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ONOMÀSTICA 6 (2020): 125-137 | RECEPCIÓ 27.10.2019 | ACCEPTACIÓ 15.7.2020

Toponyms of selected communes with minority languages in north-eastern (legal regulations and practice) Urszula Bijak & Barbara Czopek-Kopciuch (†) Institute of , Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraków, Poland [email protected]

Abstract: The aim of this article is to present the current legal regulations concerning the languages of national and ethnic minorities in Poland and geographical in ethnically mixed areas. The research covered the area of the Podlasie Voivodship in the north-eastern part of Poland, especially two communes: Orla, inhabited by the Belarusian minority, and Puńsk with the Lithuanian minority. The authors briefly describe the multilingual toponymic landscape of Podlasie region and focus on problems with the introduction of auxiliary settlement names in minority languages and with the current standardization of names of physiographic objects in these two selected communes. Keywords: standardization, geographical names, supplementary names in minority languages, Podlaskie Voivodship, Orla and Puńsk communes.

Topònims de municipalitats seleccionades amb llengües minoritàries al nord-est de Polònia (regulació legal i aspectes pràctics) Resum: L’objectiu d’aquest article és presentar la normativa legal vigent sobre les llengües de les minories nacionals i ètniques a Polònia i els noms geogràfics de les zones ètnicament mixtes. La investigació va abastar l’àrea del voivodat de Podlasie a la part nord-est de Polònia, i especialment dues municipalitats: Orla, habitada per la minoria bielorussa, i Puńsk, amb la minoria lituana. Les autores descriuen breument el paisatge toponímic multilingüe de la regió de Podlasie i se centren en problemes amb la introducció de noms d’assentaments auxiliars en llengües minoritàries i amb la normalització actual dels noms d’elements fisiogràfics en aquestes dues comunes seleccionades. Paraules clau: normalització, noms geogràfics, noms suplementaris en llengües minoritàries, voivodat de Podlaskie, municipalitats d’Orla i Puńsk.

131 Urszula Bijak & Barbara Czopek-Kopciuch (†) 1. Minorities in Poland. General information

Poland is a country characterized by considerable ethnic, cultural, and linguistic homogeneity. Yet, in the Polish census of 2011 (GUS 2015, 29), 96.2% of the country’s inhabitants declared themselves to be of Polish nationality and ethnicity, while only 3.8% declared themselves as having another national or ethnic status. Before the Second World War, national minorities had constituted more than 30% of Poland’s population, but the country’s ethnic structure was to be greatly influenced by the conflict. The main factors were the mass extermination of , mass relocations and the displacement of population, migration, and the great territorial shift experienced by Poland’s borders in 1945. Today, the most numerous national minorities in Poland are Germans, , and , followed by the other smaller national minorities of Lithuanians, Russians, Slovaks, Jews, Armenians, and Czechs, and the ethnic minorities of the Karaims, Lemkos, Romani and Tatars, and the regional linguistic minority of the Kashubians. Some of these minorities (Jews, Armenians, Russians, Romani and Czechs) find themselves dispersed throughout the country, whereas others inhabit compact territories along the state borders.

2. Legal regulations concerning minorities

Polish legislation guarantees national and ethnic minorities the right to preserve and develop their languages, preserve their customs and traditions, develop their culture, establish their own educational institutions, and to freely conduct religious observances. Moreover, the legislation grants election privileges to the electoral committees of minority organizations and it prohibits discrimination. The aforementioned national and ethnic minorities may be granted the right to use their languages locally as “supporting languages” for communication. Yet, in accordance with Article 27 of Poland’s Constitution, Polish is the country’s only official language. Nevertheless, mutual relations between Polish and other languages do not seem to generate any conflicts, although they do give rise to some issues of

132 Toponyms of selected communes with minority languages in north-eastern Poland identity. Such issues are regulated by laws and other legal acts, including the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, the Electoral Law, the Law on the Education System, the Law on Broadcasting, the Law on the Polish Language, the Criminal Code, the Law on Personal Data Protection, the Law on Ethnic and National Minorities and Regional Language. The Law on Ethnic and National Minorities and Regional Language permits a minority or regional language to be used in selected communes as a “supporting language” in dealings with commune authorities and in judicial proceedings in a court of first instance. It also states that alongside Polish geographical names, traditional names in the minority or regional language may be used as supplementary names for localities, physiographical objects and streets. A supplementary can be established by a motion brought before a commune council, provided the minority constitutes not less than 20% of the commune’s total population or – in those cases where the minority does not reach 20% – on the condition that the establishment of a supplementary name has the support of more than half the commune’s inhabitants as expressed in a public consultation. The same regulations apply to the names of physiographical objects and streets. The motions brought before the commune councils need to count on the positive assessment of the Commission on Names of Localities and Physiographical Objects. The Law states that supplementary names should be placed after the corresponding name in Polish and that they cannot be used independently. Today, the Register of Communes where supplementary names in minority languages or in a regional language are used includes a total of 60 communes. Since 2006, supplementary names in German, Kashubian, Lithuanian, Lemko, and Belarusian have been accepted, in accordance with the procedure outlined above, for more than 1,200 localities (see Map 1).

133 Urszula Bijak & Barbara Czopek-Kopciuch (†)

Map 1. Communes with supplementary names (as mapped by Paweł Swoboda)

3. Podlaskie Voivodship as a borderland region

In this paper, we discuss the aforementioned issues drawing on two examples of communes in the region of Podlaskie Voivodship: the commune of Orla (inhabited by the Belarusian minority, which constitutes almost 69% of the commune’s population) and the commune of Puńsk (inhabited by Lithuanians, who constitute almost 76% of the total population). The north-eastern territories of Poland, i.e. present-day Podlaskie Voivodship (the historical area around the towns of Białystok and Suwałki), are a borderland region. In the 10th and 11th centuries, the area was first inhabited by a population of Baltic, Polish and Ruthenian origin, becoming a melting pot of languages (Baltic and West and East Slavic),

134 Toponyms of selected communes with minority languages in north-eastern Poland cultures, and religions (Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox Church). As the history of the region is very complex, and we do not have space here to do it justice, we focus instead on providing an outline of the area’s linguistic landscape. The dialects of four languages are used here: Polish, Belarusian, Lithuanian, and Russian. Polish dialects dominate in the area surrounding the town of Suwałki, Belarusian dialects are to be found in the area to the north-east of the town of Białystok, Lithuanian dialects are clustered in the north-eastern part of the Suwałki region (specifically, in the communes of Puńsk, , Szypliszki, and Berżniki), and Russian dialects spoken by Orthodox Old Believers (who settled here in the 17th century) are to be heard near the towns of Suwałki, Sejny, and Augustów. All these dialects are internally heterogeneous and display many transitional features, e.g. mixed Polish-Belarusian qualities. The communities typically use both a primary language (the one spoken at home), which is mainly a dialect, and the Polish language (as the language of prestige). Processes of language integration are also present (Barszczewska, Timoszuk, 2016, 19–28).

3.1. Belarusian and Lithuanian minorities

According to the 2011 Polish census, the Belarusian minority traditionally inhabits the south-eastern part of the Podlaskie Voivodship. Belarusians constitute 87% of the population of eight communes (Bielsk Podlaski, Czyże, Dubicze Cerkiewne, Hajnówka, Kleszczele, Narew, Narewka and Orla). In four of these communes (Czyże, Hajnówka, Narewka and Orla), Belarusian has been introduced as a “supporting language” but supplementary names in Belarusian have only been adopted in one commune, that of Orla. Lithuanians are a national minority traditionally living in the northern part of the Podlaskie Voivodship (66% of inhabitants declaring themselves to be of Lithuanian nationality live there). The minority essentially live in the following three communes: Puńsk, Sejny and Szypliszki. In Puńsk, Lithuanian has been introduced as a “supporting language”. In 2008, the same commune applied for the establishment of 30 supplementary names in the minority language (the commune as a whole is made up of 33 localities/hamlets) (see GUS 2015 and Map 2).

135 Urszula Bijak & Barbara Czopek-Kopciuch (†)

Map 2. Belarusian and Lithuanian minorities (as mapped by Paweł Swoboda)

4. Toponyms of Podlasie region and the adaptation processes The of the borderland in question is the result of complex political conditions. The Belarusian-Polish-Lithuanian melting pot is reflected at the linguistic level: the mutual influences in these languages are evident in the phonetics, word formation and lexical roots of the place names. The mutual influences are to be seen in the historical forms of the names; however, these often depended on the language in which a particular document or legal act was written. Old names bearing

136 Toponyms of selected communes with minority languages in north-eastern Poland Belarusian features were adapted to Polish phonetics and to Polish rules of spelling. More often than not, these adaptations were made by people with little or no knowledge of the and dialects and so they matched the names with the most similar words in their own mother tongue. This led to numerous corruptions of the original names, whose correct forms were preserved only in dialects and, on occasions, in the records of historical documents. For example, the Hrud from hrud (meaning ‘hillock in a muddy meadow’, in Polish grąd) was on numerous occasions adapted as Gród (the common gród meaning a castle, fortress, town). Another example is the transformation of what was originally a Belarusian name Sawiny Hrud (coming from the Sawa, in Belarusian Sawielij) into Sowin Gród, given that the form Sawiny resembled the Polish or common noun sowa (‘owl’). Similarly, the Belarusian name Hanczary (corresponding to the Garncary) was adapted as Gończary, today Gonczary (Kondratiuk 1974, 273–274). The Belarusian sound h was Polonised as g: thus, Kruhłe was replaced with Krugłe or Krągłe whereas Kruhło was rendered as Krugło. These villages are located close to each other and the historical records show that the original form of the name was Kruhłe. Many similar examples could be given. These linguistic corruptions were pointed out by members of local organizations, e.g. the Białystok Historical Society. Aware of the importance of the issue, the Commission on Names of Localities and Physiographical Objects took steps to clarify the toponymy in the Białystok region. A commission-appointed expert selected 62 names that needed to be restored to their original historical form. This list was then sent to the appropriate commune authorities, who largely failed to respond. Only the name Bobkow Gród (in the commune of Gródek) was restored to Bobkowy Hrud in 2009 and, more recently, the name Krągłe was changed back to Kruhłe (in the commune of Dubicze Cerkiewne). The reasons for this lack of interest in restoring the original names are numerous, but one is undoubtedly the expense involved in having to make changes to ID cards and amendments to real estate documents.

137 Urszula Bijak & Barbara Czopek-Kopciuch (†) 4.1. Supplementary names in the commune of Orla

Yet, at the same time, an increasing awareness of national identity has been recorded in Polish society. This is evident, for example, from the fact that, in 2011, the commune of Orla tabled a motion to establish supplementary names for 27 localities/hamlets. What should be stressed here is the fact that in this case the motion concerned all the localities within the commune’s territory. Official names, most of them East Slavic in origin, display some degree of adaptation to the Polish language, while the supplementary names in Belarusian are spelt using the Cyrillic alphabet, e.g. Spiczki/Cпічкі and Topczykały/Топчыкалы (RG).

4.2. Supplementary names in the commune of Puńsk

A motion to introduce supplementary names in Lithuanian was brought before the commune of Puńsk as early as 2008 and concerned the names of 30 villages. Most of these oikonyms are of Lithuanian origin and had been adapted to Polish in the past. Indeed, the Polish phonetic influence is visible in the following names: (in Lithuanian Kampuočiai) — the Lithuanian -a- was replaced with -o- and -uočiai was adapted into -ocie; (in Lithuanian Ožkiniai from à (ožkà) ‘goat’) — here the Lithuanian -žk- was adapted as -szk- in accordance with Polish pronunciation; (in Lithuanian Skarkiškiai) — the Lithuanian suffixiškiai - was adapted as -iszki. Polonization also affected other Lithuanian names, including , , , which contain the Lithuanian root á (káimas) ‘village’ and that, today, end with - kiemie. Oikonyms in the area may have been created by adding a Polish suffixsk - to a Lithuanian root, e.g. Puńsk comes from the Lithuanian common noun pūnė ‘cowshed or pigsty’ (see NMPol). The supplementary names established in the commune of Puńsk have forms that continue to conform with Lithuanian, e.g. / Vidugirių Būda, Puńsk/Punskas, /Sankūrai and Wojtokiemie/ Vaitakiemis (RG, Biolik 1998, 427–452).

138 Toponyms of selected communes with minority languages in north-eastern Poland 4.3. Problems with supplementary names

The introduction of supplementary names in Belarusian and Lithuanian generally went ahead without any difficulties, although some instances of protest were encountered. The supplementary names, included on signs on entering a built-up area, directional signs and signposts, have on occasion been painted over. This has happened for example in several localities in the commune of Puńsk: in Buraki, Oszkinie, Puńsk, , , Wojtokiemie, and in the commune of Orla: in Reduty, Topczykały.

4.4. Standardization of names of uninhabited geographical places/features

Unlike the bilingual names of localities, local communities do not seem to believe it necessary to strive for the introduction of bilingual names of uninhabited geographical features. Today, work on the standardization and codification of the names of physiographical objects in Poland is in progress. Earlier, at the beginning of this century, hydronyms were standardized. In both cases, these names are taken from present-day maps at the scale of 1:10 000 and – to a lesser extent – from field surveys. The aim of standardization is not a radical overhaul of geographical names. The words of Professor Kazimierz Rymut, who for many years was the chair of the Polish Commission on Names of Localities and Physiographical Objects, are apt here: “In principle, the point is that the influence of administrative and political factors is to be limited and the names should be given the possibility to live their own life” (Rymut 1999, 259–260; Rzetelska-Feleszko 2005). For the Commission it is essential that a name (even genetically a non-Polish one) “unambiguously identifies a single object, has a Polish phonetic composition (Polish letters), does not display any non-standard dialectal features and inflects in accordance with ” (Wolnicz-Pawłowska 2020). The Commission on Names of Localities and Physiographical Objects, being a consultative body, has elaborated a set of criteria for use in its work: 1) the accordance of a name’s pronunciation and spelling with the

139 Urszula Bijak & Barbara Czopek-Kopciuch (†) rules of standard Polish; 2) the etymology of a name; 3) the historical records; 4) the tradition of using a name by a local community; 5) the frequency of a name’s occurrences on maps and in other present day publications (Cieślikowa, Wolnicz-Pawłowska 2006, XVI). These criteria are the outcome of many years of experience acquired by successive teams of experts working on the Commission. Yet, names with non-Polish features can result in many problems as regards their standardization. They are often used in small communicative communities, have no presence in historical records, appear only on very detailed maps and do not possess any regularly used Polish or Polonized variants. It would be an ideal situation if the standard Polish names of physiographical objects in communes with minority languages were accompanied by supplementary names in these minority languages. Yet, motions concerning the names of uninhabited geographical features in minority languages have never been tabled in linguistically mixed regions. In the current standardization of the names of land features, as well as in the earlier standardization of hydronyms, the Commission on Names of Localities and Physiographical Objects has ruled that non-Polish names with no documented Polonized records should be adapted to the spelling and inflection of the Polish language only.

4.4.1. Geographical names in the commune of Orla

In the commune of Orla, there are few hydrographic objects and their names display no East Slavic features, e.g. river names Biała, Orlanka (see ESHP). In contrast, among the 105 names of land objects, there are 30 that present East Slavic properties in their phonetics or word formation. The most common features are: • the h sound (corresponding to the Polish g sound), e.g. Bahno, Bojarska Hora, Haje, Łuh, Mohiłki and Zahajkowo; • pleophony (full vocalization: sound group oro, corresponding to the Polish ro), e.g. Horodzisko; • the suffix-yna (corresponding to the Polish suffix-izna ), e.g. Kosyńszczyna, Stenkaruszczyna; • the sound u (as a counterpart of the Polish nasal vowel ą), e.g. Krugłozyna.

140 Toponyms of selected communes with minority languages in north-eastern Poland These East Slavic features of names are to be preserved in the standardization process.

4.4.2. Geographical names in the commune of Puńsk

In the commune of Puńsk, hydronyms of Lithuanian origin can be found that in the past were adapted (to varying degrees) to Polish, e.g. Bebrucie from Lith. ẽ (bẽbras) ‘beaver’, Lapuk from Lith. lapũkas ‘burdock’, Mieldziń cf. Lith. méldas, meldaĩ ‘reeds’, Bebrutis, -sa; Kalninis, -sa (from Lith. appellative kálnas ‘mountain’) with the endings -is, -inis which are typical of Lithuanian. In establishing official hydronyms, the tradition of using specific name forms was taken into account. Name forms with older historic records were generally more Polonized, while names noted as late as the 20th century displayed a lesser degree of Polonization (see ESHP). In the commune of Puńsk, 45 names of land physiographical features are currently being standardized. Among these names of forests, hills and meadows, the majority (32) are constituted by names that are genetically and often formally Lithuanian, though there are some Polish names as well (13). In the Lithuanian names present on maps, many corruptions can be found, e.g. the name of a hill Austratakie (the first part of this name was probably influenced by the nameAustria ), which is in fact a corruption of Auksztatrakie, Lith. Aukštatrakė // Aukštatrakis; Orze Białe is a distortion of the name Ożabałe, Ożabała, Lith. Ožabałė (i.e. Koźle Bagno, ỹ (ožỹs) ‘billy goat’). Such corruptions are to be eliminated by the Commission. Many Lithuanian names consist of two separate words, the first of which often causes inflectional problems. To avoid them, these multi-word names are to be converted into compound names, e.g. Absza Kalnis > Apszakalnia (Lith. Apšakalnis, kálnas ‘mountain’) (see Barszczewska et al., 1992). This mechanism of adaptation (Polonization) of names has a well-documented historical tradition. Consultations with local authorities constitute an important part of the standardization of the names of physiographical objects. Proposals for standardized names are presented to the commune authorities who are asked to express their opinion. The Commission additionally seeks to determine whether Polish names are used for the physiographical objects as well as their Belarusian and Lithuanian names. If Polish names are not used locally, a graphically and inflectionally Polonized form is established.

141 Urszula Bijak & Barbara Czopek-Kopciuch (†) If a locally used Polish name is found, it is officially established according to the name policy and the local authorities are entitled to put forward a motion to establish a supplementary name in a minority language.

5. CONCLUSIONS

The toponymy of linguistically mixed regions (as exemplified here by the communes of Orla and Puńsk) is a reflection of both the land’s history and of the past and present multi-ethnic character of society. Current legal regulations favour an increase in the national awareness and identity of those Polish citizens declaring themselves as being of a nationality other than Polish. Yet, it should be stressed that only one of the four communes with Belarusian as a supporting language has actually introduced bilingual names.1 The general lack of motions to establish bilingual names can be attributed to the expenses incurred by inhabitants and communes associated with the amendments that have to be made to real estate documents and those required in EU funding procedures. From the point of view of the minorities, it is probably more important (and useful) to introduce a supporting language than to establish supplementary names, especially when the official name already provides sufficient identification of an object. The symbolic function of names is not perceived to be especially important. Nevertheless, toponyms remain relevant – as Wilhelm Humboldt once stressed: proper names are the longest-lasting monuments of the past, the monuments used by a nation to speak of its history. Indeed, this voice of the past may be easier to understand if bilingual names were placed not only on signposts but also written on maps and included in official gazetteers.

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1 Noted that Belarusian is considered an endangered language.

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