Once More on the Etymology of the Russian Word Mazurik ‘Cheater’ (in Light of the Cultural and Linguistic Image of Mazur in Slavic Traditions)

Abstract

The article proves the hypothesis of the origin of the Russian colloquial word mazurik as deriving from the name of the Polish ethnographic group mazury ‘Mazurs’—inhabitants of Mazovia (in central and south-eastern Poland) as well as immigrants from this area to other places, mainly in the north-east. This hypothesis had previously been stated in the literature, but it had not been demonstrated rigorously. The authors show that the word mazurik is included in the big semantic word family that is derived from mazur, by studies focused on nationwide usage and through dialects. Using data from the lexical system and from folklore, the linguistic portrait of the Mazurs in the Russian tradition is reconstructed, and it is compared with linguistic stereotypes of the Mazurs in the source language (Polish) and the languages of peoples in close contact with the Mazurs (Ukrainian and Belarusian). The main features of these portraits are the same in these languages, and they create a negative image of the Mazur in the Slavic tradition, making the “Polish” etymological version semantically legitimate. In addition, the authors prove this hypothesis from the point of view of word formation, linguogeography, and sociolinguistic characteristics of the words under consideration. It is noted that the derivatives of the word family derived from mazur are attracted to the lexemes which have similar form and meaning but different origin, in particular, to derivatives of the verb mazatʹ and the words murza and zamurzannyi. The article contains an overview with commentary of hypotheses about the origin of the Russian mazurik existing in Slavic etymological literature.