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VOTIC FAMILY MARKS
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Family marks are well known by many Fenno - Ugric peoples: Lives, Estonians, Finns, Saami, Mordva and Mary.( Saar, Teodor. 1998. Kihnu raamat. Tallinn.). They are also familiar to Votic people.
I first learned about the existence of a family of marks (talo-merkid) from a D. Zolotareva article on the topic (D.Zolotarev. 1927). More information relating to the marks was found in the works of the Leningrad society of study of local lore, which discussed the marks of Izhorians (1. Leningad. 139-148).
In the article, which also described everyday life and culture of the Votic villages of Liivcula, Luutsa and Jogopera, the use of house marks "talo merkkat" was explored. I turned for clarification to an old woman from Luutsa village, Anna Alexeevna Yudina; born in1906. She said that "every house had its own “talo merkki”, that they were “eternal” and then she told me about some of the families to whom the marks belonged. Interviews with local people indicated that only a few remember the family marks of their forefathers, because of the widespread use of them was stopped before World War II and only some of them have survived until the beginning of the `60’s. The family signs were used for the division of land required for land cultivation. At the time when each owner marks out his land plot, peg by peg to divide it from his neighbor’s, the pegs would be painted, carved, or burnished with his family’s mark.
Tatjana Jefimova.
Votic family marks in virtual museum exibition
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