Geography is the study of the Earth and its lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena, with geographical names (Place-names) being the labels for these features and places.
As a discipline, geography can be split broadly into two main subsidiary fields: human geography and physical geography.
Human geography largely focuses on how humans create, view, manage, and influence space. It is a branch of geography that focuses on the study of patterns and processes that shape human society. It encompasses the human, political, cultural, social, and economic aspects.
Physical geography, on the other hand, examines the natural environment, and how organisms, climate, soil, water, and landforms produce and interact. The focus is on geography as an Earth science. It aims to understand the physical problems and the issues of lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, pedosphere, and global flora and fauna patterns (biosphere).
Toponyms act within both physical and human geography, in as much as they describe aspects of both the natural world and human created space at around the time of naming.
One of the challenges in using place-names in connection with geography are to establish when a name was coined? and the significance of the naming focus?
Another main challenge lies in later onomastic developments, which, through metonymical processes—for example a place-name comes to signify a different type of locality from the one it originally did—create a mismatch between the current denotation and the original place-name meaning. In the case of metonymy, it can often be difficult to single out the original name bearing or name originating locality, and a certain amount of qualified guesswork frequently has to be applied in singling out the original name bearer.
The geographical aspect is usually most clearly expressed in the generic element of place-names, as their function within the name is to state what type of locality the name concerns. Thus, any place-name with a generic in -grad, -stadt, -ville, and Baille- will normally denote some kind of conglomerated settlement ranging from a group of buildings to a village or town. In the same way, a name in -bosch, -skov, or -wood would originally have denoted a coherent area consisting almost exclusively of trees.
In this respect, place-names act as an intermediary between present and past geographical realities. Place-names usually denote localities of today, which may or may not be the same as the original denotation. However, in terms of the meaning carried in the place-name expression, the place-name describes a perceived state of geography at the time of naming—a situation which may be radically different from what can be observed today.
For instance, the name Werningerode in Harzen, Germany, originally denoted a clearing, that is, a brief geographical state of pointing to an area affected by the human activity of tree-felling. Here we have embedded in the name an instance of human intervention with physical geography. In relation to the current denotation of Werningerode as a town situated between Harzen and Magdeburg, there is no correspondence whatsoever.
Nonetheless, it can be speculated, through the place-name’s original denotation, that this town was established as a result of woodland having been cleared. It should be mentioned, however, that some types of place-names are not capable of expressing geographical content. The most common type of place-names in this category are derivations, that is, place-names formed by adding a suffix to a word in existence at the time of naming.
To the north-east of the above-mentioned Werningerode, we find the name of Gröningen which is an -ingi/-inga derivation of Old Saxon grōni ‘green’. In this case, the name is only capable of conveying that something is akin to ‘green’, but not what it is, be it landscape, people, or perceived qualities. In addition, a few generic elements do not relate to geography but to societal factors, particularly aspects of ownership, purchase, or inheritance.
This is the case for instance with Gröningen’s neighbouring town, Hadmersleben, a place-name in German -leben, which, like its Danish and Swedish counterparts in -lev and -löv, derive from Common Germanic laiba ‘inheritance’. The naming thus concerns an act between people, the act of leaving something to another person or receiving something from someone else.
It is very telling that the vast majority of this name type features late Iron Age personal names and titles as specifics, something which is also seen in later names in -køb/-köp ‘purchase’ in Southern Scandinavia. Here names such as Basseköp (1499 Bassekøp), Høsterkøb (1185–87 Husfrecop, 1193 Husfrekop, c.1370 Husfrwkøp), and Svensköp (1377 Swensskip, 1390 Suenskøb), describe how they were purchased by Bassi, the wife (<Danish hustru ‘wife, spouse’) and Svend, respectively. Again, central to the naming is a transaction between people, a purchase.
How precise then is the geographical aspect in names? Many of the words used in place-names have a general meaning in language, but several studies have indicated that place-name elements can have a more specific meaning than they have as ordinary words.
For instance, Gelling and Cole (2000: 145–8) have shown that the Old English word beorg ‘hill, mountain’ in place-names carries the meaning ‘rounded hill, tumulus’, occasionally ‘a rounded knob at the end of a ridge’, where the central characteristic element is a continuously rounded profile and a smallish size.
Gelling and Cole (2000) admit that it has not been possible to fit this appearance to all places with beorg as the generic element. And, indeed, it is possible that the meaning may differ geographically. This is what Mølgaard (2012: 73–81) has shown in her study of the Danish cognate bjerg in central Jutland.
In Danish, the word connotes an ‘elevation’ in general, but in Mølgaard’s (2012) study, the place-name element bjerg tended to denote either: (a) a ‘rounded or cone-shaped elevation’, prevalent in the western and central parts of central Jutland, a meaning akin to Gelling and Cole’s central meaning, (b) ‘an elevation of ness-like character’, predominant in the western parts of the research area, or (c) an ‘elevation on the edge of a plateau’, found throughout the research area and relatively similar to Gelling and Cole’s (2000) second definition of ‘a rounded knob at the end of a ridge’.
In addition, there was also a small number of names in -bjerg which could not be classified. The unexpected result of Mølgaard’s (2012) research was that the element bjerg was predominant in the western parts of her study area, central Jutland. This is surprising, as this part of the country is known to be the least elevated in Denmark.
Moreover, the fact that several types of denotations could be singled out in, partly, differing areas also shows how place-names tend to merge with local landscape and take on meanings found in the local geography.
Thus semantics and landscape morphology become closely interlinked in such a way that an element like Danish bjerg, whose Common Germanic meaning is that of ‘mountain’, may end up denoting smallish elevations in a landscape barely rising 30–40 metres above sea level.
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