Ales Simakou: Indzeitsy, indeitsy, indyiane (indyiany) or indyiantsy?                                       

(webzine “Culture. Nation”, issue 33, April 2024, 114–124, www.sakavik.net)

Abstract. The use of the main words in Belarusian used to name the indigenous people of America (apart from Eskimos and Aleuts) is considered. In addition to the most common form “Indzeitsy” (“Indians”), three more are recorded (and the word “indyitsy” (i. e. East Indians) is also used to denote Indians in Belarusian texts). Forms from the Nasha Niva newspaper testify to this. We give some examples from the works of well-known authors. Sometimes two or more forms occur in the same publication. The adjective “Indian”, applied in a certain text without a noun ethnonym, does not allow us to determine whether “indyiane” or “indyiany” are the author’s choice (“Indian wild” in the manuscript of the poem “Mae koliady” (“My Christmas (Carols)”) by A. Garun (1905) is the first known example with the stem “Ind”). The names “indzeitsy”, “indeitsy” [індэйцы], “indyiane” or “indyiany” and “indyiantsy” do not oppose each other in general, so considering the use of the variants can only be called ironic. But it reflects the influences – primarily Polish and Russian ones – that contributed to the emergence of alternatives. We do not observe a great ideological significance in choosing forms, although in emigration the differences from the “Soviet” basic form are quite emphasized. As a compromise, in addition to the words “indyianin”, “indzeika”, “indyiane”, the words “indzeets” “indyianka”, “indzeitzy” are included in the dictionary of V. Pashkevich, a Canadian Belarusian. The Belarusian – (American) Indian Society made a number of attempts to find out the position of professional linguists, including those at the Institute of Linguistics. Some of them themselves proposed “neologisms”, which did not get accustomed.

Categories: Асьвета, Зьнешнія адносіны, Культура, Нацыя