The study of written monuments of the XVI-XVII centuries gives reason to believe that the geographical term ruchey has become quite widespread on the territory of the Oka-Don Plain, for example, in Kashirsky uyezd the word ruchey is found as a synonym for the river: "For Stepan, yes for Ondrey, yes for Grishey for the Fyodorov fields Zvyagitsa Zherebey ash. Mikhailova on Konishchevsky creek; arable land is good. Lands of 60 chetya" (Scribal books of the Moscow state. Ed. Kalacheva N. V. St. Petersburg, 1852-1895. Here and further italics in quotations are ours). In Kolomenskoye Uyezd, the stream has a similar meaning.: "Kust., that was der., Kurtsova, on the stream on the Flask: arable land ser. Land lane 30 chetya, and lane t bush grew"; " Villages, that was der., Kochetykova, on the stream on Chorny mud: arable land lane (and) forest grew in the stake and in the pole 35 even numbers in the field"; " Der. Pronyaeva, on a stream', arable land hood. Land 7 chetya with poluosm, yes lane 13 chetya without poluosm" (Ibid.). Obviously, the stream is used in the same meaning in other monuments: Krasny Brook, Korotkiy Brook, Dolgiy Kolodets Brook, Kolodez Brook in the Fast Pine basin, Dorobin Kolodets brook in the upper reaches of the Beautiful Mecha River, Dorobin Kolodez brook in the basin of Fast Pine, Gornaya stream in the basin of the Ugra River.

The stream has a different meaning on the Ryazan land, in the basin of the Oka River: "... and from the elm the old-timers led up the river along the Koveri and led to the source of the kruchai, and that stream flows from the Savina swamp, the hand fell into the same river in the Carpet "(Monuments of Russian writing. Ryazan Region). Here the term ruchey is used with the contextual synonym istochin and in a special phonetic design: not a stream , but a stream. The ruchai form is also found in other monuments.

I. I. Sreznevsky gave a number of examples with the word ruchay: ruchay Lybed in Kiev, ruchay Tuneg in the Suzdal region, ruchay (without a name) in the charter of the Belozersky monastery, in the bill of sale of 1453 and mezhevoy of 1504, etc. He also collected cases of using the word brook from written monuments of the XV-XVI centuries, but their geography is different. He also witnessed the form of a stream in monuments belonging to the north-western regions, and a stream - in such monuments as the Lavrentievskaya and Suzdal chronicles (Sreznevsky I. I. Materials for the Dictionary of the Old Russian Language, St. Petersburg, 1912, Vol. III).

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During the XII-XVIII centuries, the semantic content of the term brook was close to the meaning of the term river, which is due to the similarity of the designated realities. This should also explain the lack of clarity of the hydrographic criterion in determining the differences between a river and a stream, and the frequent contextual convergence of terms in monuments.

The Russian literary language retains the differential use of the terms river and stream, which denote various hydrographic objects and differ primarily in size, although approximate.

V. I. Dahl gave an interpretation of this term in the article "Hand", obviously connecting their semantics: ruchevina, ruchevinka (with the northern litter), ruchevina, ruchevina, ruchyazhina (with the Pskov litter), rucheina, rucheek, rucheechek, rucheishka, while highlighting a number of basic meanings: "a small stream of water, from a spring or swamp; a small river that dries up in some places in summer; no more than a fathom wide - a stream, and wider-a river" (Dal V. I. Explanatory dictionary of the living Great Russian language, Vol. IV).

M. Fasmer believed that the convergence of this term with the words hand, sleeve is erroneous. The author of the etymological dictionary associated this word with the Bulgarian rukvam, rukna in the sense of "I flow out, I beat with a stream". He also did not exclude the connection with the root *roc - "fast", as proof of which he cited the same root words from other languages: "Czech. ruci "fast", ruce, adverb., Polish. raczy-the same V.-luzh. ruce" (Fasmer M. Etymological Dictionary of the Russian language, vol. III).

E. M. Murzaev gave two explanations: scientific and popular. In the first case, the stream was considered as a "skinny watercourse", perhaps, and intermittently flowing, fed by atmospheric precipitation or spring waters. A stream, as a popular term, is polysemantic and has several meanings: 1) "source"; 2)" channel"," strait"; 3)" small river"; 4)" swampy hollow"; 5)"wet, wet valley".

The word brook dates back to the Common Slavic time. It lives in Bulgarian and Czech, but only as "archaic" or, as indicated by the Czech-Russian dictionary, "poetic" (Travnicek Vasa. Slovnik jazyka ceskeho, 1946). In Belarusian, Polish and, more rarely, in Ukrainian, the form ruchay is recorded.

In the Czech language *ruci, ruce "fast", the Polish term raczy and Upper Lusatian ruce have the same meaning. In the monograph of R.N. Malko "Geographical terminology of the Czech and Slovak languages "(Minsk, 1974), the term rucej is given with the mark "bookish". The author notes two meanings of this term: 1) "stream"; 2)" fast-flowing stream". R. N. Malko also gives the form rucaj , which means"mountain fast stream". The author connects the Proto - Slavic root *ruk-with the verb growl.

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V. A. Nikonov investigated the territory of using the lexeme ruchey as a toponym and identified the corresponding areas-zones of mass distribution of the word. This area is quite distinct and mainly covers the Smolensk region, the north of Belarus, the east of Latvia and Lithuania, to a lesser extent Karelia and the Murmansk region. Only two toponyms were found between the Volga and Oka rivers. The same area is given by materials of scribal books and letters of the XV-XVII centuries. The name Ruchey is common in Novgorod, less often in Belozerye and Lithuania, and in zamoskovsk uyezds it occurs as an exception (Nikonov V. A. Ruchey-klyuch-kolodez-krinitsa-rodnik / / Materials and research on Russian dialectology. New series, Moscow, 1961, Issue II).

Thus, names with the original ruchey token are clearly associated with Novgorod and Pskov. "They advanced through the Novgorod possessions to the north and northeast, to the White Sea and the Urals," wrote V. A. Nikonov in his article. There are quite a few toponyms Ruchey and its derivatives between the western Dvina and the Dnieper (in its very upper reaches, in the west of it there are only single names).

In the Krkonoshy Mountains, in the north of the Czech Republic, two names are recorded: Kozelski ruchei and Medvedi ruchei-both in the same Ilemnice district (Hlavni pomistni nazvy kraie Liberecke. Praha, 1957).

V. A. Nikonov believed that in the lands of the Krivichi and Ilmen Slavs, the word in question was widely used as a folk word, and there it gave numerous geographical names. The modern areas of these names, according to the scientist, were formed already within the Pskov-Novgorod and Belarusian-Lithuanian state formations that existed for more than one century (Nikonov V. A. Decree. op.)

As the name of the locality Ruchey is recorded in Bulgaria, and is also often found on the territory of the former USSR, this also includes Belarusian: Ruchchey, Ruchey, and Ruchae (Microtoponymy of Belarus). Much less common are plural formations - Streams (this is the name of the locality noted in the "Russian Geographical Dictionary"), as well as - Ruchu - the name of the locality in Belarus (Microtoponymy of Belarus). As already mentioned, there is reason to associate the meaning of this term with the Bulgarian rukvam, rukna - "strive, break through", with the Serbo-Croatian preruciti, preruchim - "break through, pour, spill" and Moravian-growl (Fasmer M. Decree. op.; Nikonov V. A. Decree. op.; Scober S. Pratse philologichne. 1929. N 14).

A detailed analysis gives grounds to consider the word ruchey to be common Slavic and widespread in a significant Slavic territory, used in many Slavic languages. For example: the Belarusian material gives the lexemes ruchay, ruchey, ruchchey, ruchchyevina, ruchchyeyka with the general semantics " rechushka, ruchey, the place where in

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the earth has a water-guiding hollow, a stream from rainwater or meltwater", also ruchavina, ruchayek, ruchaina and other terms. In Ukraine, the common noun ruchay means "stream, rivulet, source", the diminutive-ruchayek, ruchayka.

Quite frequent are the singular variants-ruktsay, mostly found on the territory of Belarus (Geographical Dictionary), ruchay as a term is widely distributed in the former USSR.

V. A. Nikonov, investigating the toponymic area of the lexeme ruchey, identified the mass center of the toponym Ruchey on the map he had compiled. Based on it, we can conclude that there is no toponym Ruchey in Poochye.

The study of written monuments of the XVI-XVII centuries shows that, in contrast to the toponym, the hydrographic term brook in Poochye is quite common. So, it is recorded in the "Scribal books of the Moscow state of the XVI-XVII centuries" (Kolomna, Kashirsky counties), in the "Lists of Populated places" (Oryol province).

According to G. P. Smolitskaya (Hydroonymy of the Oka basin, Moscow, 1976), the term brook is widespread both in the right-bank and left-bank Poochye. In the upper-middle Pooch region, this name is found more than twenty times, especially often in the area of the Zushi rivers (right Skomoroshnoy stream, left Berezovets stream, etc.), Proni (Sorochy Kust stream, left Ploskoy Stream, right Pletenoy Rzhavets Stream), and it can be found in the areas of other rivers (Sturgeon, Nary, Lopasni).

In the middle left-bank Poochye there are more than 180 uses of the stream. Bright localization is observed in the territory bounded by the Moscow and Ruza rivers (Myakishevskaya brook, Shilovskaya brook, Tolstoy Brook, Lukoshin brook, Smirnovskaya brook, Studenets brook). In the area of the rivers of Moscow (upper reaches) up to Pakhra - more than eighty uses: Lyadishchev creek, Vetrovskaya creek, Safonovskaya creek, etc.

According to P. L. Mashtakov (List of Rivers of the Don Basin, Moscow, 1931), the term brook is not used in the Don territory (before the confluence of the Voronezh River), and only isolated cases are known in the rest of the territory, for example, in the Bystroya Sosna basin.

So, as the study showed, the toponymic and hydrographic areas of the ruchey lexeme do not coincide. The term ruchey is also common outside the Ruchey toponymic area. The reason for this phenomenon was explained by V. A. Nikonov: "Only in certain periods does the word become a favorite toponym or cease to be one, even if it remains used outside of toponymy: after all, the very name of a settlement is associated with a certain level of economic development due to the presence of a water source. The growth of technology is weakening

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dependence on the hydrographic network, when naming all the more resolutely appear socio-political motives ... "(Nikonov V. A. Decree. op.). Although the brook as a term continues to live in the language, it has lost its toponymic productivity.

In toponymy, although less often, another option is also possible: the name is distributed where the appellative is not commonly used. The dialect of a toponymy has its own characteristics. According to V. A. Nikonov, the distribution of certain and non-dialectal words or forms in toponymy gets strictly local boundaries, "becomes toponymically dialectal", this is their independent significance as a special type of historical and linguistic evidence.

The ruchey token is quite productive from the point of view of word formation. Both in hydrography and in hydronymy, along with the neutral stream, its derivatives are also found. For example, on the territory of the former USSR, the names of localities are often used-Rucheek, Rucheiki. On the territory of Belarus, the toponym Ruktsaevka is celebrated. Rucheyka is the name of a water body in the Oka region, and on the Dnieper River the toponym of the Stream is known.

The German scientist Jurgen Udolf, in his work" Studies of Slavic hydrographic terms and hydronyms " (Gedelberg, 1979), compared the hydronyms Ruchey with names derived from the word potok. Such an analysis makes it clear that the names associated with the stream appeared only in those regions (primarily in the northern regions) where the word stream was no longer used in names. In this regard, it can be assumed that in the East Slavic regions there was a replacement of some "stream" words by others.

The prevalence of names leaves no doubt that the stream is associated with the migration of Eastern Slavs. Small Polish and Bulgarian names may have appeared independently of each other. It cannot be completely excluded that the stream in Bulgarian, possibly also in Czech, Slovak (there are no provable names) is borrowed from Russian.

The toponymic area of the ruchey lexeme can also indicate the type of settlement of the linguistic community. For example, V. A. Nikonov found that the homogeneous names of a Stream are drawn out in lines. Their range is quite clearly drawn in the North along rivers and volokov, which shows that the settlement took place along the most important routes.

The spatially attached mass of hydrographic terms makes it possible to identify territorial dialect differences in the past, and sometimes also indicates the time of dialect, word-formation, and phonetic separation.

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