the russian 'spear-coin': etymology and word formation

American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

The Russian 'Spear-Coin': Etymology and Word FormationAuthor(s): Daniel ArmstrongSource: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Autumn, 1978), pp. 372-382Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/307537 .

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THE RUSSIAN 'SPEAR-COIN': ETYMOLOGY AND WORD FORMATION

Daniel Armstrong, Indiana University

Consulting the entry for Russian kopejka in the standard etymological dic- tionaries reveals that the origin of this word has been the subject of some disagreement among scholars. Although most sources now concur that kopejka is associated with kop'ei 'spear,' the question of the precise derivation of the word is not usually answered in the references commonly con- sulted.

A. G. Preobra'enskij' states that the etymology of kopbjka, sometimes spelled with a jat' in the old orthography (kopejka), is considered to be un- clear. Preobra'enskij offers three possibilities. The word may have come from kop'ei because the coin pictured Georgij Pobedonosec (St. George) killing a dragon with a spear, as in the Moscow coat of arms. This is the etymology given by A. Sobolevskij2 and by F. Miklosich.3 If this explanation is correct, Preobra'enskij objects, one would expect *kopbjce, *kopejcb, or *kopejkd, but not kopejka. A second possibility is that kopejka is a diminutive of *kopdja, which is a derivative of kopit' 'to save up, put by, store up' and therefore related to koph 'pile, heap; 60 sheaves' (i.e. *kopdja is considered to be a parallel formaton to verejci 'gatepost, hinge' from Old Russian vreti, veret' 'to lock, close'). This etymology was first given in 1889 by R. Brandt,4 who was apparently unaware of the numismatic evidence or literature available at the time,5 and for this reason stated that he knew of no coins which depicted a spear; he claimed, therefore, that deriving kopejka from kop'ie because this is what St. George used to kill the dragon was really stretching the point.6 A third possible explanation is that k'opbjka comes from Turkic kbpek 'dog' because a certain Tatar coin from the time of Timur which circulated in Russia depicted a dog.' (Actually, as M. Vasmer informs us,8 it was not a dog but a lion.) This last etymology is suggested by H. Yule and A. C. Burnell9 and is given as the only possibility by E. Berneker,'o by K. Lokotsch," who cites the Turkic phrase dinar k6pei 'coin with a dog,' and by J. Holub and F.

Kopeny,.'2 Berneker also cites from Ja. K. Grot' a dubious Mongolian word kopeka, defined by Grot as 'a small coin of the khans of the Golden Horde,' which was given by O. I. 372 SEEJ, Vol. 22, No. 3 (1978)



The Russian 'Spear-Coin': Etymology and Word Formation 373

Senkovskij'4 as the etymon for kopbjka, but this form appears in no other sources to my knowledge and seems suspiciously like the Turkic kbpek.

If one should consult, rather than Preobra'enskij's dictionary, the Rus- sian translation of M. Vasmer's Russisches etymologisches Wbrterbuch, he will find a statement by O. N. Trubaev 15 that the Turkic etymology is in- correct. He will also learn that Vasmer considers unfounded the doubts in the derivation of kopbjka from kop'b as well as Brandt's effort to explain kopdjka as associated with kopit. These statements are preceded in the Vasmer dictionary by a capsule history of the kopeck which was largely taken over from N. P. Bauer's entry under "Kopeke" in Schr6tter's Wbrterbuch der Mimnzkunde (317). The kopbjka, this latter source tells us, was a coin minted in silver beginning in 1535 and weighing the same as the Novgorod den'gc'. It appeared in Moscow after the conquest of Novgorod in 1478. From 1535 until 1719 the obverse of the coin pictured a tsar on horseback with a spear in his hand. Vasmer cites a passage from the Novgorod II Chronicle, under the year 1535, about how the grand prince ordered'6 that "trade be conducted by means of new coins with a spear" ("novymi den'- gami torgovati s" kopiem"," II, 317).

An investigator convinced of the correctness of Preobra'enskij's first possibility, as supported by Bauer, Vasmer, and others, including A. Brfickner"7 - that kopbjka is somehow associated with kop'ei 'spear'-will still be puzzled, as was Preobraienskij, by the fact that the word is kopbjka and not a normally expected diminutive of kop'e (kopbjce, kopejcb, or kopejkb). This problem is faced by N. M. Sanskij, V. V. Ivanov, and T. V. Sanskajals and by P. Ja. Cernyx.'9 These scholars say that the diminutive *kopbjko (neuter) changed to feminine kopbjka by analogy to other coin names, most of which were feminine (they cite as examples vebkLa, grivna, mbrdka). But, one might well ask, what about other names for monetary units, particularly those in use somewhat later - at the time the kopeck evidently came into being? There were, for example, the rubl', a masculine coin name attested in documents from the twelfth century and a monetary unit in use in Moscow from the mid-fifteenth century, and the altfn (cf. the modern Russian altfn '3-kopeck piece'), also masculine, a coin borrowed from the Tatars and used in Russia from at least 1375, when the word is attested in a document, and no doubt considerably earlier. It seems clear that analogy is not an adequate explanation for the shift in gender that would have had to occur here, and thus the explanation of kopejka as a diminutive of kop'e* is ruled out.

The researcher's curiosity as to the precise etymology of kopejka would remain unsatisfied unless he should happen upon one of the articles by N. G. Rjadienko where this word is discussed.20 Here the author suggests that kopbjka is a suffixal derivative from the phrase kopbjnaja den'gcI 'coin with a spear, spear-coin.' By this phrase the newly designed coins were dis-



374 Slavic and East European Journal

tinguished from the previous ones, which, because they depicted a horseman brandishing a sword over his head, were known popularly as me'eve e ddn'gi 'sword-coins' (and could also have been called sdbel'nye dingi 'sabre-coins' because the sword depicted could well have been known as a schblja 'sabre' as some sources have it). Unfortunately, the phrase me3evj~e dbn'gi, according to Sreznevskij's Materialy, is not attested (nor is sTbbel'nye dbn'gi), but the phrase dbn'gi kopbjnye is given by this source (I, col. 1279) in a citation dated 7043 (1535) from the supplement to the "Sofijskij vremennik," a manuscript from the sixteenth century. The citation, in fact, fully supports tracing the etymology of kopbjka from the spear \,appearing in its new design: "A pri velikom" Knjaze Vasil'e Ivanovice byst' znamja na dengax" Knjaz' velikii na kone, a im6ja mec' v" ruc6; a Knjaz' velikii Ivan" Vasil'eviE' ucini znamja na dengax"Knjaz' velikii na kon6, a im6ja kop'e v" ruc6 i ottole prozvasa dengi kopejnyja."2' (And during the reign of the Grand Prince Vasilij IvanoviE there was a picture on the coins of a grand prince on a horse who had a sword in his hand; but the Grand Prince Ivan Vasil'evici made a picture on the coins of a grand prince on a horse with a spear in his hand, and from this the coins were called spear-coins.)

However, the origin of the phrase kopbjnye dbn'gi cannot, it seems to me, be pinned down to the year 1535, as the chronicler would have us believe. The problem of dating the origin of the phrase and of the word kopdjka is somewhat more complicated, as a check of Baron de Chaudoir's work reveals (II, especially 5-41). The information in this catalog shows that the designs of the small silver coins minted under the authority of the grand dukes of Muscovy varied. During the time of Dmitrij Donskoj (who reigned 1362-89), the obverse of some showed a man holding a shield in front of himself, of others a rooster and a small animal, probably a mouse, of others a Triton. Under Vasilij Dmitrievic' (1389-1425), the coins pictured a grand duke on horseback, sometimes holding a sword, sometimes a falcon, sometimes neither. Others of this period showed an animal (probably a pan- ther) or Samson wrestling with the lion. But during the reign of Grand Duke Vasilij Vasil'eviE (Vasilij Temnyj, 1425-62), the designs of these coins began to show the grand duke mounted on a horse killing a dragon (or a serpent) with a spear. After this time, although some coins continued to show the grand duke on horseback with a sword or sabre, or seated on a throne with sword in hand, or variations of these and previous designs, the type with the spear appeared with increasing frequency. Under Ivan IV Vasil'eviE (who reigned as grand duke 1533-47), the horseman-with-spear design prevailed, and this basic type continued into the eighteenth century. Thus the phrase kopbjnye dbn'gi could well have originated considerably earlier than 1535, and the word kopbjka itself is attested in the Pskov III Chronicle, in a manuscript from the seventeenth century, under the year 1499.22 The first coin listed by de Chaudoir to which he refers by the name "copek" (his




catalog number 220) is from the reign of Vasilij Vasil'evi6 (1505-33). The name koptjka, I would suggest on the basis of the changes in coin designs and its attestation in documents, first arose as a nickname for the silver coins distinguished by the spear depicted in their design, and only later became accepted as the official designation for this coin and as a monetary unit. It is most likely this last application of the word that is reflected in the 1535 citation from the "Sofijskij vremennik" which records the historically important monetary reform. The coin was known also by the name ndvgorodka, a designation which persisted through the seventeenth century and referred to the introduction of coins of this weight from Novgorod, thus distinguishing them from the mosk6vki, worth only half as much.23

The etymology for kopbjka offered by Rjad6enko is, then, supported by the numismatic evidence and by historical documentation. But what about the linguistic evidence? The substantivization of an adjective-noun phrase by use of the word-formative suffix -ka is a frequently encountered word formative type24 in Russian. In fact, the tendency toward univerbization - condensation into a single word of a phrase consisting of more than one word but denoting a single object or concept-is a feature characteristic of the development of the Russian lexicon, and, in a broader perspective, of language in general.25 Examples of derivatives on the same pattern as kopbjka from kopbjnaja den'gh are numerous. Literatzirka<Literatirnaja gazbta 'The Literary Gazette,' pjatilbtka<pjatilbtnij plan 'five-year plan,' devjatilbtka<devjatilbtnaja kbla 'nine-year school,' Leninka<Lbninskaja bibliotbka (Gosudfrstvennaja bibliotbka im. V. L Lbnina) 'the Lenin Library (in Moscow),' and otkr'tka 'postcard' <otkr'toe pis'mb 'open letter' come to mind. Rjadenko (in his 1957 article, 152) gives another example, the "oc- casional" formation Drbzdenka<Drbzdenskaja vj'stavka 'temporary art ex- hibit from the Dresden Gallery,' which gives clear evidence of the productivity of this type in present-day Russian.

Further examples are supplied by the 1952 Academy Grammar,26 which lists this as a productive word-formative type in popular speech (prostorebie) operating to form nouns from adjectival stems describing a typical or essential feature of the object: Aleksandrinka<Aleksandrinskij tedtr 'Alexandrine Theater,' ve'erka< veernjaja gazeta 'evening newspaper,' deZrrka<deZrtrnaja k6mnata 'duty room,' let zeka<lettdee sobrdnie or let ziij miting 'emergency meeting' or <let

r ij listbk 'leaflet,' or <letlzaja pb6ta

'pony express,' pjatidnbvka<pjatidnbvnaja nedblja 'five-day work-week,' Tret'ak6vka<Tret'jak6vskaja gallereja 'Tret'jakovskij Gallery.' The same source (246-47) also gives two other types, differing formally from the one just mentioned in that the derivatives in -ka are formed on adjectival stems but - in the opinion of V. V. Vinogradov, the author of this section of the Grammar - without an underlying adjective-noun phrase: a productive type forming words on adjectival stems in -ov- (e.g. abrikbsovka 'apricot li-




queur,' kladbvka 'pantry, storeroom,' vrnbovka 'coal cutter'); and a slightly productive type forming nouns on adjectival stems in -an- (e.g. zemljbnka 'earth house, dugout,' ?estjhtnka 'tin can,' voscanka 'wax paper, waxed cloth'). These two types, the Grammar states, are not limited to popular speech. I would suggest (and Isaenko emphatically states, 342) that these are, in fact, three varieties of one and the same word-formative type, and that abrikbsovka is a condensation from abrikbsovaja vbdka (the underlying phrases for the other examples would probably be kladbvaja kbmnata, vrzbovaja marina, zemljanbj dbmik, ?estjanbj sos6d, vo~Vcnaja bumbga).

So it is clear that there are numerous words in modern Russian which owe their origin to this word-formative type, and that it is productive in the present-day language. But what about the productivity of the type in the history of the language, and particularly in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century when the word kopbjka must have first appeared? Vinogradov indicates27 that -ka in this word-formative type increased markedly in productivity during the nineteenth century, and according to the Slovar' sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo jazyka,28 several of the examples given in the Academy Grammar and cited above are listed in the Rossijskoj cellarius of 1771 (e.g. zemljbnka,

,estjbnka; vobibnka is in a

slightly earlier dictionary, the Leksikon rossijskij ifrancuzskij of 1762). The fact that the word-formative pattern adjective + noun>adjectival stem + suffix -ka was productive also in the fifteenth century, and even considerably earlier, is borne out by an example such as bblka 'squirrel', which is attested in the Slovo Daniila ZatoZ'nika (twelfth century) in a manuscript from the sixteenth or early seventeenth century (bblka<bblaja veverica 'white squirrel,' a phrase appearing in the Hypatian chronicle, a manuscript from the fifteenth century, under the year 6307 [799]). A word like nbvgorodka at- tests to the fact that other coin names were formed in the same historical period as kopbjka on this model: nbvgorodskaja den'gc>nbvgorodka, and so does the moskbvka, referred to in a Novgorod document from 1571 (cf. Srez- nevskij, Materialy, II, col. 176). Another word of this type is indbjka 'turkey'<indbjskaja kgirica 'Indian chicken'; indbjka is not listed in Srez- nevskij's Materialy, but the word is attested, according to the seventeen- volume Academy Dictionary, in I. Nordstet's dictionary (1780).29

One further aspect of the word-formative implications of this etymology of kopbjka remains to be considered. If the productivity of the word-formative type in question was limited in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to popular speech, as Vinogradov indicates at least one form of it is in modern Russian, would this make it any less likely that this pattern gave rise to kopbjka? I think not. In the first place, it is a well-known phenomenon that the stylistic tone of a word can change in the course of the history of the language, and derivatives in -ka of this type are evidently no exception. The assimilation by the literary language of words from popular




speech such as semilUtka<semilbtnjaja kbla 'seven-year school' is not at all unusual in modern Russian, as G. A. Osnovina demonstrates by considering a number of examples from various types of contemporary Russian literature. 30 While some words in -ka of this type are markedly colloquial (e.g. telefbnka<telefbnnaja stancija 'central telephone office') or are for the most part restricted to professional or technical language (e.g. lesopil- ka<lesopil'naja masinka 'electric saw' or<lesopil'nyj zavbd 'sawmill,' instru- mentalka<instrumentchl'naja kbmnata or kladovaja 'tool room'), nouns of this general type not infrequently pass into literary Russian. Presumably a similar trend could have operated in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century to make the newly formed, possibly colloquial kopbjka acceptable to the literary language, if indeed there was a distinction between the literary and colloquial languages at this period similar to the one that exists in modern Russian. (This is, of course, too complex an issue to debate here.) Even if we were to find evidence that the productivity of this word-formative type was limited to popular speech in the sixteenth century, this would in no way render it inappropriate as a word-formative type for producing coin names, which are quite often nicknames in origin (due, one might suppose, to the nature of money as a commodity often most appropriately discussed in terms veiled by jocularity; cf., for example, the Tatar kbpek 'dog-coin' which actually showed a lion as a symbol of royal power). Coin names, either because of this social attitude or, less likely, their small size, are rather frequently formed with suffixes commonly referred to in the literature as carrying expressive (affectionate or diminutive) connotation; cf. poltinnik 'half a ruble' from the former poltina 'idem,' grivennik '10 kopecks' from grivna, an Old Russian monetary unit, or efimok 'thaler' (associated with the name Efim 'Joachim' on the model of Polish joachymik, cf. German Joachimsthaler).

Examination of the sources cited in this study has shown that the con- sensus of modern scholarship rules out the derivation of kopbjka from either Russian kopit' or Turkic kibpek, that the linguistic and historical evidence does not support the conclusion that kopdjka is a diminutive of kop'ei 'spear' but rather weighs heavily in favor of the derivation of the word from kop'I via the phrase kopbjnaja den'gh 'spear-coin,' and that this word- formative type is not in the least unusual in Russian and is moreover still productive. Even more importantly it has demonstrated how consideration of the word-formative types available to a language can be of assistance in clarifying an otherwise puzzling problem of historical lexicology.




NOTES

1 A.G. Preobraienskij, Etimologifeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka (2 vols.; M., 1910-14 and 1949; reprint M.: Gos. izd. inostrannyx i nacional'nyx slovarej, 1959), I, 350.

2 A. Sobolevskij, "Kopejka," Russkij Filologibeskij Vestnik, 22 (1889), 291. 3 F. Miklosich, Etymologisches Wbrterbuch der slavischen Sprachen (Vienna: W.

Braumiiller, 1886), 128. 4 R. Brandt, "Dopolnitel'nye zamecanija k razboru 6timologiceskogo slovarja Miklo'iia,"

Russkij Filologibeskij Vestnik, 22 (1889), 139-40. 5 S. de Chaudoir, Aperqu sur les monnaies russes et sur les monnaies btrangeres qui ont eu

cours en Russie (3 vols.; SPb. and Paris: F. Bellizard, 1836-37); see especially the illustra- tions in Vol. III, plates 2-7. Photographs of coins of these types may be found in Table 60 in V. N. Rjabcevic's O em rasskazyvajut monety, 2nd ed. (Minsk: Narodnaja asveta, 1977).

6 Even if there were no actual coins rendering Brandt's doubts unfounded, this derivation of kopbjka from kopit' seems to me suspect for several reasons: (1) The suffix -bja was apparently very unproductive in Old Russian, as 2. . Varbot notes in Drevnerusskoe imen- noe slovoobrazovanie (M.: Nauka, 1969), 84, pointing out that the only word attested in Old Russian in which the suffix can be identified with certainty is vereja. (2) One might also expect that if this etymology were correct the intermediate derivative *kopeja would appear somewhere, since documents from this time are plentiful and other names associated with monetary units are well attested. (3) There is no apparent motivation for the derivation of kopbjka from kopit '. There is, in fact, more of a motivation for the development of kopbjka from the noun kop&, which in Slavic originally meant, according to A. Brfickner's Slownik etymologiczny jqzyka polskiego, 2nd ed. (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1957), 254, a man-made mound of earth, then 'pile, heap,' then a stack of hay, straw, or grain, then a stack of a certain size (60 sheaves), and finally a counting unit '60 of an item'; the word was used in western Russia also in the meaning of a local gather- ing of peasants, a crowd (Preobralenskij, I, 349). It seems unlikely, however, that a coin name would develop from kopa' in the meaning 'straw-, hay-, or grain-stack' in a period (the mid-sixteenth century, if the date of the first mention of the kopeck in documents [see note 22 below] is to be taken as a rough indication of the period when the name began to be used) when straw, hay, and grain were not associated directly with money or used as a unit of exchange. (True, this sort of association accounts for the development in an earlier period of the Old Russian coin names from the names of furs, e.g. veverka from vbverica 'squirrel' and kuna' from kunica 'marten.' But from kop& in the meaning 'a unit of 60' there is a possible motivation, not pointed out by Brandt, for the word kopbjka: in Old Czech and Old Polish the name kopa was applied to the monetary unit which replaced the hfivna (Polish grzywna) when Wenceslas II (who reigned in Prague 1278-1305, and was also king of Poland 1300-05, reformed the monetary system and began about 1300 to mint the gros from silver (cf. Wielka encyklopedia powszechna PWN [13 vols., Warsaw: Pafstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1962-70], XII, 72). This new unit was called a kopa, Briickner says (Slownik, 254), because 60 groszy were minted from the amount of silver in a grzywna. (J. Holub and F. Kopeinr, Etymologickj slovnikjazyka beskbho [Prague:Staitni nakladatelstvi ucebnic, 1952], 135, say there were 64 grog in a kopa or hfivna, which either reflects a subsequent decrease in the amount of silver in each grog or somewhat weakens Briickner's etymology since the kopa was specifically 60 of an item; was a kopa just a "heap of grole"?) I. I. Sreznevskij (Materialy dlja slovarja drevnerusskogojazyka, [3 vols.; SPb.: Otdelenie russkogo jazyka i slovesnosti Imperatorskoj akademii nauk, 1893; reprint M.: Gos. izd. inostrannyx i nacional'nyx slovarej, 1958], I, col. 1278) supplies the Old Czech phrase, cited from the works of Thomas of Stitn6, kopa gro'u, which Sreznevskij




equates to hhiwna. Thus, Czech or Polish kopa in its meaning as a monetary unit might well have served as the deriving stem for kopbjka were it not for two problems. It would be very difficult if not impossible to explain the phonological development from kopa to

kopebjka using suffixes normal for Russian derivation. The second difficulty is that kopa designated a large amount of money, equal to 60 (or 64) of the smaller unit in the system (the grog), while kopbjka from its beginning was apparently used to mean a small coin equal to 1/100 of a Novgorod rubl' (the kopbjka's weight when first minted as a coin with this specific name was only about 0.69 grams of silver, according to F. v. Schr6tter, Wbrterbuch der Miinzkunde [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1930], 317, and it declined steadily from then on). Deflation in the amount of purchasing power represented by a coin name is, of course, hardly unusual - cf. the fate of the grog: it took its name from the Latin grossus den;arius and was thus originally a large coin. The grog gradually represented a smaller and smaller value until the present time, when the Polish grosz is I / 100 of a zloty and will scarcely buy a single match and when the word is used in Russian only in phrases such as gro~ic mbdnogo ne stbit 'not worth a farthing.' But this deflation does not seem to have gone so far in the present case: the kopac grosbj, descendant of the Czech and Polish kopa which circulated in the western portions of the East Slavic area, was valued at 3 rubles 22 5/7 kopecks; later, after the Ukraine "submitted to the tsar's hand" in 1654, this unit was equal to half a ruble; about 1730 its value was fixed at 60 kopecks by the commission set up to establish a code of law for the Ukraine (these and other details of the story of the kopai groisj on East Slavic territory are provided by the Brokgauz-Efron Enciklopedibeskij slovar' [82 vols.; SPb.: F. A. Brokgauz and I. A. Efron, 1890-1904], XVI, 160). My second objection could possibly be eliminated by the fact that since the -ka suffix carries a diminutive meaning, it might be plausible that the word

kopbj'ka represented a small kopch. But in this case why not *kbpka? Moreover, a genuinely diminutive suffix would be unusual in a name for a monetary unit, although certainly expressive suffixes are not uncommon (e.g. nogitka, grivenka, grivennik). The -ka here is more apt to be affectionate than diminutive, as I will have occasion to mention again later, and besides the chronology here makes this derivation very improbable. Brandt's etymology offers interesting possibilities but they seem on the whole unlikely, especially in the light of other evidence, to be presented below.

7 Cited by Preobra'enskij from T. Korsch's "Anzeigen" [to F. Miklosich's Die tiirkiscben Elemente in den siidost- und ost-europaiischen Sprachen (Vienna: K. Gerold, 1884)], A rchiv

fiur slavische Philologie, 9 (1886), 517. Korsch refers to F. Erdmann, Iz 'Iasnenie nekotoryx

slov, peresedsix iz vosto'nyx jazykov v Rossijskij (M., 1830), 5 ff., and F. Reiff, Russko- francuzskijslovar' (SPb. 2 vols.; 1835-36), 439.

8 M. Fasmer, Etimologikeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka (4 vols.; M.: Progress, 1964-73), II, 318.

9 H. Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1903), 253.

10 E. Berneker, Slavisches etymologisches Wbrterbuch (Heidelberg: Carl Winter. 1908-13), I, 566.

11 K. Lokotsch, Etymologisches Wbrterbuch der europinschen (germanischen, romanischen und slavischen) Worter orientalischen Ursprungs (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1927), 96.

12 Holub and Kopecnf, Etymologickj slovnikjazyka beskbho, 179. J. Hager is another who, in his Description des mbdailles chinoises du Cabinet imperial de France (Paris: Imprimerie imperiale, 1805), gives Turkic kbpec as the source for kopbjka (cited by de Chaudoir, I, 123). There are at least three main problems with deriving kopbjka from Turkic kopek, and each of them, it would seem, is virtually insurmountable: First, it would be very difficult to explain the phonological development from kbpek to kopbjka (why the j and why the feminine ending a?). Second, if this derivation were correct, it would mean, as in the




case of the etymology from kopai gro]bj, a substantial decrease in the value of the kopeck since, as is pointed out in Hobson-Jobson (253), the Turkic 'dog-coin' was a much more valuable coin than was the kopbjka, even when first minted (Schr6tter's dictionary [142] gives the weight of the Tatar silver dinair of this period at between 8.00 and 4.21 grams, depending on its date and place of manufacture). It appear that there was insufficient time between the reign of Timur (1370-1405) and the minting of the first coins which became known as kopbjki (probably late fifteenth century) for such drastic deflation to have oc- curred. And, third, there is no numismatic or documentary evidence of the continued widespread use of the dinair kbpei on Russian territory during the 150 or so years in question as would be expected if the name for the kopeck traces back to the Tatar 'dog'coin.'

13 Trudy Ja. K. Grota (5 vols.; SPb.: Ministerstvo putej soob''enija, 1898-1903), II (Filologibeskie razyskanija), 905.

14 0. Senkovskij in Biblioteka dlja Etenija, 1854, No. 1; not available to me. 15 Fasmer, Etimologibeskij slovar', II, 318. 16 It was evidently not the grand duke who gave this order, but rather his mother, Elena

Vasil'evna Glinskaja, acting in his name: "Grand Duchess Helena, mother of Ivan Vasil'eviE and regent during his minority, ordered, in 1535, that these din 'gi be melted down and new ones struck in kopecks at the rate of 300 dkn 'gi or 3 Moscow rubles to the grivenka" (de Chaudoir, I, 122). The assignment of this change in coinage in the Pskov III Chronicle to the year 7045 (1537) (Pskovskie letopisi, ed. A. N. Nasonov, II [M.: AN SSSR, 1955], 229) is considered by I. G. Spasskij (Russkaja monetnaja sistema, 4th ed. [L.: Avrora, 1970], 111) to be an error; it is well established by other documents that the monetary reform took place late in 1534 (early in 1535 by the Old Russian calendar). See also Dictionary of Russian Historical Terms from the Eleventh Century to 1917, comp. Sergei G. Pushkarev (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1970), 44.

17 A. Brfickner, "Ober Etymologien und Etymologisieren, II," Zeitschrift fur vergleishende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen, 48 (1918), 175.

18 N. M. Sanskij, V. V. Ivanov, and T. V. ganskaja, Kratkij timologicbeskij slovar' russkogo Jazyka: Posobie dlja ueitelja, 2nd ed. (M.: ProsveSienie, 1971), 210.

19 P. Ja. ( ernyx, Oeerk russkoj istorieeskoj leksikologii: Drevne-russkij period (M.: MGU, 1956), 130.

20 N. G. Rjad'enko, "O slovoobrazovanii russkix deneinyx naimenovanij," Trudy Odesskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, tom 147, Serija filologi'eskix nauk, vyp. 6 (1957), 151-54; "Iz istorii slov 'rubl" i 'kopejka'," ibid., tom 150, vyp. 4 (1960), 269-73; "O proisxoidenii russkix deneinyx naimenovanij," Prepodavanie istorii v Ikole 1959, No. 2, 107-9.

21 P. Stroev, Sofijskij vremennik, ili Russkaja letopis's 862 po 1534 god (M.: Semen Selivanskij, 1820-21), II, 387.

22 Sreznevskij's Materialy (I, col. 1282) refers us to the entry for the year 7007 in the Pskov II Chronicle (which in the light of a subsequently discovered manuscript should, in the opinion of A. N. Nasonov, be considered the Pskov III Chronicle). The citation in the Materialy is from the conclusion of this Chronicle in the so-called "Second Archival Manuscript," which dates from the mid-seventeenth century: "V l6to 7007-go ... Toe ze oseni xl6b byl dorog, 'etverka po 9 deneg, a ovsa Eetverka po 4 den 'gi, a iita po 6-ti kopeek ", a zobnica po 8 deneg p'enicy, rekie po poltine, a mex soli pol 40 deneg, pol et- verty grivne i men 'Ii vo Pskove .. ." (Pskovskie letopisi, II, 252) [In the year 7007: ... That same autumn, grain was expensive, [for rye] 9 dbn'gi a quarter [of a zobnica, a unit of grain measure, in Pskov at this time probably the equivalent of 2 1/2 pudj (Brokgauz- Efron, XII, 622), or about 90 pounds], and oats 4 din 'gi a guarter, and barely 6 kopecks, and a zobnica of wheat [50] din 'gi, that is half [a ruble] each, and a bag of salt 35 dn 'gi [or] 3 1/2 grivny and less in Pskov. . . ]. I have based the translation of this somewhat gar-




bled passage on a comparison with the corresponding passage in other Pskov chronicles which, in Nasonov's opinion, most likely go back to the same protograph as the manuscript in question (Pskovskie letopisi, II, 6; see also A. N. Nasonov, "Iz istorii pskovskogo letopisanija," Istoribeskie zapiski, 18 [1946], 272; this passage is found also in the Pskov I Chronicle, from the so-called "First Pogodin Manuscript," originating in the second half of the sixteenth century [Pskovskie letopisi, I (M.L.: AN SSSR, 1941), 63]; and in the "Copenhagen Collection," a seventeenth-century manuscript containing excerpts from previous Pskov chronicles [Pskovskie letopisi, II, 292]). I have supplied the word "rye" from the Copenhagen manuscript. The problem with the price of wheat can easily be explained as a simple copying error in which the letter H = 50 was mistaken for an H = 8.

There remains, of course, the question of whether the word kopbjka was used in the Pskov III Chronicle by the original author of this section (and thus probably in the first half of the sixteenth century, in Nasonov's opinion [Pskovskie ketopisi, I, lxiii]) or was in- serted by a later copyist. On the one hand, the fact that other prices in the passage are in

dbn'gi might lead one to believe that kopkjka was used in the original, because if the later copyist had been intentionally converting prices into contemporary monetary units he would most likely have converted them all. On the other hand, this intentional conversion seems improbable: From the omitted word for "rye" and the impossible equating of 8

ddn'gi with a poltina as the price of wheat, it is apparent that this passage was not com- pletely understood by the person who left it to posterity in the Second Archival Manuscript. I therefore think it unlikely that the word kopejka was recorded in the Pskov chronicles in their original version, a conclusion which is shared, as I found after com- pleting this sideline investigation, by A. S. Mel'nikova ("Pskovskie monety XV v.," Numismatika i epigrafika, 4 [1963], 237-38).

Another attestation of the word is, however, somewhat less problematical: kopejki appears in the Pskov III Chronicle (in the "Stroev Manuscript," written in the late 1560s) in the entry for the year 7045 = 1537: "Da togdy ie rezanyja dengi perekova'a, da kovasa kopeiki dengi" (Pskovskie letopisi, II, 229) [And at that time they reforged the small coins and made Kopeck coins.

The date 1453, given by de Chaudoir (I, 122) as the first attestation of the word kopbjka, is an error. He bases his statement on a citation by M. Sierbatov (Istorija rossi- jskaja ot drevnejjix vremen, [7 vols.; SPb.: Imperatorskaja akademija nauk, 1774-1805], IV Part II, 110) from nearly identical grimoty exchanged by Boris Aleksandrovi', Prince of Tver', and Grand Duke Vasilij Vasil'evil. However, it turns out that in recapitulating the contents of the original documents g6erbatov converted into kopbjki, for the convenience of his readers, the amount of duties enumerated in the actual documents in altjny (cf. L. V. Cerepnin, Duxovnye i dogovornye gramoty velikix i udel 'nyx knjazej XIV-XVI vv. [M.- L.: AN SSSR, 1950], 188, 191; incidentally, according to terepnin the documents should be dated 1456 rather than 1453).

Thus the actual date of earliest attested usage of the word kopbjka remains an open question, but to my knowledge there is no clear example of its usage before 1560.

23 Bol'Saja sovetskaja enciklopedija, 3rd ed. (M.: Sov. nciklopedija, 1970- ), XIII, 122. 24 I use "word-formative type" as a translation of slovo-obrazovatel nyj tip, in the sense in

which this term is used in most current Soviet studies on word formation, e.g. Grammatika sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogojazyka, ed. N. Ju. gvedova (M.: Nauka, 1970). The word-formative type may be defined as the structural scheme of derived words having in common the same formal and semantic characteristics. Cf. A. Bartoszewicz, "Aktualne zagadnienia teorii slowotw6rstwa w nauce radzieckiej," Studia Rossica Posnaniensia, 5 (1973), 48, for a brief summary of Soviet views on this.




25 This problem is discussed in some detail by A. V. Isabenko in "K voprosu o strukturnoj tipologii slovarnogo sostava slavjanskix literaturnyx jazykov," Slavia, 27 (1958), especially 339-43.

26 Grammatika russkogo jazyka, (2 vols.; M.: AN SSSR, 1952), I, 247. 27 V. V. Vinogradov, Russkij jazyk: Grammatibeskoe ubenie o slove, 2nd ed. (M.: Vys'aja

skola, 1972), 117. 28 Slovar' sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogojazyka, (17 vols.; M.-L.: AN SSSR, 1948-65). 29 I. Nordstet, Rossijskij s nemeckim i francuzskim perevodami slovar' (2 vols.; SPb.: 1780-

82), I. Unfortunately none of the words in -ka found in the materials examined by V. N. Rogova in Slovoobrazovatel'naja sistema russkogo jazyka v XVI veke (po materialam publicistieeskix proizvedenij) (Krasnojarsk: Krasnojarskoe kniinoe izd., 1972), belongs to this word-formative type.

30 G. A. Osnovina, "Ob upotreblenii susdestvitel'nyx s suffiksami -k-a i -1k-a v sovremen- nom russkom jazyke," Russkij jazyk v Skole, 1960, No. 5, 26-28.



the russian 'spear-coin': etymology and word formation

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