The Pleiades as Openings, the Milky Way as the Path of Birds, and the Girl in the Moon: Northern Eurasian Ethno-Cultural Links in the Mirror of Cosmonymy

The Pleiades as Openings, the Milky Way as the Path of Birds, and the Girl in the Moon: Northern Eurasian Ethno-Cultural Links in the Mirror of Cosmonymy

Yu.E. Berezkin.

The Baltic-Finnish and the Baltic cosmonyms mostly coincide, while the Baltic and Slavic ones are different. Baltic-Finnish variants fi nd parallels in texts of the peoples of the Middle Volga. The interpretation of the spots in the Moon as a girl or young woman with water-pails is widespread across all of Northern Eurasia, being also typical of the North American Northwest Coast, the Algonquians to the north of the Great Lakes, and of the Maori. Part of Siberian, North American and Maori texts include a motif of a bush clutched by the person. The interpretation of the Pleiades as a “sieve” can be a variation of an Eurasian image of stars as openings in the sky. The Milky Way as the path of birds is typical of the Balts, Finno-Ugrians, and some Turkic peoples, as well as of the Amur Evenki and the Algonquians. These cosmonyms spread from the East to the West. They are almost completely unknown among the Samoyeds.

Keywords: Cosmonymy, the Pleiades, the Milky Way, lunar spots, Samoyeds, Turks, Siberian peoples, Indians of the North
American Northwest Coast, Algonquians, Salish.