About the project

The database “PhytoLex: Russian Phytonymy of the 11th-17th centuries”contains the names of plants recorded in Old Russian booklore of the 11th-17th c. The database includes plant names with contexts of their use from original and translated literary works, lexicographical manuscripts, natural science and historical literature, business papers, as well as Russian historical dictionaries of the studied period and researches on the project theme. Both original Russian and borrowed phytonyms are presented, including transliterated foreign lexemes that have not received further development in the Russian language.

The database records lexemes and denotates, the time and place of creating literary monuments, their authorship, source languages, and allows searching by these parameters. The Latin nomenclature of plants is given in accordance with the classification presented in the Catalog of Life database (https://www.catalogueoflife.org/).

The base is addressed to researchers and lecturers studying the history of the Russian language and literature, Slavic studies, comparative linguistics, lexicology and lexicography, folklore, ethnobotany, ethnolinguistics, cultural anthropology and is an effective tool for searching, comparing and analyzing units of the vocabulary-semantic group “Plant Names”.

The database is supposed to become the basis for the “Russian Phytonyms Dictionary of the 11th-17th centuries”.

This information resource was created with the support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR), project 17-06-00376 “Phytonymy of the Russian language in the diachronic aspect (11th-17th centuries)”.

How to cite the database:

PhytoLex: Russian Phytonymy of the 11th-17th centuries. (https://phytolex.iling.spb.ru/)