Mulkide Nimetuse Saamisloost Ehk Kas Mulgid On Tõesti Rumalad?
Etymology of the folk name Mulks: Are the Mulks really fools?

Summary/Abstract: The article explores whether the widespread belief that the folk name Mulks and the region name Mulgimaa derive from the Latvian word muļķis, muļķe ‘stupid, fool’ is based on evidence and possibly justified. Phonetic similarity between the words mulk and muļķis is evident indeed, but we lack convincing evidence that the word mulk is of Latvian origin. By tracing the emergence and use of the folk name Mulks, the authors explore its social, historical and cultural context. By combining contemporary fiction, polemics in media, memorates and other forms of oral tradition, sources on settlement and migration, it appears that the folk name Mulks was most probably used by people living in the district of Tartu to refer to migrants from the southern part of the districts of Pärnu and Viljandi who started, in the late 1850s and increasingly in the 1860s, to buy farms in perpetuity outside their own area of residence, most notably in the district of Tartu. The article considers the relationships between the farm name Mulgi, the migration of Mulks in the third quarter of the nineteenth century and the early use of the folk name Mulks in the Estonian cultural space. In the late 1850s and early 1860s several families from Halliste and other parishes, most notably from the manor Abja, migrated to Tartumaa and settled down in several different places all over the district. Part of them became tenants, some became proprietors by buying a farm from the landlord. Among the early inmigrants there were the former farm heads of two Mulgi farms in Abja, who were forced to leave their place due to demesne expansions. It is very probable that during their long searches for a new home (farm) they often had to answer the question „Where are you from?” by „We are from Mulgi”, since it was common in those days to tell which farm one came from rather than what one’s surname was (surnames were still a novelty in Estonia and seldom used, especially in oral communication). Migrants from more developed regions (nowadays known as Mulgimaa) were successful in their search for farmland and they managed to purchase c. 400 farms from the manorial lords in the district of Tartu until 1889. The occurrence of the folk name in the media and fiction of the late 1860s and early 1870s, referring to persons who bought the farms that had formerly been cultivated by Tartumaa peasants who were now evicted, lends support to the idea that the folk name and the process of buying peasant land in perpetuity were closely related. The success of the in-migrants must have irritated the locals, who started calling them Mulks, which was initially an abusive name.

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