Original scientific paper
FISHERIES AND FISHING TERMINOLOGY IN THE ZADAR REGION
Šime Županović
; Split
Abstract
The oldest document in which fishery in the Zadar region was mentioned for the first time is from the year 995. This document-deed of gift mentions that at the time of the prior Madije’s office in Zadar the fishing grounds on the islands of Molat and Dugi otok (Telašćica) were given the Monastery of St. Krševan at Zadar. For the first time an other document from the year 1056 mentions three fisherman (gripatores) by their Croatian names: Ž u p a n (S u p a n), P e t u l e t, and P o d b o j, with the addition »and their other mates«.
This fact could serve also as a positive argument that the islands of the Zadar archipelago had been inhabited at that time, even though the byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his report »De administrando imperio« (c. 30 and 31) mentions them as uninhabited, except of the island Vrgada where the civis Romanus lived.
After the Croats’ arrival at the Adriatic the conditions calmed down considerably. Inhabiting the islands more and more these conditions led them to organize economy and change their way of life. The autochthons helped the newcomers to adapt to the sea and fishing craft.
As the Croats had no names in their vocabulary for individual kinds of fish and other sea fauna they t o o k o v e r those of the autochtons of formed them t h e r e using both native and foreign elements. This is also one of the reasons why the older layers of the thalassozoonomic inventory have been so well preserved.
The names taken over from the tongue of the Dalmatian Romanized autochthons living in the region occupied by the Croats were adapted to the Croatian linguistic structure. Such Delmat elements, while that language had not yet died out completely, were numerous in the Zadar region where the c. Romanus prevailed teaching the Croats the crafts of seamanship and fishery. When the autochtons were already assimilated the newcomers had already a large number of fishery terminology at their disposal combined greatly with the elements taken over from them. In that sense, in forming our nomenclature our fishery terminology is constructed from a very small number of the elements brought along, while that for the more important species of ichthyofauna has been taken over directly from the Delmat Romanus and, via them, from the Greeks.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
138032
URI
Publication date:
1.2.1995.
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