduction, suggests that a further volume - or two - are in the offing.

The present selection gives some idea of the scope of Isacenko's interests: there are studies, both synchronic and diachronic, on phonetics, morpho- phonology, morphology, aspect, syntax, lexicology, and textology; particular emphasis is on Russian, but Slovak and other Slavonic and non-Slavonic languages are also used. Isa&nko's concern with teaching requirements comes out in his reiterated pleas for unified and clear terminology and in his interest in contrastive language descriptions. Overall views of general trends are backed up by precise detailed work, for example, the analysis of eto emu mne kupit' (p. 36I) or the translation of Old Russian utro (p. 409), accompanied by devastating comments on less accurate scholars. Frequently during his career he has identified neglected areas or popular misconceptions and often sketched an exemplary solution which has proved a profitable starting point for others' investiga- tions, for instance, his reassessment in I968 of the importance of Lomono- sov's theory of three styles or his criticisms in I966 of the 'myth' of free word order in Russian. Not all his complaints have been properly answered: linguistic terminology, though the object of an international commission which has now published a polyglot glossary, is not yet stable, and his proposed division of 'Old Russian' is not generally accepted. Isa6enko himself has sometimes incorporated in his books the conclusions reached in certain of these articles, but some of his studies have un- doubtedly not had the attention they deserve, and it will be a great

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