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 (or toponym) is a word or words used to indicate, denote, or identify a geographic locality: town, city, river, mountain, etc.
Toponymy divides toponyms, (placenames), into two broad categories: Habitation names and Feature names.
Habitation name denotes a place that is peopled or inhabited, such as a homestead, village, town, city, region or country.
Feature names refer to natural or physical features of the landscape, such as: mountains, deserts, valleys, forests, islands, coasts, seas, rivers, springs, etc.
Toponymy is concerned with the linguistic evolution (etymology) of place-names and the motive behind the naming of the place (historical and geographical aspects). Toponymy also involves the study of place-names within and between languages. Studies within a language usually follow three basic assumptions: every place-name has a meaning, including place-names derived from personal names; place-names describe the site and record some evidence of human occupation or ownership; once a place-name is established or recorded, its phonetic development will parallel the language’s development.
Specific & Generic:
Many toponyms are composed of ‘SPECIFIC’ and ‘GENERIC’ elements (or forms).
The specific element is akin to a given name (functioning as the ‘identifier’), whereas the generic element is analogous to a classifier or family name, indicating to which class or ‘family’ the named place belongs.
Example_01:
“Montenegro” is a toponym, a country in Southeastern Europe.
This toponym is composed of specific and generic elements.
Specific element: -negro = black
Generic element: Monte- = mountain.
Montenegro = Black mountain.
Example_02:
“Uzbekistan” is a toponym, a country in Central Asia.
This toponym is composed of specific and generic elements.
Specific element: Uzbek- = an ethnonym, “the Uzbek people”
Generic element: -stan = Place, location.
Uzbekistan = The land of the Uzbeks.
Example_03:
“Oxford” is a place-name, a city in England.
This toponym is composed of specific and generic elements.
Specific element: ox- = bull
Generic element: -ford- = “a crossing”.
Oxford = oxen’s crossing.
Basic, Grammatical & Epenthetic
Basic element: The content word, that primarily expresses the lexical meaning.
Grammatical element: An element that is combined with a word to produce derived or inflected form. Grammatical elements include “affixes” and “functional words” such as “definite articles”, “prepositions” and “plural suffixes”.
Epenthetic element: Epenthesis: is the addition or the insertion of an extra sound (or syllable) into a word, without changing the word’s meaning.
Examples:
1- iskenderun (a city in Turkey): iskender + un
“iskender” = Basic element.
“un” = Epenthetic element.
2- elPaso (a city in US): el + Paso
“Paso” = Basic element. (It means: passage).
“el” = Grammatical element, (a definite article).
Exonym & Endonym:
“exonym” is a common, external name for a place that is used only outside that particular place.
“endonym” is a common, internal name for a place, coined and used by its local inhabitants.
Examples: “Greece” and “Egypt”. “Greece” is a foreign name, the Greeks call their country: “Elláda”. “Egypt” is a foreign name, the Egyptians call their country: “Miṣr”. “Greece” and “Egypt” are: “exonyms”. “Elláda” and “Miṣr” are: “endonyms”.
Adoption, Translation & Replacement:
Foreigners, new-comers and immigrants, may adopt, translate, or replace endonyms.
Adopted endonym: Qāhirah => in English: Cairo. (adoption).
Adopted place-names are usually misspelled or mispronounced.
Sometimes it’s hard to determine whether or not the place-name is an Exonym (a foreign name), because it might be an adoption of a lost endonym (a native name).
Translated endonym: Nederland => in French: Pays-Bas. (translation)
Arrub-alkhāli => in English: Empty Quarter. (translation).
A place-name, which is actually a translation of a local name, may become the only known name for that place.
Replaced endonym: Elláda > in English: Greece. (replacement, a different foreign name)
Borrowed & Adopted exonyms
Borrowed exonym: The exonym might be borrowed from a third language. For example, Germany, in German language is known as “Deutschland”. “Deutschland” here is an endonym.
“Germany” in French language is known as “Allemagne”.
“Allemagne” here is an exonym.
“Germany” in Arabic language is known as “Almānyā”.
“Almānyā” is a borrowed exonym, borrowed from the French language.
Adopted exonym: People may abandon their centuries-old native place-name and adopt a foreign name for that place. Example: Eritrea (a part of historical Abyssinia).
Obsolete & Archaic toponyms
Obsolete toponym: Abandoned and then forgotten name. No longer used, no longer remembered. Rediscovered by historical research or archaeological investigations.
Example: Sumer (southern Mesopotamia).
Archaic toponym: Abandoned but not forgotten name. Example: Gaul (Gallia).
Main problems:
Place names often need specialists to interpret their meanings. Some of the main problems are:
Multiple meanings: Some elements, such as “wich” and “wick“, can have many meanings. Generally wich/wick/wyke indicates a farm or settlement (e.g. Keswick “cheese farm”). However, some of the sites are of Roman or early Post-Roman origin, in which the “wich” represents Latin “vicus” (“place”). These “vici” seem to have been trading-posts. On the coast, “wick” is often of Norse origin, meaning “bay” or “inlet” (e.g. Lerwick)
Language: Sometimes the language used in the formation of a place name is unclear; for example, some names in England may be plausibly derived from either Old English or Celtic roots. In recent years there has been a tendency to seek Celtic origins for names in England that were previously taken to be Anglo-Saxon.
Translation: The general similarity of Old Norse and Old English meant that the place names in the “Danelaw England” were often simply “Nors-ified”. For instance, in Askrigg (‘ash (tree) ridge’) in Yorkshire, the first element is indubitably the Norse asc (pronounced ask), which could easily represent a “Norsification” of the Old English element aesc (pronounced ash) with the same meaning.
False analogy: Sometimes, the place names were changed by new settlers to match pronunciation habits without reference to the original meaning. For example, the Old English name Scipeton (“sheep farm”), which would normally become *Shipton in modern English, instead was altered to Skipton, since Old English: “sc” (pronounced ‘sh’) was usually cognate with Old Norse: “sk“, thus obscuring the meaning, since the Old Norse word for ‘sheep’ was entirely different.
Lost reason: Interpreting some names can be difficult if the reason for the name is no longer evident. Some names originally referred to a specific natural feature such as a river, ford or hill that can no longer be identified. For example, Whichford (Warwickshire) means “the ford of the Hwicce”, but the location of the ford is lost.
Linguistic artifacts
Toponyms are “linguistic- artifacts”, they can reveal more about human history than historical records and archaeological artifacts.
Place-names provide invaluable information about the diachrony of languages and dialects. Many toponyms preserve obsolete morphemic aspects, lost sememes and archaic lexemes.
Toponymy can uncover important historical information about a place, such as the period of time the original language of the inhabitants lasted, settlement history, and population dispersal. Place-name study can also provide insight to religious changes in an area, such as the conversion to Christianity. Information about the folklore, institutional conditions, and social conditions of a place can be understood as well. Linguistic information like words and personal names, not mentioned in literature, can also be found through toponymy.
Toponymy and etymology
Toponymy and etymology are closely interlinked, understanding of either discipline cannot be carried out without some knowledge and use of both.
Etymology, as a discipline, is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of a word’s semantic meaning across time, including its constituent: “phonemes” and “morphemes”.
“Etymology” is the history of a linguistic form (such as a word) shown by tracing its development since its earliest recorded occurrence in the language where it is found, by tracing its transmission from one language to another, by analyzing it into its component parts, by identifying its cognates in other languages, or by tracing it and its cognates to a common ancestral form in an ancestral language. Etymology, as a discipline, is the study of the origin and meaning of words or names, and how their denotations have changed over the course of time.
False etymology
A false etymology is an assumed or postulated etymology, (the historical development of a word meaning), that current consensus among scholars of historical linguistics holds to be incorrect.
Folk etymology
“Folk etymology” or “popular etymology” are established terms for a false etymology that grows up anonymously in popular lore. A modern folk etymology may be thought of as a linguistic urban legend, but folk etymologies can be very old and even establish themselves as accepted fact among scholars.
Many false etymologies may be described as “folk etymologies”, the distinction being that folk etymologies are widely believed to be true, and of anonymous origin.
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