Читать книгу The Origin of the Planet’s Toponyms - Alexander Tokiy - Страница 19

Let us imagine that our ancient ancestors, traveling, came to a deep river. The leader wanted to wade through it, poked a stick into the water, but the stick did not rest anywhere. There is no stop, there is no limit. There is no “do” – deep down to it. He looked back at his fellow tribesmen, threw up his hands and said: Do no [dɔnɔ]. May be he spoked differently, but the combination of the protoroots (ancient prepositions) “do” and “no” formed a complex protoroot “dono”, which explains that there is no limit (dnois bottom). It is deep. Now the simplified word “dno” has the opposite meaning: a certain surface, a rest under water. However, this meaning became “dno” when deep rivers seemed to be an abyss bezdna (without a bottom). It is interesting to trace the way of protoroot from the understanding of “glubina” (depth) to the name Abadonna, personifying the diabolical power, the image of which Mikhail Bulgakov borrowed from ancient religions, for example, the Hebrew ǍḇaddōN – death, decomposition, annihilation, cessation of being. Probably, it seemed like hell for our ancestors when the waters of the Don River absorbed an unlucky tribesman and he could not get out of this abyss – dno. Understanding the “glubina” (depth) created not only the terrible word “ad” (hell) – “a-ba-ad-do-no”, but also popular now “Armageddon”, the meaning of which is the flooding of the earth – “ar” – with water: the same world flood that happened, happens and will happen in the future. Someday compatriots will learn to understand our great language and they will discover the innermost secrets lying on the surface.