Ковиље, кобиле, Арханђео Михаило и Свети Никола

Abstract

Kovilj, the name of a village and of a neighbouring monastery in southern Bačka apparently derives, in its present form, from the Common Slavic phytonym *kovyl‑ designating the Europaean feather grass (Stipa pennata), but the historical evidence in Hungarian, Turkish and Serbian sources points clearly to a derivation from the zoonym *kobyla, Serbian kobila, ‘mare’. Curiously enough, in the region of Stari Vlah (western Serbia), another monastery called Kovilje is situated at the foothills of a mountain named Kobilje. An additional parallelism between two monasteries consists in both of them being dedicated to the same saint, Archangel Michael, whose name, in the archaic phonetic shape *Mьkovilъ, also might be eponymous of Kovilj(e). Additionally it is suggested that the dedication of a younger church in Kovilje to Saint Nicholas possibly reflects the mingling together of the two hagionyms, that took place in Slavic mouth at an early date (OSerb., Russ. Mikula ʻNicholasʼ, etc.).