Sheikovsky, Kalenyk

Sheikovsky, Kalenyk [Шейковський, Каленик; Šejkovs'kyj], b 1835 in Kamianets-Podilskyi, d 1903 in Menzelinsk, Ufa gubernia, Russia. Writer, linguist, lexicographer, educator, and ethnographer. As a student at Kyiv University (1858–61) he helped organize Ukrainian Sunday schools in Kyiv and published for them a book on domestic science (2 parts, 1860). He also wrote an ethnographic study on folkways in Podilia (two parts, 1859–60). In 1876 he was exiled to Ufa gubernia for printing a Ukrainian translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. His most important work was a Russian dictionary of vernacular Ukrainian, which contained many little-known dialectal words and his own neologisms. The first fascicle (A–Byjak) appeared in 1861. Because of the ban on Ukrainian-language publications (1863; see Petr Valuev), financial difficulties, and the loss of materials in a fire, he managed to publish only two more fascicles (T–Khlivets', 1884, 1886).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]