The toponym Kurikuće, in the Berane–Gornja Sela region of Montenegro, is of particular interest when examined within the wider Albanian toponymic landscape of Montenegro and the northern Balkan highlands. The name has been interpreted as corresponding to the Albanian expression Guri i Kuq, meaning “the Red Rock” or “the Red Stone”. Although this etymology cannot be regarded as conclusively proven without earlier documentary forms, the linguistic resemblance is noteworthy and deserves to be considered together with the historical character of the settlement and the wider presence of Albanian geographical terminology in the region.
An important element is the historical description of Kurikuće as an old settlement originally inhabited by shepherds. The settlement later developed into a community engaged in cattle breeding and agriculture. This pastoral background is significant because shepherd communities were highly mobile and maintained extensive knowledge of mountain landscapes, pastures, valleys and passes.
In the mountainous Balkans, geographical names could therefore survive across changes in population, language and political organisation. A place-name originally used by an Albanian-speaking pastoral population could remain in use after the population gradually adopted a South Slavic language.
This possibility is particularly relevant in Montenegro, where the modern linguistic landscape does not necessarily reflect the older linguistic layers of the region. Numerous geographical names in Montenegro and the neighbouring Prokletije and Polimlje areas have been associated with Albanian vocabulary.
Ćafa, for example, can naturally be compared with Albanian qafë, a geographical term meaning a mountain pass, saddle or mountain neck. Such examples demonstrate how an Albanian geographical term could enter a South Slavic linguistic environment and become adapted to its pronunciation and orthography.
The same process may potentially explain Kurikuće. If the name originally represented Albanian Guri i Kuq, its present form could reflect a later South Slavic adaptation of an older Albanian geographical expression. The transformation should not necessarily be understood as a regular sound change; rather, it could represent the reshaping of an inherited or borrowed place-name by speakers of another language. This kind of adaptation is particularly plausible in multilingual mountain regions where older names continued to be used after linguistic change.
The pastoral character of Kurikuće is therefore more than a minor historical detail. Shepherding was an important component of the traditional societies of the Prokletije, Montenegro, Kosovo and northern Albania. Pastoral groups travelled through the same mountain landscapes over long periods and transmitted geographical terminology from one generation to another.
Such traditions are sometimes discussed in connection with older Illyrian or pre-Slavic Balkan cultural continuity. It would be too strong to claim that the shepherds of Kurikuće can be identified as Illyrians solely on the basis of the available evidence. Nevertheless, the combination of pastoral continuity and older Albanian-associated toponymy provides a reasonable historical context for investigating whether some local names preserve an older Balkan linguistic layer.
The history of Slavicisation is equally important. In parts of Montenegro and the surrounding highlands, groups that may have had older Albanian linguistic or cultural connections gradually became South Slavic-speaking. Linguistic assimilation did not necessarily erase older geographical names.
A population could change its everyday language while retaining inherited place-names, clan traditions, territorial memories and other elements of an older cultural landscape. Consequently, the presence of an Albanian-derived toponym in a modern Slavic-speaking area should not automatically be interpreted as evidence that the population remained Albanian-speaking into the modern period.
The same principle applies to the history of clans. The traditional clan societies of Montenegro and the neighbouring Albanian highlands were not separated by the modern linguistic and national boundaries that exist today. Some clans and brotherhoods underwent processes of linguistic and cultural Slavicisation, while older traditions and memories could remain embedded in local society.
Modern Slavic-speaking identity therefore does not necessarily exclude an older Albanian or wider Paleo-Balkan heritage. Toponyms can be one of the surviving traces of such earlier layers, although they must always be examined together with documentary, genealogical, linguistic and archaeological evidence.
The geological setting of Kurikuće may also be relevant. Zarija M. Bešić, in his 1975 geological work Geologija Crne Gore, places Kurikuće along a geological line extending through the Bjelojevića River valley towards Vragoda and subsequently towards Zagrađe and the Brzava River.
If the name Guri i Kuq originally referred to a distinctive reddish rock formation in this landscape, its meaning would be entirely natural as a geographical designation. The geological evidence therefore provides a possible semantic context for the Albanian interpretation, although it cannot by itself establish the etymology.
The Serbian interpretation of these names should nevertheless be considered as part of the scholarly debate. The cited Serbian source argues that names such as Šekular, Kurikuće, Berane and Ćafa should be understood within a Serbian toponymic tradition and rejects the idea that their presence necessarily demonstrates an older Albanian population.
Such an interpretation illustrates the wider disagreement concerning the linguistic history of the Polimlje and Prokletije regions. However, the fact that a name is used today in a Serbian or Montenegrin linguistic environment does not in itself determine its ultimate etymological origin. A borrowed Albanian name can become completely integrated into South Slavic speech and still preserve traces of its earlier linguistic origin.
Kurikuće should therefore be viewed within a broader layered toponymic landscape. The present-day Slavic character of many settlements does not necessarily erase older Albanian geographical terminology, just as the existence of Albanian toponyms does not by itself establish the ethnic composition of a settlement at a particular historical moment. The most useful interpretation is one of linguistic contact and historical transformation: older names could be preserved, adapted and eventually incorporated into the language of populations that had become Slavic-speaking.
In this context, the proposed connection between Kurikuće and Albanian Guri i Kuq is significant. It is not yet a proven etymology, but it fits a wider pattern in which Albanian geographical vocabulary appears within the mountainous toponymy of Montenegro. When this is combined with the documented pastoral history of Kurikuće, the broader Albanian toponymic presence in the region, examples such as Ćafa/qafë, and the historical processes of Slavicisation affecting some local communities and clans, the possibility of an older Albanian linguistic layer becomes worthy of serious investigation.
Kurikuće may therefore represent not simply a modern South Slavic place-name, but potentially a surviving linguistic fossil of an older Albanian-speaking or Albanian-influenced pastoral landscape. Establishing this conclusively would require earlier historical attestations of the name, but the combination of toponymic, geographical and historical evidence provides a meaningful basis for further research into the Albanian heritage preserved within Montenegro’s modern Slavic-speaking landscape.
Sources
Zarija M. Bešić, Geologija Crne Gore, knj. I, sv. 1 (Titograd: Društvo za nauku i umjetnost Crne Gore, 1975).
Mirko Raičević and Nikola Pantelić, Gornja Sela: Naselja i stanovništvo (Beograd: Etnografski institut SANU, 1994).
Raičević and Pantelić, Gornja Sela: Naselja i stanovništvo.
