The Nomenclature of Medicinal Plants of Tuva in Dictionaries

The article introduces a list of sources which inform the reader of the plants used for medicinal purposes by Tuvan people. A brief analysis of these sources has revealed a necessity to distinguish between medicinal plants of Tuva and those used in traditional medicine of the Tuvans; and also between their names in Tuvan as the language of the indigenous people of the area, and in the language of the local Russian-speaking population, especially the Old Believers. There is an ongoing process of mutual enrichment of the range of medicinal plants known and used by Tuvans and Russians in the region (e.g., teve-kuduruu and chuksugbai are words borrowed by the local Russians from the Tuvans; and pantseria sherstistaya or kalendula have taken the opposite route – into Tuvan from Russian). On the whole, the names for medicinal plants in various sources are absolutely stable and do not raise any doubt - such as pion, mar’in koren — shengne (Eng. - peony), pikhta-choigan (Eng. - silver fir). Nevertheless, some dictionary entries may present a problem due to: a) absence of matching names in Tuvan-Russian and Russian-Tuvan dictionaries; b) difference of nomenclature for medicinal plants of Tuva in different sources; c) incongruity of descriptions leading to misunderstandings (orgaadai, smolevka/ Eng. campion); d) wrong versions of the plant’s name in translated dictionaries (khek-davan — podsnezhnik/ Eng. snowdrop instead of prostrel/eng. pasqueflower). The authors suggest that philologists should work out a methodology of processing plant names for a future trilingual (Russian, Latin and Tuvan) dictionary of Tuvan plants of varying household significance. This methodology should then be thoroughly tested, and the dictionary should feature colour illustrations. It is thus of utter importance to have Tuvan names of plants clarified, and literary norms and their dialectal differences clearly marked in order to write up correct entries for the new dictionaries, and ultimately, to build the dictionary of Tuvan plant names on this basis