THEORICAL CHALLENGES IN INTERPRETATION AND RESEARCH OF TOPONYMIC LEGENDS

It is well-known that reflecting real life events through fictitious, containing specific epic information based on historical and ethnographical aspects, considered as true information by speaker and listener, consisting of characters from mythological, historical and real life background as well as oral prose works in brief plots (stories) are called as legends. Legends are one of the oldest and most popular epic genres of Uzbek folklore. There are several kind of legends about origination of material environment, events, mythological imagination about flora and fauna, patriots, heroes who have done good deeds for the people, important historical events, tribal history, as well as cities, villages, auls, mountains and rivers, finally about the origin of names of geographical objects and historical monuments. The legends reflect the artistic and aesthetic attitude of our people towards the material world, historical and social events and the geographical structure of our country’s relief. World folklore has a tradition of categorizing folklore works in myths and legends genres into several types according to the themes and specific signs and in this case there are separate grouping of story lines based on tomonymic motives of origination place names (even though named with different names).