The Bulgarian dialect terminology of commemoration of the dead sheds light on the relations between terms and ritual formulas and presents interest for the history of the Bulgarian language. The prepositional phrases за/о/по + душа ‘to the benefit of a soul / souls’, which were a part of ritual wording in the observance of funeral and post-funeral rites, have been substantivized and preserved as terms, many of them with various obsolete endings of the noun: о̀ душа, о̀ душе, одуши in the Rupa area ‘day of the dead’, за̀ душа / задуши to the north and the west of the Rupa area ‘day of the dead’, ‘memorial service for a deceased person’, ‘feast following a funeral or a memorial service’, ‘handing out of food in memory of a deceased person or persons’, подуше in some Balkan dialects ‘memorial service for a deceased person’. The next step in the evolution of the commemorative terminology was the formation of adjectives: о̀ душно was substantivized in its neuter form in the Rhodope dialects, whereas the adjective derived from задуша formed the collocation задушна събота, from which by means of univerbation and suffixation came into being задушница, a term for ‘day of the dead’, broadly known among Bulgarians (in the northern area) and Serbs. Two further types of terms follow a different path: (1) the Moesian душница is formed through univerbation and suffixation from душна събота which may, on one hand, calque Greek ψυχοσάββατο and, on the other, be a distant reflection of the Proto-Slavic *dušьnъ dьnъ‘a day of commemoration of dead ancestors’; (2) descendants of the collocations *мрьтвѣмъ дьнъ / дьни and *мрьтвѣмъ сѫбота are used in the southern part of the southwestern dialect area: мъртвѐм, мъртвен, мъ̀ртвен дѐн’, мъ̀ртва съ̀бота, мъ̀ртва.
Key words: Bulgarian dialects, terms for the Days of the Dead, areal linguistics, terminology, ritual formulas.
