Where do swear words come from in Russian? Where did Russian swearing come from?

Swearing has accompanied Rus' since its inception. Authorities, social formations, culture and the Russian language itself change, but swearing remains unchanged.

Native speech

Almost the entire 20th century was dominated by the version that the words that we call swear words came into the Russian language from the Mongol-Tatars. However, this is a misconception. Swearing is already found in Novgorod birch bark documents dating back to the 11th century: that is, long before the birth of Genghis Khan.

Revolt against matriarchy

The concept of “checkmate” is quite late. From time immemorial in Rus' it was called “barking obscene”. It must be said that initially swear language included exclusively the use of the word “mother” in a vulgar, sexual context. The words denoting the genital organs, which we today refer to swearing, did not refer to “swearing.”

There are a dozen versions of the checkmate function. Some scientists suggest that swearing appeared at the turn of society’s transition from matriarchy to patriarchy and initially meant the authoritative assertion of a man who, having undergone the ritual of copulation with the “mother” of the clan, publicly announced this to his fellow tribesmen.

Dog tongue

True, the previous version does not explain the use of the word “laya”. There is another hypothesis on this score, according to which “swearing” had a magical, protective function and was called “dog tongue.” In the Slavic (and Indo-European in general) tradition, dogs were considered animals of the “afterlife” and served the goddess of death Morena. A dog who served an evil witch could turn into a person (even an acquaintance) and come with evil thoughts (to cast the evil eye, damage, or even kill). So, having sensed something was wrong, Morena’s potential victim should have uttered a protective “mantra”, that is, sent him to “mother”. This was the time when the evil demon, the “son of Morena,” was exposed, after which he had to leave the man alone.

It is curious that even in the 20th century, people retained the belief that “swearing” scares away devils and that swearing makes sense even “for the sake of prevention,” without seeing a direct threat.

Calling the good

As already mentioned, ancient Russian words denoting the reproductive organs began to be classified as “foul language” much later. In the pagan era, these lexemes were commonly used and did not have an abusive connotation. Everything changed with the arrival of Christianity in Rus' and the beginning of the displacement of old “filthy” cults. Sexually charged words were replaced with “Church Slavinisms: copulate, childbearing, penis, etc. In fact, there was a serious rational grain in this taboo. The fact is that the use of the previous “terms” was ritualized and associated with pagan fertility cults, special conspiracies, and calls for good. By the way, the word “good” itself (in the old Slavic - “bolgo”) meant “many” and was used at the beginning precisely in the “agricultural” context.

It took the Church many centuries to reduce agrarian rituals to a minimum, but the “fertile” words remained in the form of “relics”: however, already in the status of curses.

Empress censorship

There is one more word that is unfairly classified today as swearing. For the purposes of self-censorship, let’s call it the “B” word. This lexeme quietly existed in the elements of the Russian language (it can even be found in church texts and official state documents), having the meanings “fornication”, “deception”, “delusion”, “heresy”, “error”. People often used this word to refer to dissolute women. Perhaps during the time of Anna Ioannovna this word began to be used with greater frequency and, probably, in the latter context, because it was this empress who banned it.

"Thief" censorship

As you know, in the criminal, or “thieves”, environment, swearing is strictly taboo. For a carelessly dropped obscene expression, a prisoner may face much more serious punishment than an administrative fine for public obscene language on the outside. Why do the “urkagans” dislike Russian swearing so much? First of all, swearing can pose a threat to “feni” or “thieves’ music.” The keepers of thieves' traditions understand well that if swearing replaces argot, they will subsequently lose their authority, their “uniqueness” and “exclusivity,” and most importantly, the power in prison, the elite of the criminal world - in other words, “lawlessness” will begin. It is curious that criminals (unlike statesmen) understand well what any language reform and borrowing of other people's words can lead to.

Renaissance mate

Today's times can be called a renaissance of swearing. This is facilitated by the boom of social networks, where people have the opportunity to swear publicly. With some reservations, we can talk about the legitimization of obscene language. There is even a fashion for swearing: if previously it was the lot of the lower strata of society, now the so-called intelligentsia, the creative class, the bourgeoisie, women and children also resort to “sweet words”. It is difficult to say what is the reason for such a revival of “barking obscenities”. But we can safely say that this will not increase harvests, matriarchy will not win, and will not drive out demons...

And what Russian doesn’t express himself with strong words? Moreover, many swear words have been translated into foreign languages, but the interesting thing is that there are no full-fledged analogues of Russian swear words in foreign languages and are unlikely to ever appear. Linguists have long calculated that there are no other languages on the planet with as many curse words as in Russian!

In oral form

How and why did swearing appear in the Russian language? Why do other languages do without it? Perhaps someone will say that with the development of civilization, with the improvement of the well-being of citizens in the vast majority of countries on our planet, the need for swearing naturally disappeared? Russia is unique in that these improvements never occurred in it, and swearing in it remained in its virgin, primitive form... It is no coincidence that not a single great Russian writer or poet avoided this phenomenon!

Where did he come to us from?

Previously, a version was spread that swearing appeared in the dark times of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, and before the arrival of the Tatars in Rus', Russians did not swear at all, and when swearing, they called each other only dogs, goats and sheep. However, this opinion is erroneous and is denied by most research scientists. Of course, the invasion of nomads influenced the life, culture and speech of the Russian people. Perhaps such a Turkic word as “baba-yagat” (knight, knight) changed social status and gender, turning into our Baba Yaga. The word "karpuz" (watermelon) turned into a well-fed little boy. But the term “fool” (stop, halt) began to be used to describe a stupid person.

Swearing has nothing to do with the Turkic language, because it was not customary for the nomads to swear, and swear words were completely absent from the dictionary. From Russian chronicle sources (the oldest known examples in birch bark letters of the 12th century from Novgorod and Staraya Russa. See “Obscene vocabulary in birch bark letters.” The specifics of the use of some expressions are commented on in the “Russian-English Dictionary Diary” by Richard James (1618−1619) .) it is known that swear words appeared in Rus' long before the Tatar-Mongol invasion. Linguists see the roots of these words in most Indo-European languages, but they became so widespread only on Russian soil.

Here to stay

So why, out of many Indo-European peoples, did swear words stick only to the Russian language? Researchers also explain this fact by religious prohibitions that other peoples had earlier due to the earlier adoption of Christianity. In Christianity, as in Islam, foul language is considered a great sin. Rus' adopted Christianity later, and by that time, along with pagan customs, swearing was firmly rooted among the Russian people. After the adoption of Christianity in Rus', war was declared on foul language.

The etymology of the word “mat” may seem quite transparent: it supposedly goes back to the Indo-European word “mater” meaning “mother”, which was preserved in various Indo-European languages. However, special studies propose other reconstructions.

So, for example, L.I. Skvortsov writes: “The literal meaning of the word “mate” is “a loud voice, a cry.” It is based on onomatopoeia, that is, involuntary cries of “ma!”, “me!” - mooing, meowing, roaring of animals during estrus, mating calls, etc.” Such an etymology might seem naive if it did not go back to the concept of the authoritative Etymological Dictionary of Slavic Languages: “...Russian mat, - a derivative of the verb “matati” - “shout”, “loud voice”, “cry”, is related to the word “matoga” - “curse”, i.e. grimace, break, (about animals) shake your head, “curse” - disturb, disturb. But “matoga” in many Slavic languages means “ghost, ghost, monster, bogeyman, witch”...

What does it mean?

There are three main swear words and they mean sexual intercourse, male and female genitalia, all the rest are derivatives of these three words. But in other languages, these organs and actions also have their own names, which for some reason did not become dirty words? To understand the reason for the appearance of swear words on Russian soil, researchers looked into the depths of centuries and offered their own version of the answer.

They believe that in the vast territory between the Himalayas and Mesopotamia, in the vast expanses, there lived a few tribes of the ancestors of the Indo-Europeans, who had to reproduce in order to expand their habitat, so great importance was attached to the reproductive function. And words associated with reproductive organs and functions were considered magical. They were forbidden to say “in vain,” so as not to jinx them or cause damage. The taboos were broken by sorcerers, followed by untouchables and slaves for whom the law was not written.

Gradually I developed the habit of using obscenities out of fullness of feelings or just to connect words. Basic words began to acquire many derivatives. Not so long ago, just a thousand years ago, the word denoting a woman of easy virtue, “f*ck,” became one of the swear words. It comes from the word “vomit,” that is, “vomit abomination.”

But the most important swear word is rightfully considered to be the same three-letter word that is found on the walls and fences of the entire civilized world. Let's look at it as an example. When did this three-letter word appear? One thing I will say for sure is that it was clearly not in Tatar-Mongol times. In the Turkic dialect of the Tatar-Mongolian languages, this “object” is denoted by the word “kutah”. By the way, many now have a surname derived from this word and do not consider it at all dissonant: “Kutakhov.”

In the Indo-European base language, which was spoken by the distant ancestors of the Slavs, Balts, Germans and other European peoples, the word “her” meant a goat. This word is related to the Latin "hircus". In modern Russian, the word “harya” remains a related word. Until recently, this word was used to describe goat masks used by mummers during carols.

Thus, we can conclude that swearing arose in ancient times and was associated with pagan rituals. Mat is, first of all, a way to demonstrate readiness to break taboos and cross certain boundaries. Therefore, the theme of curses in different languages is similar - “bottom line” and everything related to the fulfillment of physiological needs. And among Russians this need has always been great. It is possible that even, like no other people in the world...

Don't be confused!

In addition to “corporal curses,” some peoples (mostly French-speaking) have blasphemous curses. The Russians don't have this.

And one more important point - you cannot mix argotisms with swearing, which are absolutely not swearing, but most likely just foul language. As, for example, there are dozens of thieves’ argotisms alone with the meaning “prostitute” in the Russian language: alura, barukha, marukha, profursetka, slut and the like.

Russian obscenities is a system of words that have a negative connotation (curses, name-calling) that are not accepted by the norms of public morality. In other words, swearing is profanity. Where did Russian swearing come from?

Origin of the word "checkmate"

There is a version that the word “checkmate” itself has the meaning of “voice”. But a larger number of researchers are confident that “mat” comes from “mother” and is an abbreviated expression for “swearing,” “sending to mother.”

Origin of Russian swearing

Where did swearing come from in the Russian language?

Firstly, some of the swear words were borrowed from other languages (for example, Latin). There were versions that swearing also came into the Russian language from Tatar (during the Mongol-Tatar invasion). But these assumptions were refuted.
Secondly, most swear words and curses came from the Proto-Indo-European language, as well as Old Slavic. Thus, swearing in the Russian language is still “one’s own”, from the ancestors.

There are also certain versions of the origin of where swear words came from in the Russian language. Here are some of them:

Connected to the earth.
Related to parents.
Associated with the subsidence of the earth, earthquakes.

There is an opinion that the pagan Slavs used many swear words in their rites and rituals to protect themselves from evil forces. This point of view is quite viable. The pagans also used swearing in wedding and agricultural rites. But their swearing did not have any great meaning, especially abusive language.

Lexical composition of Russian swearing

Researchers have noticed that the number of swear words is high. But, if you are more careful, you will notice: the root of the words is often common, only the ending changes or prefixes and suffixes are added. Most words in Russian obscenities are in one way or another connected with the sexual sphere, genitals. It is important that these words have no neutral analogues in the literature. More often they are simply replaced with words with the same meaning, but in Latin. The uniqueness of Russian swearing is its richness and diversity. This can be said about the Russian language in general.

Russian swearing in a historical aspect

Since Christianity was adopted in Rus', decrees have appeared regulating the use of swear words. This, of course, was an initiative on the part of the church. In general, in Christianity, swearing is a sin. But the curse managed to penetrate so deeply into all segments of the population that the measures taken were completely ineffective.

Twelfth-century charters contain swear words in the form of rhymes. Swearing was used in various notes, ditties, and letters. Of course, many words that have now become obscene previously had a softer meaning. According to fifteenth-century sources, there were a large number of swear words, which were even used to call rivers and villages.

After a couple of centuries, swearing became very widespread. Mat finally became “obscene” in the eighteenth century. This is due to the fact that during this period there was a separation of the literary language from the spoken language. In the Soviet Union, the fight against swearing was carried out very stubbornly. This was expressed in penalties for foul language in public places. However, this was rarely carried out in practice.

Today in Russia they are also fighting against swearing, especially on television and in the media.

Sidorov G.A. about the origin of Russian swearing.

Origin of Russian swearing. Magazine Life is Interesting.

There are a lot of myths around Russian swearing that do not correspond to reality. For example, Russian linguists and historians have spread two myths about swearing: that Russians began to swear in response to the “Tatar-Mongol yoke” and that swearing is supposedly “a product of Slavic paganism.”

Our ancestors divided some words into:
1. Swear words are words from the mother, i.e. her blessing!
2. Swear words are words used on the battlefield to intimidate the enemy!
3. Foul language is the very bad thing you shouldn’t say!
All these points were reduced by the enemies of our Race to one thing and now mean the same thing, that is, bad words!

A lot has been written about the dangers of swearing. A long time ago I read an article by one writer, I no longer remember his name. He attacked the mat with noble anger. For a long time and convincingly he proved how disgusting and disgusting this was. In conclusion, he cited the only case of the usefulness of swearing known to him.

I will retell this incident too. A freight train is traveling, but it is carrying people. I don’t remember why, but there was a man on the other side of the carriage. He is holding on with all his strength. It's about to fall off and die. The men in the carriage are trying to open the door and get him in. But the door is jammed and it won’t budge. The men are already exhausted and have mentally come to terms with the loss, but they continue to fiddle around. And then the unexpected happened.

A modest, quiet girl will shout: “Oh, you guys, fuck you! Anu got it!” And a miracle happened. Wild strength was revealed in men. The muscles tensed in one impulse, the door flew off, and the man was saved. Then they asked the girl how she decided to say such a thing. And she blushed, looked down and couldn’t utter a word out of shame.

Here the author hit the nail on the head, without even suspecting it. The point is that the mat is designed for exceptional cases. In Russia, swear words are also called swear words. Here you are standing on the battlefield, wounded, exhausted and, staggering, leaning on your sword. And your enemies are attacking you. For them and even for you, the outcome of the meeting is obvious. But you raise your head, look at them for a long time and say: “Well, come here, damn it, so get over you!!” And a miracle happens. A wild power is revealed in you. And your sword whistled like the blades of a helicopter, and the heads of your enemies rolled with an astonished expression on their faces. Then you yourself are surprised. This is what a mat is, this is why it is needed.

Our ancestors knew and understood the power of swearing very well. They carried it for centuries, and maybe even millennia, but they were not fools. Mat is exactly what is needed in emergency, critical situations. The ban creates a reserve of energy, like a battery, or more precisely, like a capacitor. Because the battery releases energy slowly, and the capacitor discharges instantly. This burst of energy works wonders. Any nation, people and even tribe have forbidden words, words that are tabooed. This is a common property of people, or more precisely, a property of a community of people. Fighting this property is as stupid as creating a new person. Why is Russian swearing so developed? Yes, because our history is difficult. Who knows, maybe thanks to swearing they survived and survived as a people.

To combat swearing, they propose to introduce swear words into everyday use and stop considering them swear words. And that will be? Here's what. You stand on the battlefield, wounded, exhausted and staggeringly leaning on your sword. And your enemies are attacking you. For them and even for you, the outcome of the meeting is obvious. But you raise your head, look at them for a long time and say: “Well, come on, damn it, so get over you. And then do the same again.” But a miracle does not happen. There is no longer any energy in these words. These words sound like: the weather has turned bad. You don't have a hidden reserve. And they take you lukewarm and rape your wife in front of your eyes, and take your children into slavery. Reducing swear words to ordinary ones discharges the people, making them sluggish and flabby.

MYTHS AND TRUTH ABOUT RUSSIAN MATE

In fact, the Slavs never swear. Including Belarusians and Ukrainians, as well as Poles, before the Russian occupation of 1795, the worst curses were only “curva” (corrupt girl) and “cholera” (disease). Neither Kievan Rus, nor the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, nor the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth have preserved a single document with obscenities and not a single order from the authorities on the fight against swearing, although in Muscovy there is a huge abundance of such documents.

If it were not for the Russian occupation, then Belarusians (Litvins), Ukrainians and Poles would not be swearing today. Today, however, Poles still hardly swear, and Slovaks and Czechs do not swear at all.

And this is quite normal, because most peoples of the world do not know swear words - just as the Slavs, Balts, Romans, and Germans did not know them. Their sexual vocabulary is extremely poor (compared to Russian), and many languages do not use sexual themes at all when using foul language. For example, the French “con” conveys the name of both the male and female genital organs with different articles, and the limit of foul language in the French is to simply call the opponent with this word. And only in the English language and only at the beginning of the twentieth century, and only in the USA, did the curse “mother fucker” appear, which has no analogue in Europe, and which was a copy of Russian obscenities - it was introduced into the US language by emigrants from Russia (see. V. Butler “The Origin of Jargon in the USA”, 1981, New York).

Thus, swearing is not at all a “product of Slavic paganism,” for the pagan Slavs did not swear.

The statement that “in ancient Rus' they swore” is also a myth. In Kievan Rus, no one swore - they only swore in Muscovy, but it was not Russia.

Historians find the first mention of the strange habit of Muscovites to use obscenities in 1480, when Prince Vasily III, along with Prohibition, demanded that Muscovites stop swearing. Then Ivan the Terrible ordered to “click on the auction” so that the Muscovites “would not swear and would not reproach each other with all sorts of obscene and nasty speeches.”

Then the German traveler Olearius, who arrived in Muscovy, noted with regret the wide prevalence of swearing: “Little children, who do not yet know how to name either God, or mother, or father, already have obscene words on their lips.”
In 1648, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich conceived the idea of “getting rid of the infection” and gave a royal decree so that “they should not sing demonic songs, swear, or use any obscene barking... And if people teach someone to scold someone with swearing and all sorts of barking - and to those people for such opposite Christian law for the fury of being from Us in great disgrace and cruel punishment."

Moscow priest Yakov Krotov notes:

“Throughout the 17th and most of the 18th centuries, Muscovy was calm about swearing. A simple example: near the Savinno-Storozhevsky Zvenigorod Monastery, located three kilometers from Zvenigorod, a stream flows, and in all scribe books, starting from the end of the 16th century, when the first one was compiled, scribes quite normally recorded the name of this stream flowing through the land that belonged to the monastery. The first letter was "p", the second half ended in "omoy". Who came here to wash from Zvenigorod, several kilometers away? Not quite clear. But, one way or another, at the end of the 18th century, when the general survey of Russia was carried out, the compilation of a complete map of the Russian Empire, by decree of Catherine the Great, all names that contained obscene language, obscene roots, were replaced with more euphonious ones. Since then this Zvenigorod stream has also been renamed.”

Until now, on the maps of Muscovy-Russia there were thousands of toponyms and hydronyms created on the basis of swear words.

There was nothing like this at that time either in Belarus-Lithuania or in Rus'-Ukraine then - the people there did not know curse words.

This circumstance could seemingly be explained by the fact that the Belarusians and Ukrainians were never under the Horde, and the Muscovites lived in the Horde for three hundred years, and then seized power in it, annexing the Horde to Muscovy. After all, Soviet historians used to think so: that the Muscovites’ curses were supposedly their response to the “Tatar-Mongol yoke.”

For example, Vladimir Kantor, a fiction writer and member of the editorial board of the Russian journal Voprosy filosofii, recently wrote:

“But in Russia, during the Tatars, the word “eble” appeared, which is a derivative for us, Russian people, understandably, associated with defamation of the mother and so on, in Turkic it simply meant to get married. The Tatar, capturing the girl, said that he was “eble” her, that is, he was taking her. But for any Russian commoner whose daughter, wife, or sister was taken away, he committed violence against a woman, and as a result, this word absolutely acquired the character of rape. What are swear words? This is the language of the raped, that is, of that lower layer who always feels outside the zone of action of high culture and civilization, humiliated, insulted, raped. And like any raped slave, he is ready to use this violence against his comrade, and if it works out, of course, against a noble one.”

At first glance, the version seems foldable. However, she is wrong.

Firstly, the current Tatars of Kazan (then Bulgars) were just like that “languishing from the Tatar yoke” (for Kazan was equally a vassal of the Tatars, like Moscow), but for some reason they did not give birth to any curses to the world.

Secondly, the Tatars of the Horde were not Turks, but were a mixture of Turkic and Finno-Ugric tribes. For this reason, they annexed the Finns of Suzdal-Muscovy (Mordovians, Moksha, Erzya, Murom, Merya, Chud, Meshchera, Perm) to the Horde and sought to unite all the Finno-Ugric peoples who left the Volga for Europe, including those who reached Hungary, the people which they considered “ours by right.”

Thirdly, there was no “Tatar yoke”. Moscow paid only a tax to the Tatars (half of which it kept for itself for the labor of collecting it - which is how it rose) and sent its Moscow army to serve in the army of the Horde. It never happened that the Tatars captured Muscovy girls as wives - these are modern inventions. They were captured as slaves during wars, but in the same way, hundreds of thousands of Slavs were captured as slaves by the Muscovites themselves (for example, 300 thousand Belarusians were captured by the Muscovites as slaves in the war of 1654-1657). But a slave is not a wife.

Generally speaking, this whole version of Vladimir Kantor is “sucked up” only on two dubious grounds: the presence in the Turkic language of the word “eble” (to marry) and the myth about the notorious “Tatar yoke”. This is very little, especially since other main swear words in the Russian language remain without explanation. How were they formed?

Although I must note that this hypothesis of Cantor is already a kind of breakthrough in the topic, because earlier Soviet historians generally wrote that the Muscovites simply adopted swear words from the Tatar-Mongols, they say they taught the Muscovites to swear. However, there are no obscenities in either the Turkic language or the Mongolian language.

So, there are two serious circumstances that completely refute Cantor’s hypothesis about the origin of one of the Russian mats from the Turkic word “eble” (to marry).

1. Excavations by academician Valentin Yanin in Novgorod led in 2006 to the discovery of birch bark letters with mats. They are much older than the arrival of the Tatars in the Suzdal principality. Which puts a BOLD CROSS on the general attempt of historians to link the obscenities of the Muscovites with the language of the Tatars (Turkic).

Moreover, these mats on the birch bark letters of Novgorod are adjacent to elements of Finnish vocabulary - that is, the people who wrote them were not Slavs (colonists encouraged by Rurik, who sailed from Polabye and built Novgorod here), but local semi-Slavicized colonists of Rurik, Finns (or Sami, or miracle, all, muromoy).

2. There is another people in Europe, besides the Muscovites, who have been swearing for a thousand years - and with the SAME RUSSIAN cuss words.

These are Hungarians.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF RUSSIAN MATES

For the first time, Russian historians learned about the Hungarian mats quite recently - and were extremely surprised: after all, the Hungarians are not Slavs, but Finno-Ugrians. And they were not under any “Tatar-Mongol yoke,” for they left the Volga for Central Europe centuries before the birth of Genghis Khan and Batu. For example, Moscow researcher of the topic Evgeny Petrenko is extremely discouraged by this fact and admits in one of his publications that “this completely confuses the issue of the origin of Russian obscenities.”

In fact, this does not confuse the question, but rather provides a complete answer.

The Hungarians have been using mats absolutely similar to those of Muscovy since the time they came to Europe from the Volga.

It is clear that Cantor’s hypothesis about the origin of one of the Russian mats from the Turkic word “eble” (to marry) is in no way applicable to the Hungarians, because the Turks did not force their girls to marry. And there are no Turks around the Hungarians in Central Europe.

Evgeniy Petrenko notes that the Serbian swear expression “ebene sluntse in pichku” appeared historically recently - only 250 years ago, and was adopted by the Serbs from the Hungarians during the period when Serbia came from the Turkish yoke to the rule of Austria-Hungary under Empress Maria Theresa. The Hungarian chronicles of the Middle Ages are filled with such obscenities that did not exist anywhere else and among no one else around (Slavs, Austrians, Germans, Italians, etc., including Turks). They were then carried to the Serbs by the Hungarian colonial administration, the Hungarian army and the Hungarian aristocracy.

Why are the Hungarians’ swear words absolutely identical to the Muscovite swear words?

There can be only one answer: THESE ARE FINNO-UGRIAN MATS.

Let me remind you that Hungarians, Estonians, Finns and Russians are one and the same Finnish ethnic group. The Russians, however, were partly Slavicized by the priests of Kyiv, who instilled Orthodoxy among them. But studies of the gene pool of the Russian nation, conducted in 2000-2006 by the Russian Academy of Sciences (which we previously described in detail), showed that in terms of genes, Russians are absolutely identical to the Finnish ethnic group: Mordovians, Komi, Estonians, Finns and Hungarians.

Which should not be surprising, since all of Central Russia (historical Muscovy) is the land of the Finnish peoples, and all its toponyms are Finnish: Moscow (of the Moksha people), Ryazan (of the Erzya people), Murom (of the Murom people), Perm (of the Perm people) etc.

The only “blank spot” remains the question of the ancient presence of mats in Estonia and Finland. Judging by the fact that the birch bark letters of Novgorod with mats could most likely be written by the Sami (and not the Chud or Muroma), who also inhabited Estonia and Finland, the Estonians and Finns too must have had mats since ancient times. This nuance needs clarification.

On the other hand, in the Finno-Ugric ethnic groups, it was the Ugrians who could have given birth to mats. That is, the Hungarians and those who remained to live in the lands of the future Muscovy are related peoples to them. The Ugric group of languages today includes only the Hungarian language and the Ob-Ugric Khanty and Mansi. In the past, this group was much more powerful, including, presumably, the Pecheneg people, who went with the Hungarians to Central Europe and along the way settled widely over the Crimea and in the steppes of the Don (they were allegedly exterminated by the Tatars). In Muscovy itself, the main ethnic group was the Mordovian ethnic group Moksha (Moksel in its language), which gave the name to the river Moksva (Moks Moksha + Va water), changed in the Kiev language to the more euphonious “Moscow” for the Slavs. And the Erzya ethnic group (with the capital Erzya and the state Great Erzya, later changed to Ryazan). In the Perm group of Komi and Udmurts, the state of Great Permia stood out. All this is the historical territory of the original distribution of mats.

Thus, the very term “Russian swearing” is absurd. For they are not Russians at all (in the understanding of Rus' as the Kievan State), but Finnish. Those who remained in the language of the native Finnish population of Muscovy as subjects of their pre-Slavic language.

ESSENCE OF MATES

What is the essence of Russian obscenities?

It is clear that Russian researchers of the issue have always been confused by the fact that the Russians have mats, while the Slavs and other Indo-Europeans do not have them at all. Therefore, in this matter, Russians have always, under the shadow of some kind of “inferiority complex,” instead of scientific consideration, tried to justify themselves or “make amends.” They tried to drag the Slavs into swearing - they say, this is Slavic paganism. But it didn’t work out - because the Slavs never swear, and the Russians are not Slavs. They tried to show that Russian obscenities were invented for a reason, but in response to the yoke of the Tatars. And it didn’t work out: the Hungarians had exactly the same mats, but they didn’t have any “Tatar yoke”.

In fairness, it should be said that the Russians are truly an unfortunate people of the former Finnish ethnic groups, whose fate over the last thousand years has been simply terrible.

At first, he was conquered as a slave by the younger princes of Kyiv, who simply did not get their principalities in the Rus of Kyiv. Since there were no Slavs here in future Muscovy, the princes and their squads treated the local Finnish population as slaves. It was the Kyiv princes who introduced serfdom (that is, slave ownership) in Muscovy, which was wild in Kyiv in relation to the peasants of their ethnic group. Let me remind you that neither in Ukraine nor in Belarus-Lithuania there was ever serfdom before the Russian occupation of 1795, and besides Muscovy, serfdom existed in Europe only in one place - in Prussia, where, in exactly the same way, the Germans made local foreign Prussians slaves and local Slavs.

Then these Finnish lands enslaved by Kievan Rus fell under the rule of the Horde of Trans-Volga Tatars, whose capital was located near present-day Volgograd. They created the Empire of the Turks and Finno-Ugric peoples, so mentally the Suzdal lands were drawn to the Horde, and not to the Indo-European Rus of Kyiv and Lithuania-Belarus of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the country of the Western Balts). Moreover, the princely elite of the lands of the future Muscovy found in the Horde a very successful justification for their slave-holding power over the local Finnish population: Eastern traditions elevated rulers to the rank of God, which the Europeans never had, including Byzantium and the Russian Orthodox Church of Kiev, which baptized Rus'.

These two main arguments turned Muscovy away from Rus' and Kyiv forever and created a new eastern type of state - a complete satrapy.

Therefore, the Finno-Russians (Muscovites) had every reason to swear at everyone: they lived freely only in their national Finnish states (of which only Finnish place names remained) until the arrival of the Kyiv enslavers. And then came a thousand years of complete slavery: first, slavery as part of Kievan Rus, then the same slavery, but when the Tatar enslavers were sitting on top of the Kiev enslavers, and then the enslavers began to be called “Moscow Sovereigns.” Until 1864 (the abolition of serfdom), the people remained in the state of enslaved natives, that is, slaves, and the aristocracy despised them with the same degree of contempt as the British and French despised the African blacks they conquered in the 19th century.

Yes, from such a thousand-year oppression of Kievan Rus, the Horde and then Muscovy-Russia, there is enough hatred in the Finnish people to give birth to obscenities - like native slang of foul language towards the oppressors.

But... We see that these mats existed among the Finno-Ugrians even before their enslavement by their neighbors from the West and the East. And they exist among the Hungarians, who very successfully escaped from the Volga to Europe, avoiding the fate of their fellow tribesmen.

This means that the mats of the Finno-Ugric peoples did not originate as a response to their enslavers, but as something internal, purely primordial and without any external influence. Because the Finno-Ugric people ALWAYS swore.

Some researchers express the following point of view: swearing is part of some mystical culture, in a series of conspiracies or curses. Including some (A. Filippov, S.S. Drozd) find that a number of obscene curses essentially mean not something offensive, but a wish for death. For example, going to “n...”, as they write, means the desire to go to where you were born, that is, to leave life again into oblivion.

Is it so? I doubt.

Did the Finno-Ugric peoples in the past, during the era of the birth of swearing, have such a mystical culture in which sexual themes of swearing would be used? Personally, it’s hard for me to imagine this. Yes, sexual themes are present among all ancient peoples - but as symbols of fertility. But in our case we are talking about something completely different. And there is simply no “mystical culture” or “pagan cults” here.

It seems to me that the Moscow priest Yakov Krotov finds the essence of the obscenities most correctly:

“One of the modern Orthodox publicists, Abbot Veniamin Novik, published several articles against foul language, against swearing. In these articles, he emphasizes that swearing is associated with materialism. There is a kind of play on words here, with dialogue. “Why should release, and swearing, foul language, this is often justified as an emotional release, have to happen,” writes Abbot Veniamin, “at the expense of other people? A swearer certainly needs someone to hear him. Swearing is, first of all, a symptom evolutionary underdevelopment. Biologists know that in the animal world there is a pronounced connection between aggressiveness and sexuality, and some “especially gifted” (hegumen Veniamin writes sarcastically) individuals use their genitals to intimidate the enemy. And some no less gifted representatives of the homo sapiens family do this "It's the same verbally. Exhibitionists are just more consistent." This is a refutation of foul language and a rebuff to it from the position of a modern, well-educated person.”

Exactly.

The Indo-Europeans did not swear because their ancestral ethnic group was formed as more progressive and excluded in communication the ape habits of “using your genitals to intimidate the enemy.” But the ancestral ethnic group of the Finno-Ugrians, who are not Indo-Europeans, was formed in a different way - and used monkey habits.

That's the whole difference: Russians and Hungarians swear because they are not Indo-Europeans. And because their ancestors developed differently than the Indo-Europeans - in a completely different cultural environment.

Moreover, the use of swear words in communication necessarily retrospectively means that in the distant past the ancestors of Russians and Hungarians used these swear words as an illustration of ACTIONS - that is, the Finno-Ugric people used to show their genitals to their opponent as a SIGN OF INSULT. And various other indecent ACTIONS.

Does it seem wild? But this is no more savage than the very fact of almost COMPLETE approval of obscenities in Russia - primarily by cultural figures. How, for example, should one react to such statements: GALINA ZHEVNOVA, editor-in-chief of the joint editorial office of Gubernskie Izvestia, shares with readers: “I have a positive attitude towards swearing. Russian people have two ways of letting off steam. The first is vodka, the second is swearing. Let it be better to swear.”

Why don’t other nations have “ways to let off steam” only in the form of vodka and swearing? And why is swearing “better” than vodka?

WHAT IS MAT BETTER THAN VODKA?

In Russia they don’t understand that swearing destroys the foundations of Society. Swearing, being an animal behavior of “using one’s genitals to intimidate the enemy,” is already antisocial. But swearing has evolved compared to animals: the very name “swearing” means an insult to the opponent’s mother in sexual violence on the part of the speaker. What animals don't have.

For Finno-Ugric peoples (Russians and Hungarians), this is perhaps their own normal local traditional form of communication. But for Indo-Europeans this is unacceptable.

Each of us was a child and knows that all sorts of nasty things easily penetrate into children's brains. Likewise, the swear words of the Hungarians and Russians were introduced into Europe not through our adult Europeans, but through children who had contact with the children of these peoples who spoke swear words. This fact alone shows that swearing enters the minds of people through the corruption of our children and, in essence, differs little from child pornography or the corruption of minors.

Let them always use obscenities in Russia. But why should we be like them? Our ancestors did not know these foreign obscenities.

It is very bad when sexual education of children begins with their knowledge of obscenities and their meaning. This is exactly what happened to me: teenagers taught me swear words and explained their meaning - they were the discoverers for me of the mystery of the relationship between a man and a woman - through swear words.

This is fine? This is absolutely abnormal.

Therefore, the opinion of the editor of a Russian newspaper that swearing is better than vodka seems completely erroneous. Our children don’t drink vodka at the age of 10, but learn swearing. For what?

Russian publicists say with pride and joy that Russian obscenities completely replace any transmission of thoughts and concepts. Olga Kvirkvelia, the head of the Russian educational Christian center “Faith and Thought”, a Catholic, said about swearing in a Radio Liberty program in February 2002: “In principle, swearing is like a good swearing, real, not the street one that we hear today, it’s just a sacred language with which you can really tell absolutely everything. I became interested in swearing when I accidentally heard in the Novgorod region, in a village, how my grandmother explained to my grandfather how to plant cucumbers. There were only non-obscene pretexts, which is understandable perfectly. She didn’t swear, she very kindly, very friendly explained how to plant cucumbers correctly. This is a language that, unfortunately, we have practically lost and turned into something vulgar, disgusting, vile and bad. Actually this is not true. And this reflects very deep layers of consciousness.”

I'm shocked. Why can’t grandma talk normally about planting cucumbers in normal human terms, but replaces them all with sexual terms? Olga Kvirkvelia sees this in “sacred language.” What is “sacred” about it, besides the animal display of its genitals?

She also says that “This is a language that, unfortunately, we have practically lost.” It turns out that the Finno-Ugric language of Russians and Hungarians is the language of complete obscenities, where all concepts are replaced by them?

Unfortunately, everything bad and nasty tends to spread around like a disease. So Russia brought its obscenities to the neighboring peoples it conquered: Belarusians, Ukrainians, Balts, Caucasians, peoples of Central Asia, who speak their own language, but insert Finnish obscenities every other word. Thus, Finnish “sacred words” became the everyday vocabulary of distant Uzbeks. Moreover, they began to swear in the USA - already in English, and it is quite normal in the film “Police Academy” to see a plot, the action of which takes a long time to unfold against the background of an inscription written in Russian on a telephone booth from the familiar three letters “x..”. Who wrote it there? Yankees?

But there is nothing like this anywhere else in the world: writing obscenities on the walls. And even Vysotsky noticed: in public French toilets there are inscriptions in Russian. Writing obscenities on a wall is tantamount to the animal behavior of displaying your genitals. This is what the “sacred” eastern neighbors do, like monkeys. This is the exhibitionism of our eastern neighbor.

Is this the norm of behavior for us Europeans, including Belarusians and Ukrainians? Of course not, because we cannot express anything sacred, that is, sacred, simply because our ancestors did not know curse words. These swear words are foreign and alien to us.

Our European languages have enough means to express any concept without obscenities, just as there are no obscenities in the works of Lev Tolstoy. He did not use the “sacred language”, but created literary masterpieces of world culture and the Russian language. Which already means that the Russian language will not lose anything without these obscenities. But he will only get richer

Attention attention! This article will contain obscene language(after all, how can you write about the history of swearing without it?). Therefore, for those with a delicate mental structure and those who may be offended, please just walk nearby and under no circumstances press the “Read in full” button. And everyone else - welcome to our next journey along the paths of history, and the topic of today's historical research will be such a difficult (or maybe, on the contrary, mega simple) thing as obscenities (aka swearing, swearing, obscene language, “strong words” and others like them ), where they came from, their history, origin and even sacred meaning... Oh yes, sacred meaning, because swearing is not just all sorts of “dirty words” or vulgar language, for some, swearing is a kind of poetry, an integral component of speech, writing, maybe even a sacred mantra.

Of course, we are talking more about the great and powerful Russian language, because it is no secret that swearing is an integral “cultural” property of Russian speech, this gives rise to some Ukrainians even making witty jokes about it.

But be that as it may, swearing is present not only in the Russian language, but also in many different languages around the world: English, Spanish, Polish, Magyar and many others. (It would be interesting to listen to, say, how Eskimos swear, or how swearing sounds in sophisticated French or other languages). It seems that obscenities, these dirty words, are written and sealed somewhere deep in the wilds of our common collective subconscious - “ Having pinched his fingers, the plumber Ivanov, as always, wanted to talk about the terrible pain that tormented all the nerve endings of his swollen fingers and how his delicate and sensitive nature was suffering, but as always, only a short “Fuck your mother!” ».

But still, whatever one may say, Russian swear words are the most colorful, poetic, as the famous Russian humorist Mikhail Zadornov (whom I love very much) once beautifully said: “Only a Russian person can swear at a sunset.” And this is true, for some Russians swearing is not just swearing, (as is the case primarily for all other nations) for them it is often a way of self-expression, internal expression, even admiration. And there is something so otherworldly and magical about this, as if when swearing a person is saying a certain magical formula, spell, mantra.

But let's finally turn to history: there are several different versions about the origin of swearing. According to the most common of them: in ancient times, our ancestors did not swear, but came to the mats along with the Mongol-Tatar horde. Although, as for me, this version is complete nonsense, because the same English or Spaniards are also not exactly fond of swearing, but no Mongol-Tatars came to them. The question also arises: where did the Mongol-Tatars come from and whether different ancient peoples in ancient civilizations had it, say, did they swear in Sumer, Ancient Egypt or Greece? There is no clear answer to this question, since there have been no written references with obscene words since then. But, nevertheless, this does not mean that the ancient Egyptians or Babylonians did not swear, maybe they did. (I think that if some simple Egyptian fisherman from those times, who was suddenly grabbed by a crocodile from the Nile in one place, at that moment he was not reciting sacred mantras, but was winging the crocodile with a real ten-story obscenity, but who knows...?) But of course , obscenities were not written on clay tablets and were not carved on the lids of Egyptian tombs or sarcophagi, in a word - censorship! (already)

Another version of the origin of the mat looks more plausible - they came to us (and at the same time to the whole of Europe) along with nomadic tribes (those strong guys on horses who at one time destroyed the great one). The Huns themselves (more precisely, some tribes), who first lived in Asia, long ago worshiped monkeys, considering them sacred animals (hello to Charles Darwin). It’s the monkeys who are to blame for the fact that people started swearing, because basically all swearing is associated with the genitals and sexual intercourse, and if we observe the behavior of monkeys, say chimpanzees, we will notice that male chimpanzees demonstrate their strength and superiority over their rivals and generally securing leadership status, often demonstrate their genitals or even imitate a sexual act. And the ancient Huns, following their sacred animals - monkeys, took and adopted their monkey customs into their everyday life - often showing their genitals to their enemies before battle (probably to scare them). Although not only the Huns did this, I remembered how in the film “Braveheart” the Scottish warriors showed off their bare asses before the battle with the British.

And from non-verbal customs, verbal ones have already emerged, and the meaning of some obscenities can be discussed a lot not only by all sorts of philologists and historians, but also by psychologists. For example, the popular swearing message “fuck you” (I warned you that there would be obscene language) - that is, to the male reproductive organ, puts the one who was sent, as if in a female sexual position, which means the loss of his masculine strength and dignity. Thus, the ancient Huns and later other barbarian tribes, sending their opponents to those same obscene three letters, tried to inflict a kind of damage on them, to deprive them of their male strength, so that they could easily later win and overcome them in battle. And without any doubt, the ancient Huns (if they brought the mats) invested them with enormous sacred meaning and magical power (though sometimes in a negative sense).

And finally, the most interesting version of the origin of swearing, according to which from ancient times they spontaneously arose in our Rus' (and not only among us, but also among other peoples) and at first they were not bad, “dirty” words, but quite the contrary - sacred mantras! So, precisely with sacred pagan mantras, which symbolized primarily fertility. And fertility, in turn, was associated with various erotic rituals, it’s just that our distant pagan ancestors believed that human eroticism and sexuality could also affect natural fertility, which gives a good harvest (after all, everything is interconnected, and what is above is not so below is it?). By the way, among the numerous Slavic gods, all these Peruns, Dazhbogs and Svarogs, there was one god named Ebun (by the way, then it was not a bad word at all) about whom for some reason historians and religious scholars do not actively remember (maybe they are embarrassed ?)

And the common swear words themselves, if you think about it, reflect nothing more than the symbolic structure of our universe: the first is the very word of three letters, the masculine active principle, the second is the feminine, passive principle, and the third is the process of their active interaction (by the way not only here, but also in all other languages, for example, the most popular English swear word “to fuck” in different variations, just means the active interaction of the masculine and feminine principles). It turns out to be a real yin and yang, a continuous renewal of life through the unity of opposites. And it is not surprising that in ancient times these words were attributed with real magical meanings and properties and used as amulets (and not as abuse).

With the advent of Christianity, of course, all pagan erotic cults were leveled, and obscenities also fell into disgrace, which from sacred pagan mantras and “words of power” turned into dirty words. So everything was turned upside down, turned upside down. It is interesting that some people intuitively feel the power of swearing and do not hesitate to actively use them, including on the Internet (just look at the mega-popular blog on the Russian Internet, Lebedev’s Topics). What do you think about using a mat?

In conclusion, a good esoteric anecdote:

Nicholas Roerich travels through Tibet, looking for the mystical city of Shambhala, the abode of highest wisdom. A year, two, three, but she feels that she is getting closer. And so he climbs the mountain, finds a descent into a cave there, goes down it all day and comes out into a huge hall. Thousands of Buddhist monks stand in rows along the walls, chanting the “ommm” mantra, and in the middle of the cave is a huge lingam, 30 meters high, made from a single piece of jade.
And a quiet voice sounds in Roerich’s ear:
- Nikolai?
- Yes!
- Roerich?
- Yes!
- Do you remember how on November 17, 1914, at the corner of Nevsky and Gorokhovaya, you were sent to hell by a cab driver?
- Well, yes …
- Congratulations, you have arrived!