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Toponymy Simplified
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…
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Noah’s Ark.. Piecing The Puzzle Together
According to the bible, Noah’s Ark is the boat through which God spares Noah, his family, and examples of all the world’s animals from a global deluge. The Biblical account shares many details with earlier Mesopotamian stories, which demonstrates the existence of shared culture traits that spanned the ancient Near East both geographically and temporally,…
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Ur of the Chaldees: Unlocking the mystery
“Ur of the Chaldees” is a toponym mentioned in the Bible as the birthplace of biblical Abraham. The original Hebrew name of this place is: “אוּר כַּשְׂדִּים”, (Ūr Kašdīm). In Septuagint, the earliest Greek translation of the Old Testament, “Ūr Kašdīm” is rendered as “χώρα τῶν Χαλδαίων”, (khôra ton Khaldion). Ūr (אוּר) was translated as…
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Name typology
In toponomastics, it is important to highlight, on the one hand, the individual that uses language, and on the other hand, the language community’s perspective. Naming and the interpretation of names are always the action of both the individual and the community. The name giver is an individual and the first who uses a certain…
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Intensive toponymy
A research method introduced by Jan Tent.
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Problems of interpretation
Place names often need specialists to interpret their meanings. Some of the main problems are:Language: Sometimes the language used in the formation of a place name is unclear; for example, some names may be plausibly derived from either Old English or Celtic roots. In recent years there has been a tendency to seek Celtic origins…