西伯利亚名考

Deciphering Siberia

对西伯利亚名称的研究由来已久,人们往往根据西伯利亚的地理位置、历史,结合历史文献及当地民族的归属进行考证其名称的来源与意义。这样的讨论很有意义,然而,仅仅考虑上述方面还不足以科学地对西伯利亚的名称意义进行解释。本研究认为,还应该从历史语言的角度,通过讨论同源词来进行佐证才能够科学和合理地解释西伯利亚名称的意义。从语言的同源词比较中,我们可以看出,西伯利亚名称的意义可以局限在两种比较可以令人信服的解释:一为源于阿尔泰语系的"泥泞、潮湿"之地,另为"鲜卑"。而"泥泞"才是合理的释义。

The research of meaning of the name Siberia has been quite long. Resrachers tend to decipher the meaning by means of Siberia＇s geographical location, history and with historical documents as well as nationalities. This is reasonable, but trying to interpret the meaning only by the above mentioned fields is far from satisfactory. This paper tends to consider the deciphering of its meaning from historical linguistic aspect by discussing the cognates of the Altaic language family. From the contrasts of cognates, it is easy to see that the meaning of Siberia can be limited to two plausible interpretation ： one being＂ muddy＂, the other cianbej. ＂Muddy＂ is the reasonable decipherment.