The multiperspectival nature of place names: Ewenki mobility, river naming, and relationships with animals, spirits, and landscapes

Abstract

The article examines the process of production and change of place names based on data collected in 2017 among the Okhotsk Ewenki, the easternmost Indigenous community in Siberia, Russia. Through ethnographic and semiotic analysis, we show that Ewenki place names are not simply reproduced, but rather generated and transformed through empathic contact and engagement within a semiotic circle of shared knowledge and praxis among humans and other beings encountered, especially in ambulatory travel. We consider place names as complex signs which evolve from landscape, mobility as a spatial practice, and relationships with nonhuman beings. Through ecosemiotics and nonhuman ontology, we examine how the concept of shifting landscapes and interactions with different environmental agents, especially animals, contribute to the production of space and place names and their changes. We also show that the responsible voicing of the land with place names is related to Ewenki understandings of territorial prerogatives, and rights, which are perceived as being shared with other beings.

Mental maps, practical mastery and environmental experience: an analysis of the wayfinding culture of Evenki reindeer herders and hunters

“…‘Ily’ means a piece of rock sticking out of a mountain) and they carry information about the possible uses of the landscape. This knowledge system is dynamic and relational: Evenki can use their toponymical knowledge to infer the types of landscape that will surround a particular place (see Lavrillier and Gabyshev, 2018 for a detailed analysis of Evenki landscape typology and a glossary of place names; and Mamontova and Thornton, 2022 for a recent analysis). In the words of researcher and reindeer herder Semën Gabyshev, ‘thanks to the Evenki knowledge system of the landscape, I can guess the locations of rocks, rivers, passes, and so on, even if I do not know the specific place’ (Lavrillier and Gabyshev, 2018, p. 25).…”