Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor, RSPU named after A.I. Herzen, St.Petersburg, Russia [email protected]
Abstract. The Finno-Ugric languages contain many compound in their form plants’ names which include zoosemisms (animals’ names) with the meaning ‛pig’. In these languages it is possible to detect a number of phytonyms simple in their form,  motivated by such zoosemisms. In the article the author studies all these names of plants on the material of the Finno-Permian languages (the branches of the Finno-Ugric languages, excluding the Ugric languages). Most of the names of plants motivated by zoosemisms with meaning ‛pig’ were found in Finnish and Estonian languages. In total we have considered about a hundred of the phytonyms; such names they are absent only in Vepsian language among other Finno-Permian languages, but it may be caused by a lack of dialectal lexical material. Words with the meaning ‛pig’ in the composition of the phytonyms often mark inedibility of the plant or its practical uselessness. In many cases these words are parts of the composition of the plants’ names used to feed pigs. A number of such phytonyms have figurative meanings. Almost all viewed in the article phytonyms are compound in their form and usually consist of two components. The second component often acts as the determinant of an object’s class of a plant’s nomination.
Key words: nomination of plants, phytonymy, phytonyms, zoosemisms, Finno-Ugric languages, Finno-Permian languages, language contacts, pig.