Toponymy is the study of place-names, including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponymic research is based on etymological, historical, and geographical information concerning the place-name in question. A place-name is a word or words used to indicate, denote, or identify a geographic locality such as a town, a city, a river, or a mountain. Toponomastics…

Toponymy has traditionally been understood as a part of linguistics, but historians and archaeologists have been interested in it, as well. Linguistic studies tend to focus particularly on lexical, phonetic, and morphological characteristics and structures of toponyms. Historians concentrate on distributions of different toponymic material compared with related historical documents and archaeological material. Archaeologists try…

Many toponyms are composed of ‘SPECIFIC’ and ‘GENERIC’ elements (or forms).

There are identifiable processes which occur over time to place names, and which alter the place names in such a way that their original meanings are lost. These apply to both the names of settlements and natural features, although more so to the former.The processes by which place names change include abbreviation, conflation, convergence, development…

A common question about toponyms concerns their origin. We can identify at least five common sources for toponyms. First, we can look to the migration history of a place and the people who reside there. Immigrants bring their culture with them, and place names reflect these patterns of relocation diffusion. Names like New England and…