Златни бор и рујно вино

Abstract

The name of the mountain region in western Serbia Z/atibor, with no records older than 19th century, is usually analysed as an agglutination of z/ati ‘golden’ and bor ‘pine tree’, supposedly designating a local subspecies of Pinus sylvestris. In the second part, one might rather assume the North Slavic meaning ‘(coniferous) forest’ (Czech bor, Polish bor, Russian bor). However, the Slovak parallel Zlaty bor < Latibor points to a paretymological reshaping of the j-possessive from the PN *Ratibor.

The medieval name for the northern part of the Zlatibor region Rujno or Rujna is commonly believed to derive from ruj ‘tanner’s sumac’, which is a South Slavic loanword from Latin rhus, rois (< Gk pods), just as the formulaic expression rujno vino 1s traditionally explained as ‘red’, literally ‘sumac-coloured’ wine. In view of OSerb r'uiste, ruiste ‘rutting place’, Common Slavic *r’ujond (-onb) ‘(deer) rutting season’ > ‘September/October’, from *r’uja ‘rut’ and ultimately *r’uti, revo ‘to roar’ an explanation of Rujno as ‘rutting region’ seems more probable, as well as rujno vino would have been originally an ‘exciting wine’, cf. Serb uzrujati se ‘to get excited’.