NOMINATION OF SHAH IN THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE: UPDATE, REINTERPRETATION, COMBINATION, ETYMOLOGY

The article examines the functioning of the monetary unit shah in the Ukrainian language of the new period. The material of artistic, dialect, historical and folklore texts shows that the name shah at the beginning of the 19th century denoted a specific coin and later — any small amount of money. It was established that the lexeme shah belongs to the old Ukrainian heritage, which has been preserved in the new Ukrainian literary language. Most etymological sources insist on the Ukrainian origin of the studied name. Until the beginning of the 20th century the lexeme shah was passivized, but due to its high frequency in the previous period it underwent the process of phraseologisation and became element of many phrases that are actively used in the modern Ukrainian literary language. The nomination shah to denote the hundredth part of the hryvnia was first established by the «Law on the monetary unit, minting of coins and printing of state credit bills», which was adopted by the Small Council of the Ukrainian People’s Republic on March 1, 1918. After the defeat of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921, the name of the shah moved to the category of historicism. With the restoration of Ukraine’s independence in 1991, a new stage of updating the name shah began. During the introduction into circulation of the national monetary unit of the hryvnia in 1996 the idea of returning to the nomination shah for a Ukrainian exchange coin appeared. However, at that time the hundredth fraction of the hryvnia was called a kopiika — an old borrowing from the Russian language. On September 2, 2024 the National Bank of Ukraine initiated the change of the name of the exchange coin, the kopiika per shah. A new process of updating and reinterpreting the name of the shah in the Ukrainian language has begun.