Everyone knows: streets, houses, cities and villages, as well as various natural objects have their own names. However, not everyone knows that such a discipline as toponymy is engaged in their study. This is the science that studies geographical names with all their features.
Subject of study
The range of interests of this area of knowledge includes such aspects as the history of emergence and transformation, the reasons for the change, spelling, translation and pronunciation, myths and legends associated with one or another "name". Toponymy seems to be a secondary science only at first glance. Many historical data about the various peoples and tribes that originally inhabited a particular territory become clear after studying the names left by them. However, this process is two-sided: some riddles of toponymy cannot be understood without studying the history and culture associated with them and often determining the features of the names of certain objects.
Value
The importance of toponymic objects and their study is easy to understand if we turn to maps. Without place names they becomeuseless. Without them, it is also very difficult to navigate the terrain, especially unfamiliar ones. The phrase: "Go to the gray house, turn left and go another five meters to the north" - many may be bewildered. And almost everyone is used to navigating by street names. The world without toponyms (as the objects of this science are designated) would be completely different, as well as without their study.
The above is well illustrated by one historical legend. Heinrich Schliemann, one of the founders of field archeology, set himself the task of finding the ruins of ancient Troy, the city described by Homer, and thereby proving its existence. While searching for a suitable place for excavations, he drew attention to the hill of Hisarlik, located in Turkey. Its name roughly translates as "place of ruins". This prompted the archaeologist to start his search here. As you know, Schliemann was not mistaken: ruins were found under a thick layer of earth.
At the junction
Toponymy is a science that studies geographical names from all sides. Of course, it uses data from a wide variety of disciplines. Understanding the origin, meaning of the word, its semantic load for the indigenous population, as well as the events behind it, arises as a result of the synthesis of historical, geographical and linguistic data. If we return to the Schliemann example, all these aspects are perfectly shown in it. Historical "reference" and geographic location data were taken by the archaeologist from Homer and from other sources. Translation of the name of the hill (contributionlinguistics) also played a prominent role in the search.
Many mysteries of toponymy can be explained if you understand the general principles of constructing the name. Let's take a look at some of them.
The simplest option
Historical toponymy knows many cases when a term denoting its geographical features was used as the name of an area. There are many similar examples on the map. This is the Palau archipelago in Oceania (“palau” translated from Micronesian means “islands”), and the South American Atacama desert (“desert” translated from Indian). Often the name of an object is formed by attaching some kind of epithet to a similar term. There are also many examples here: the Serra Dorada mountains in Portugal (“golden mountain”), the Parana River in India (“big river”), Mauna Kea in Hawaii (“white mountain”) and so on.
Some toponyms are transferred from one object to another. A common example of this is the names of cities and rivers. In many cases it is difficult to understand which object was the source of the "name". Nairobi, Moscow, Lilongwe, La Plata - all these are the names of rivers and cities at the same time.
Changeable
The history of toponymy is full of examples when names have changed over time. Quite often, this was the result of the arrival of new tribes, conquerors or forced migrants to the area. Human consciousness is arranged in such a way that it tries to make everything unfamiliar more understandable to itself. This is also the case with foreign toponyms. New residents take a geographical name, withoften encountered and transformed in their own way. So, the ancient Greeks reinterpreted the Berber "adrar", which means "mountain", into Atlas (translated from Greek as "bearing"). The new toponym organically entered the mythological system of Antiquity.
It happens that the name of an extended geographical object is not the same in its different parts. This is not uncommon for rivers. Such riddles of toponymy are easily explained: the main reason for changing the name of a river, as a rule, lies in the transformations in the nature of its flow. Bahr el-Jebel ("river of mountains") - the name of the Nile in the place where it breaks loudly from the mountain peaks to the East Sudanese plain.
In addition, different peoples living on the banks of the same river give it their own names. For the Nile, this is El-Bahr, given by the Arabs, Coptic Earo, Cyprus and Tkutsiri - in the Bunaga and Bari languages, respectively.
Memory of the past
The toponymy of a word often encounters an incorrect interpretation of certain names associated with the lack of certain knowledge in the field of their etymology (origin). This process is similar to the rethinking by new settlers of foreign language terms, which was mentioned above. Vrazhsky Lane in Moscow, according to many, witnessed some clashes with the enemy. The name is associated with the word "enemy". However, this assumption is erroneous: "enemy" means "gully". That was the meaning of the word until the 18th century.
There are many examples when toponyms told historians about the past. Names often reflect the way of life and featurespopulation. According to them, one can judge the predominant type of activity in a particular territory or its belonging, for example, to the lands of princes or landlords. Sometimes the designations of the area are associated with natural and climatic features that were characteristic of it some time ago. Mysteries of place names often arise when there is no information about the past of the place and it is difficult to compare the “name” and the territory designated by it.
