Place Name Elements ura and ora in South Estonian
Place Name Elements ura and ora in South Estonian

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses South Estonian place name elements ura and ora ’stream, little river’ which appear in the Estonian, Livonian and Latvian language and place names. The appearance and semantics of the word variants and the etymologies in the Finnic languages is analysed. Both South Estonian ura and ora are the variants of the word *urka, because the spread of the u-initial variants is wider and there is no proof of the form *orka. Although the researchers have suggested earlier that *orka and *orko are connected, doubts still remain because of the different stem vowels. However, we may associate *urka with Finnish urkama ’cavity, pit, river bed’ and with an old Uralic word *ura ’road, path; watercourse, river bed’.

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