Category: Basics

There is a compelling “lexical similarity” between Semitic and Indo-European languages. These two families, share many cognate words. Some of these words underwent phonetic changes, and became: “camouflaged cognates”, while others are still “explicit cognates”. Cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent…

“Swadesh list” is a compilation of basic vocabulary items used in historical linguistics to compare languages and their relatedness.This list was originally compiled to focus on the core vocabulary, the items most likely to persist in a language over the millennia.Swadesh collection of words was also intended to avoid borrowing, based on the idea that…

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 Historians concentrate on distributions of different toponymic material compared with related historical documents and archaeological material.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…

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…

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…

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…