helicopters

[Ralph Cleminson]

Ušakov is right: the word вертолет was coined in 1929 by N.I.Kamov,
co-inventor of the Kaskr-1, which is an autogiro, so clearly at the
beginning this is indeed what it meant.  

Hélicoptère dates back to 1861, and was borrowed into Russian as геликоптер
(perhaps via English, given the initial г-), a word definitely in use at
the time of Kamov's invention and indeed a decade later, when A.A.Žabrov
published a book entitled "Автожир и геликоптер", showing that at this
period Russian made the same distinction as English between aircraft
with unpowered and powered rotors, and, apparently, neither of them was
known generically as a вертолет.  Автожир survives to this day, but at
some point геликоптер was replaced by вертолет: could it be that in the
course of the Soviet Union's efforts to establish itself as родина слонов
it was felt preferably to have a "Russian" name for this symbol of
progress?

Regarding the origin, autogiro (c.1920) should theoretically give
*самовёрт, but gyroplane (1907) is a better bet.
 Вертолет may be a direct calque from this, or else it may stand in the
same relation to самолет as gyroplane to aéroplane (yes, the word did
exist in 19th-century French).

Since an autogiro cannot take off vertically, the original point -- the
fanciful nature of Vvedenskaja and Kolesnikov's etymologies -- still
stands.


>>> John Dunn <J.Dunn at SLAVONIC.ARTS.GLA.AC.UK> 30/08/08 3:15 PM >>>
The first volume of Ushakov was published in 1934, when helicopter
manufacture was, to judge by the Wikipedia article, still in its
infancy.  If one adds this to Kamov's apparent coinage of the term in c.
1929, it would seem reasonable to conclude that when it first appeared,
the word вертолёт [vertolet] did indeed mean the same as автожир
[avtozhir] and that its meaning shifted as the mass production of
helicopters took off (sorry!) and autogiros were cast into (near)
oblivion.  This would then reinstate the plausibility of the link with вертеть
[vertet'] and the possibility of a calque from ...giro.

John Dunn.

-----Original Message-----
From: William Ryan <wfr at SAS.AC.UK>
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:13:51 +0100
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] helicopters

I thought so too - but see Russian Wikipedia:

    Когда изобрели летательный аппарат, которому не нужен разбег перед
    взлётом, поскольку он способен вертикально подняться и полететь с
    любой площадки, то для его наименования создали слово /вертолёт/
    (/верт/икально + /лет/еть), отражающее специфику этой летательной
    машины (Л. А. Введенский, Н. П. Колесников. Этимология: Учебное
    пособие // СПб., Питер. 2004, стр. 107). Впервые термин /вертолёт/
    был применён Н. И. Камовым
   
<http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B2,_%D0%9D%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B9_%D0%98%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%B8%D1%87>
    к автожиру
   
<http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%B2%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B8%D1%80>
    КАСКР-1
<http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BA%D1%80-1>.

Ushakov says a vertolet is the same as an avtozhir - which it isn't 
because an autogyro needs forward movement to fly and its rotor is not 
powered - therefore, unlike a helicopter, it cannot fly vertically. This

makes the final statement in the passage quoted above puzzling.

Will Ryan


John Dunn
Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
University of Glasgow, Scotland

Address:
Via Carolina Coronedi Berti 6
40137 Bologna
Italy
Tel.: +39 051/1889 8661
e-mail: J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk
johnanthony.dunn at fastwebnet.it

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