ON THE HISTORY OF THE WORD ГАЗДА/GAZDA IN THE SLAVIC LANGUAGES

The article focuses on the formation of the concept ‘owner’ and one of its designations in a number of Slavic languages, and the ambiguity of its origin. The word газда/gazda is usually considered a borrowing from Hungarian (Hung. gazda ‘host, owner; landowner, peasant; householder; chief’), where it is an adaptation from the Slavic *gospoda. The analysis of historical and geographical contacts of the Hungarians, their impacts on the language, the presence of a substantial number of borrowings from Alanian, and the structure of the semantic field of the Slavic *gospoda, permits us to pose a second, Iranian-based, source of the designation of an owner in a number of Slavic languages.