Place-Names

Landbohistorisk Selskabs kampagne for indsamling af landmandserindringer sluttede med udgangen af 1992. Selskabet ønsker med dette nummer af Bol og By at give en foreløbig afrapportering af kampagnens meget vellykkede resultater, samt at give smagsprøver på det righoldige materiale, der nu befinder sig i arkivernes varetægt. Som tema har vi valgt landmændenes uddannelse og etablering som selvstændige jordbrugere: "Foden under eget bord"

Index to articles on Belfast Street-Names published in the Belfast Telegraph 1940-41. This index was compiled from microfilm copies in the Newspaper Library, part of Belfast Central Library.  Transcript page numbers relate to the blue, brown and red bound copies held in the Heritage Department of Belfast Central Library.

Historian John J Marshall wrote a series of articles on Belfast's street-names which were published in the Belfast Telegraph between December 1940 and March 1941.  This list details all 33 articles, some of which were not included in the transcripts compiled subsequently and held in libraries.

Until recently, solutions to the meaning of the names of the various major Hebridean islands have been looked for withing a Celtic framework, and this has in a number of cases led into a cul-de-sac, often resulting in a frustrating admission that the names might indeed be 'pre-Celtic'? In recent years, in the context of Phoenician mercantile activity around Britain and Ireland during the early first millennium BCE, a possible Proto-Semitic solution in a number of cases has been sought. Given this situation, the present article seeks to loosen the log-jam to some extent in offering a few suggestions. But for many names it is likely that we may never get to know their provenance or meaning at all?

Проаналізовано передавання українською мовою перських звуків у географічних назвах. Увагу зосереджено на тих звуках, у передаванні яких помічено розбіжності, а також на таких, які можна відтворювати українською мовою більш наближено до оригінального звучання, не наслідуючи традиції інших мов.

The present study aims to address a tri-phased recourse to nodal points within the soft landmarks of “ideologies of nothingness” as translated through nihilist-centric spatial models: accessing certain alternative formulations in / from within an extension of “falling-from-thecenter” / “falling to the periphery” anxiety, by launching the notion of ecstasy as a quality belonging to any body which is in a form of orbit around itself till all sense vanishes, delivering itself in a pure, empty form: a reactivation of philosophies and politics of threshold-spaces, with all their interstitial, intermediate, tertiary attributes. The present study’s hypothesis will decree the interchangeable proportion between striated space-smooth spaces, establishing through recourse to Deprimism’s Manifesto. The conclusions presented will serve to strengthen the evidence stating that, blank space dispersion theory reconverts itself on political grounds into a theory of the blank seen as architecture of a...

The gendered patterning of urban street names as part of the spatial production of broader male-centric memorial landscapes has been documented in a growing body of scholarship. Scholars from various cognate fields, such as cultural geography, gender and memory studies, and urban sociology, have unraveled the stark gender disparities favoring men inscribed into symbolic landscapes through place names, public monuments, and other memorial artefacts. This article sets out to overcome some of the limitations characterizing this strand of researchnamely, the lack of statistical sophistication and the preference for case studies based on singular citiesby developing a multi-level modelling of gendered street nomenclature at the national level. The approach developed in this paper employs the complete collection of urban street names in Romania to assess the empirical adequacy of five hypotheses regarding the gendered structuring of the country's urban namescape. This analysis highlights the factors underpinning the variation of gender disparities in terms of Romania's historical regions, ethnic demographics and local ethnopolitics, city ranking within the national territorial administration and intraurban stratification of the road network, as well as the effects brought about by postsocialist transformations.

This is an essay that explores the phenomenon of stripping dedicatory names-commemorative toponymsfrom buildings, particularly on university campuses, but with the wider lens of thinking through renaming more generally. It comes out of my experience as a faculty member at U.C. Berkeley, where a number of buildings have been-or are in the process of being-renamed. The essay uses a building named after the eminent Anthropologist Alfred Kroeber-and recently unnamed, but not yet renamed-as the point of departure for exploring the various arguments for unnaming, as well as preserving names on buildings. Along the way, it investigates issues of what constitutes history or institutional memory, whether toponyms can be understood as free speech, and how institutions use unnaming to perform cultural work that is only peripherally about memory.

The earliest extant regional map covering Carrickfergus, its environs and the sea-inlet which later came to be known as Belfast Lough, is held in the National Archives at Kew, reference MPF 1/77.  It shows Carrickfergus and the lough, Belfast, Larne Lough, Island Magee, Bangor, etc. at the scale of 1 inch to 1 mile.  It is an unsigned map on parchment, commissioned by the Crown during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and not made for publication.  It was one of the 16th century maps of Ireland catalogued and described by R. Dunlop and attributed to Robert Lythe (Dunlop 1905).  This was supported by John Andrews, who dated it to the year 1567, the year in which Lythe was sent to Carrickfergus to begin a campaign of surveying in Ireland (Andrews 1965). 

Lythe’s map is valuable for many reasons, most obviously because it is the earliest extant map of this part of Ulster.  It reflects a completely different age from, say, John Speed’s map The province Ulster described, made four decades later in 1610.  The Lythe map is post-Reformation but pre-Plantation, and this is reflected in the marking of territories. Belfast was little more than a muddy fording point on the Lagan between Carrickfergus and Bangor.  Irish place-names are more in evidence than on other maps of the era.  Holywood appears as Ardemaghste (< Ir. Ard Mhic Nasca); Grey Point as Roneraiagh (< Ir. Rinn Riabhach); Thornfield near Carrickfergus as Houghtonskie (< Ir. Achadh na Sceiche).  The map in question comes just before a period of major change.  It is also a key source for several other later maps which are better known, such as those of Mercator, Hondius, Boazio and Speed (Andrews 1993).  Mercator’s Ultoniae Orientalis Pars (‘Eastern Part of Ulster’, 1595) and Speed’s The province Ulster described (1610) are derivative of the present map where they overlap.  This paper discusses Lythe’s map in context and the characteristics of the 36 place-names shown.  It offers new derivations and identifications for some of the more problematic names.

In order to compile a list of Irish mountain names and other features in the mountain landscape of interest to walkers, it is necessary to consult different types of sources.  These include place-name surveys, databases, modern and historical maps, administrative documents and guides for walkers and travellers.  I have been compiling my own mountain lists since the 1990s and have been involved in researching and collating mountain names for the Mountain Views website for two decades.  Gathering information for Mayo, more than any other county, has necessitated the use of a very wide variety of sources.  In part, this is due to the fact that a surprising number of peaks and mountain features were left unnamed by the Ordnance Survey in the 1830s, even by comparison with other mountainous counties such as Kerry, Galway and Donegal.  Fortunately, it has been possible to fill some of these gaps by consulting other sources in both Irish and English, many listed in ‘Surveys of Irish Place-Names: A Bibliography’ (Tempan 2009).  Consultation of William Bald’s map of Co. Mayo (published 1830) and Fiachra Mac Gabhann’s thorough place-name survey, Logainmneacha Mhaigh Eo (2014), has proved particularly fruitful.  This contribution examines some of the issues involved in collating such information in order to recommend Irish and English forms for the name of four particular peaks.

The place-name element eochaill has been identified in over forty places scattered around Ireland and has usually been interpreted as a compound noun consisting of eo, ‘yew’ + coill, ‘wood’, so ‘wood of yews’ or ‘yew-wood’ (INP i, 510-11; Flanagan and Flanagan 1994: 84, 262).  These include Eochaill  / Youghal (par.), Co. Cork; Eochaill / Oghill, par. Clontibret, Co. Monaghan; Eochaill / Aughil, par. Tamlaghtard or Magilligan, Co. Derry; and Eochaillí / Oghillees, par. Burrishoole, Co. Mayo. 
In contrast with this group, there is another group of names which has typically been interpreted as containing an element meaning ‘promontory’ or ‘look-out point’.  These are phonetically very similar to the first group but typically have a- or ea- as the initial vowel.  These include Acaill / Achill Island, Co. Mayo; Achaill / Aughils, par. Ballinvoher, Co. Kerry; An Eachla / Aghla Mountain, Co. Donegal; and Feochaill – Foughill Etra/Otra, par. Jonesborough, Co. Armagh, where the initial f- appears to be prothetic.  They appear to be cognate with the ancient Celtic place-name Ocelum, which occurs both in Roman-era Britain and continental Europe.
There are several reasons, both linguistic and environmental, to be sceptical of the conventional interpretation ‘yew-wood’ with at least some of the names usually assigned to the first group.  This paper takes an inter-disciplinary approach to attempt to establish whether this meaning is appropriate to these places and asks whether some are derived from acha(i)ll / ocha(i)ll, meaning ‘promontory, look-out point’, but have undergone subsequent re-interpretation.  It also asks how future research could help to clarify the origin of these names.

Socio-onomastics is a growing field of research which began as a sub-discipline in onomastics, where we consider the social, cultural, and situational field in which names are used (Ainiala, 2016). Although the methodology of socio-onomastics often overlaps with well-known methods in anthropology, such as the use of ethnography for qualitative data, it is important to recognise other methods and theories that anthropology can offer onomastic studies. A discussion of the use of trans-cultural diffusion versus anthropo-geographic points of view from the anthropological perspective can provide deeper insight into the cultural impact of toponyms, for example. In this paper, I will seek to engage with the work of founding anthropology scholars, such as Franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, and Claude Levi-Strauss, whose methodology and theories will be evaluated for their value in toponymic study. Specifically, this paper will focus on the Otago region of New Zealand's South Island to demonstrate anthropological perspective in the study of toponyms. Using anthropological methodology, including anthropo-geographic methods, this paper is concerned with what new information we can glean from the Otago namescape about toponym formation. On a larger scale, what can a combined approach of anthropology and onomastics offer us in the way of new theories to evaluate, classify, and interpret toponyms, particularly in a multicultural setting? By engaging with these concerns, we aim to better understand how the anthropological perspective can enhance our understanding of toponyms, and of Pākehā-Māori cultural contact, in colonial New Zealand.

Besides being canonized as Romania's "national poet," Mihai Eminescu was hailed as the "complete man of Romanian culture" and the "absolute Romanian," among a profusion of encomiastic praises. Eminescu was immortalized in myriads of ways, from the most solemn and official (e.g. state-run rituals) to the most prosaic and banal (e.g. banknotes). In this article, I investigate the spatial dimension of Eminescu's memory by charting the commemorative landscape defined by toponymy and public monuments honoring the national poet in Romania. Particular attention is given to Eminescu's presence in urban street nomenclature and its regional distribution across the country. Drawing on several datasets of spatial information, I use statistical modeling techniques to examine the factors underpinning Eminescu's memorial namescape. Employing logistic regression analyses, the article highlights an uneven geography of Eminescu's memory and points out the variables structuring its particular spatial patterning.

The paper explores the semantic evolution of *kwenno- 'head' reflexes in Celtic languages, tracing their diachronic development and highlighting both language-specific nuances and universal semantic shifts. It describes nine major semantic groups of 'head' metaphors and metonymies and devises semantic maps of 'head' polysemy in Celtic, Germanic, Romance and Slavic languages. The analysis reveals a trend of the gradual disappearance of anatomical meanings while abstract meanings continue to expand; however, head names retain their usage in spatial and temporal expressions. This study further demonstrates the effectiveness of Celtic languages in lexical typology, owing to their extensive written tradition and the notable semantic distinctions that occasionally emerge among related terms.

Núria Garcia-Quera, Master in Linguistics (UB-UAB) and PhD in Geography (UAB), presents her doctoral thesis defended last October. The aim of the thesis was, on the one hand, to propose an interdisciplinary method with a cognitive approach that reveals the etymology of the settlement-names in the region of Pallars Sobirà (Pyrenees), and on the other hand, to discover some characteristics of the language that created them. Regarding the initial hypotheses, the first was that the opaque toponyms would be descriptions of the places where they are found; the second, that the repeated segments of these toponyms would refer to elements of the landscape; and the third, that the names would be formed by the compounding of words. Therefore, the novel method designed by the researcher statistically relates the features of the landscape of the towns of Pallars Sobirà to the different segments of their toponyms. The collection of these features was done on the basis of fieldwork, structured interviews with elderly people in the villages, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), while the segmentation of place names was achieved through a mathematical algorithm.
At the end of the talk, Garcia-Quera will present results as innovative and surprising as the proposed methodology. Not only are preconceived ideas about the language that was once spoken in the Pyrenees challenged, but new lines of research, hitherto unexplored, are opened up.

“Transferred names” are a special category of names which are copied from one location to one or many other locations because the places in question share a function, characteristic or association.  Typically, the original instance of the name applies to a place of note, often prestigious, or sometimes notorious. The street-names discussed in this article are all namesakes of London names. They include Smithfield, Oxford Street, Regent Street, Bond Street, Fleet Street and Grosvenor Street (later Grosvenor Road). It is likely that some of these are conscious transfers from London whilst others are probably coincidental occurrences of the same name.

A common pattern in Belfast street-names is naming after the house of an eminent person or family. The article focusses on a part of North Belfast which, two hundred years ago, was in the countryside just beyond the town boundary. As Belfast expanded, most of these houses were demolished for redevelopment of the land for industry or residential housing for workers.

The old Spiš county was one of the northernmost counties of the medieval Hungarian kingdom, located right on the border of the Polish kingdom. In this paper, I give an overview of the place name system of this area. The organization of the county dates back to the beginning of the 13th century, and although archaeological findings indicate that some parts of the area had been inhabited earlier, our place-name data have only survived from that period. Between the 13th century and the end of the Middle Ages, Spiš was a multilingual area where Slavs, Hungarians and Germans lived side by side and together. Because of this linguistic diversity, place names were created in different languages, and some names have been loaned to other languages. The purpose of this paper is to briefly summarize the linguistic processes that have affected the formation and evolution of place names in the county. For this, I use the methods of etymology, toponym reconstruction and the analysis of toponym system. At the same time, I also pay attention to the characteristics of the sources that preserve the place-name data and try to consider the possibilities and limitations of linguistic-ethnic reconstruction.

On the basis of an introductory analysis of the intimate bond established between territory and the nation/nation-state, the author points out that the main instrument of this bonding is the naming of places in the national language. When writing about the past of an area, deciding to use this or that language to render place-names is not an innocent choice. This is especially true of the 19th and 20th centuries when nationalism became the only globally accepted ideology. Such a choice may amount to repossessing the past of a territory in the interest of this or that nation/nation-state.

Archaeology and linguistics both investigate the past of human populations. They offer an opportunity to reach the past of mankind thousands of years before the present day and to obtain information on human groups of a particular period and region, their forms of livelihood, societal structures, beliefs and intergroup relations. While linguistics and archaeology both have multiple methodologies and research materials, some fundamental differences can be discerned between them already from the outset. Whereas a linguist studies (mainly) mental and portable cultural heritage, the archaeological material is spatial and has a particular location. Linguistics studies cultural concepts and a human world view that is related to the physical world through a process of cultural conceptualization, whereas archaeology investigates practical and often neglected sides of human life – material remains and waste. Archaeological research materials almost always have an absolute chronology in years...

Our study briefly outlines the history of the first toponomastic journal worldwide and the first journal devoted to Dutch toponymy, Nomina Geographica Neerlandica, which was launched in 1884. It presents the creation, objectives, editorial boards, evolutionary paths and inevitable end. The final part focuses on its decisive influence on the development of place-name research in the Netherlands and Belgium until 2011.

This paper looks at the study of place names (TOPONYMS) from a historical perspective using the methods of historical geography, philology, epigraphy, and spatial archaeology. It provides a number of case studies of ancient sites in Indonesia. Place names are of value as part of a nation's cultural heritage. Historical geography is a field at the intersection of history and geography in which toponyms have been a valuable source of data. Further, archaeological studies may also benefit from place name data. Philology and epigraphy allow us to derive data from inscriptions and manuscripts to identity the presence of settlements. An example is given of place names found in 14th and 15th century inscriptions and manuscripts. Research using spatial archaeology methods, meanwhile, involves placing archaeological sties in a spatial frame. One such spatial archaeology study in Java discovers over two hundred temples from between the 8th and 10th centuries. This led to uncovering the place names of villages where the temples were found. Such studies can help reconstruct the patterns of distribution of settlements, migrations, and invasions. Old place names which appear in inscriptions and manuscripts can also provide insights into the culture of the people at that time

This paper briefly discusses various aspects of the Gudhjem area on the Baltic island of Bornholm during the first millennium AD: the landscape, urbanization, administrative subdivisions, roads, ports, rural settlements and cemeteries. The whole area is of great archaeological interest with many 'recognized archaeological sites' and 'cultural heritage areas of national importance'. The paper lays emphasis on the coastal area around Gudhjem, which includes the classical Iron Age and Viking Age cemeteries along the coastal road from Salene Bugt, 0.5 km north of Gudhjem, to Saltuna, 6 km south of Gudhjem. This ancient coastal road from Gudhjem to Svaneke (Sorte Muld) is, figuratively speaking, the 'Via Appia' of Bornholm. The Via Appia is, of course, the most famous road in the Roman Empire, along which countless graves of wealthy families are located. The coastal area near Gudhjem is probably the best preserved ancient burial area in Denmark. The road leads directly to the large Iron Age settlement of Sorte Muld, a trade, production and religious centre near the town of Svaneke, 14 km to the southeast of Gudhjem. The hinterland of Gudhjem is also rich in Iron Age and Viking settlements, and the Christian landscape with its churches, chapels and religious place names is equally special. The Gudhjem area seems to have been important in both prehistoric and historical times-as a centre of administrative and religious power during the Germanic Iron Age, the Viking Age and the medieval period. It was indeed a picturesque and wealthy area-truly 'a home of the gods'. Gudhjem was a very interesting area throughout prehistoric and early historical times. I have called this paper 'The road to Gudhjem-the "Via Appia" of Bornholm' because of the remarkable concentration of ancient monuments, especially cemeteries and opulent burials, aligned like pearls on a string along the ancient coastal road near Gudhjem.

This work presents an onomastic investigation of the settlement names in the district (härad) of Färs in Sweden’s southernmost historical province of Scania (Skåne). Historical and contemporary records of the names are given, as are cadastral data from historical sources. Each name is etymologised and interpreted toponomastically, taking linguistic and factual (topographic, cadastral, agrarian, historical and archaeological) information into account. A large number of names of villages, hamlets, manors and solitary farmsteads from the Middle Ages and the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries are accounted for. The oldest types of settlement names, such as those ending in -by or -stad, are essentially concentrated to the central and north-western areas of the district. Name types prevalent in the Viking Age, the Middle Ages and early modern period, for example those ending in -hult or -röd, first appear in the uplands of the northeast, along the district’s eastern border and in the far south. These name types are indicative of forest clearing and reclamation, which is consistent with these areas having been forested until relatively recently or continuing into present day. Younger names include those of crofts and farmsteads that moved out from the villages and hamlets following the partition reforms of the early 19th century, which are addressed in sub-articles. Many of these names have been formed using a small set of second elements that were popular in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as -berg, -dal and -lund, often including the owner’s or the owner’s wife’s name as the first element. The interpretation of settlement and district names often involves the investigation of names of fields, forests, hills, lakes, rivers, streams and other uninhabited locations. It is suggested that the district name Färs is derived from a reconstructed name Proto-Norse *FariaR m. of lake Vombsjön in the western parts of the district, in turn derived from a reconstructed name Proto-Norse *Farō f. ‘the navigable one’ or possibly ‘the running one’ of the river Björkaån, which runs through the northern and central parts of the district, flowing into lake Vombsjön, and possibly of its continuation Kävlingeån downstream from the lake.

Bægerklang og rustilskyndelse er også temaet i Camilla Skovbjerg Paldams essay om den danske drikkevise anno 2003, hvor det klaustrofobiske i vores repetitive nationale drukritualer kontrasteres med en længsel efter rusbesyngelse med vidder, vid og bid. Der er ikke langt til horisonten, når rejsen op ad åen allerede efter kun fire takter går nedad igen

Fourth book from the collection about the old place-names around Vigo. The old toponyms of a recent urban area gathered from the last locals reminding a toponymic landscape that is now almost vanished.
The first book of a series on the place names of Vigo, led by the University of Vigo and the local government of Vigo.