- Genre
- Recorded place narratives
- Source status
- Editorial discussion of recorded accounts
- Motifs
- stone name, folk etymology, death in a river, craft memory
One place, two name stories
No. 136 connects the name with a merchant who died in the river and with his surname; no. 137 suggests a connection with a man who pressed oil nearby. One version centres on a death, the other on a craft. The source does not establish a definitive origin.
Narrators and recording dates
Stanislav Šakievič, aged 82, of Šiurmoniai, Sudervė eldership, told no. 136 to Ida Stankevičiūtė in 2005. Vladislav Jodka, aged 76, of Geležių Antakalniai in the same eldership, told no. 137 in 2004. The texts appear in Tautosakos darbai XXXIII (2007), pp. 218–219, in the Klimoniškės geographical group.
The narrator's name, home and the location of the subject are different fields in a record. Keeping them separate helps when another version is found later.
A narrative is not an incident report
The first version tells of a guide and a merchant's death, attributing a reputation for sorcery to the guide. These are statements within recorded folklore, not proof of a crime or a historical person's character. The merchant's ethnic identification in the original does not support generalisations about a community.
The second explanation is tentative. Editorial wording should preserve that uncertainty: a possible connection must not become a definite assertion of how the stone was named.
How to investigate the name further
A linguistic etymology would require earlier written forms and their local context. Comparing two popular explanations is a starting point for that research, not its conclusion.
This record supplies no precise visitor pin. The publication's geographical grouping supports historical investigation but does not verify present-day access or coordinates.
