ZOONYM "BEAR" IN THE MARI FOLK GAMES

The article deals with the traditional Mari games like hide and seek and blind man's buff in which the catching man is called a bear. The distribution area of these games, their seasonal and ritual timing is detected. A previously unpublished material from the manuscript archive of MarSRILLH (YoshkarOla) is introduced.The correspondences to this character in the games of the Finno-Ugric peoples, Turks and Russians of the Ural-Volga region are established. The article includes an analysis of the etymology of the Mari word mask. 'bear', examines the available versions and sets out additional data, including an indication of the correspondence of the Mari bear name (the main dialect forms maska, mas'ka > maska; meska> moska) to Russian dialect words meaning sheep (mas'ka, mis'ka). Such a naming logic is explained by the prohibition of words meaning wild animals and the metonymic shift of semantics (sheep - wool - bear). The structure of the relationship between this Mari zoonym (historical form aba maska 'bear') and the name of a typologically similar character in the Bashkir game - maskai- abei 'grandma glutton' is analyzed.