SESSION I : Geographical Names and Sea Names
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The 14th International Seminar on Sea Names Geography, Sea Names, and Undersea Feature Names The sense of names Geographical names as dynamic element of a world in motion Isolde Hausner (Chair, Austrian Committee on Geographical Names) 1. Introduction : Toponyms as cultural and historical heritage – names and identity from a linguistic perspective: A speech community denominates the objects of its surrounding natural and cultural area with its specific names inventary which exercises a cognitive function in communication, this means that names have a community building function in society. The function of toponyms and the motives of naming are primarily focused on the natural and cultural surroundings of a society and their achievements on the cultivation of their living space. With the toponyms people create a spatial identity, they feel familiar with the region and in this sense toponyms are part of the cultural and historical heritage of a region. If there are alterations – is it the object itself or any other changes from outside (e.g. natural hazards, political, social alterations) – name changes can and will happen, names can newly be created but names can also disappear. Toponyms have furthermore the function to be a historical and linguistic documentation of a region, because they store information on the natural space and the socio-cultural developments in the course of the centuries. In this context I mention also the name protection on the national and international level. Countries have their own laws and rules to protect their geographical names, and have the right to denominate objects on their territory. The United Nations group of experts on geographical names (UNGEGN) coordinates all these endeavours of the member states and sets standards for the implementation in practice. What we all try to achieve is to preserve the autochthon toponymic inventory. We all know furthermore, that not all names enjoy the protection of one country alone, that are the toponyms belonging to two or more states. Res. VIII/9 (UNGEGN) Geographical names as cultural heritage1 The Conference, Recognizing the emphasis placed by delegates to the Eighth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names on the importance of geographical names as part of a nation’s historical and cultural heritage, Noting that the collection of geographical names in many countries of the world is made increasingly difficult as a result of the rapid pace of socio-economic change impacting on society and landscape, Recalling the recommendation made by the Second United Nations Conference on the 1 See http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/unresolutions.htm 1 The 14th International Seminar on Sea Names Geography, Sea Names, and Undersea Feature Names Standardization of Geographical Names in its resolution 27, as well as the recommendations made by the Seventh Conference in its resolution VII/5, that measures be taken nationally to ensure that names that are yet to be collected are recorded through fieldwork according to local usage of name forms, Urges countries that have not already done so, to undertake both the systematic collection of geographical names and the promotion of a greater understanding among the wider public of the significance of inherited geographical names with respect to local, regional and national heritage and identity. 2. The linguistic aspect of toponyms The treatment of the cultural-historical aspect of appellatives and proper names (in our context the subgroup of toponyms) has a long tradition in Germanic philology. At the beginning of the 20th ct. there were endeavours to combine linguistic research with cultural history and to establish a close connection between linguistic and subject/object referenced studies. We all know nowadays that modern onomastics can deliver a substantial contribution to this interdisciplinary topic, exactly for the cultural-historical interpretation of a landscape. In philology always evolutionary processes in space and time are described. The keywords which we hear from ecology, biology and other natural sciences, these are - preservation of the cultural-historical heritage - responsibility of the society for the natural and cultural heritage - language variety in the light of a sustainable cultural development - initiative for a cross-bordering cooperation are in the same way relevant for toponyms and their treatment. The Austrian Alpine toponyms, for instance, reveal a lot of information on the regional socio-cultural developments and migrations in the course of the centuries.2 From a linguistic point of view the definition of „Alpine culture“ is contradictory to that of other disciplines (ecology, ethnology) which are also concerned with this subject. In contrary to ecology, e.g.,3 where stability and the preservation of the status quo is demanded for the maintenance of the prevalent ecological system, changes and development processes are regarded as a prerequisite in linguistic disciplines. Cartographers tend to demand a stable names inventory. But reality shows that toponyms show a similar dynamic like appellatives. The word disappears with the object and it is similar by the names. But one must know that the dynamic of toponyms is admittedly dependant on mostly extralinguistic factors, such as political, economical, tourist, historical or other circumstances. A good example is the name of the capital of Austria Vienna: In Roman times the 2 The Austrian Academy of Sciences/Institute of Lexicology of Austrian Dialcts and Names hosts the project „Alpkultur – Cultural-historical documentation of toponyms in the Alpine space: The names of mountains and Alpine pastures in East Tyrol“. The results will be published in 2009. 3 See Walter Leimgruber (2002): Alpine Kultur: Konstanz und Wandel eines Begriffs. « Alpenforschung. Kulturelle Diversität im Alpenraum. Workshop der Schweizerischen Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften», Thun, 29. und 30. November 2002, S. 53-67. 2 The 14th International Seminar on Sea Names Geography, Sea Names, and Undersea Feature Names name was Vindobona, which is composed of the Roman generic element –bona ´property´ and the Celtic- Roman first name Vindos, so the name can be translated as “the property 4 th or the residence of Vindos”. In the years after the withdrawal of the Romans in the 4 ct. this name disappeared. After the “dark centuries” from which we have no historical documents, a new society, the Bavarians, gave the city a new name. Only in the 9th ct. (881 C 12th ct.) in a historical document the battle between the Magyar people and the Bavarians ad Uueniam is reported. This is a completely new name, based on the Indo- European stem *ueidhu- “wood”. This was originally the name of the river Wien which has its spring in the Viennese Wood, and which was transferred to the name of the city Wien (Vienna/English). As I mentioned before, toponyms belong to the category of proper names and therefore own their characteristics. In the following I want to speak about the 3. The nature of toponyms and the “sense” of names Like all proper names toponyms have a unique function, that is to say they refer to one particular object. There is no need for special contextual conditions (on the contrary we call toponyms as textless sources for onomastics), and – this is very important for our topic here - toponyms give rise to specific correlations by the user of the toponym, they are (loosely) connected with the characteristics of the denominated object. But the relation denotation – connotation is not rigidly definable: examples are the dual naming of Arabian Gulf / Persian Gulf and East Sea / Sea of Japan. The denotation takes place on the administrative level, the connotation has a psychological or even political impact. Necessary conditions for applying a particular name to a particular object are 1) identification of the object by a generic element “Sea”, “Mountain”, “River” 2) reference to the nature of the object (topographical conditions): “Mediterranean Sea”, “Rocky Mountains”, “Yellow River” (for the river Huang He in China) 3) reference to a political context: Gulf of Finland, Persian Gulf/Arabian Gulf. Toponyms are one of the most important cultural-historical sources. We in Austria have a lot of cultural loan words, many of the times of the antique Roman Empire. These loan words can be found in many toponyms. Especially the Alpine toponyms of mountains and pastures in our country are witnesses of historical times in which the three main language groups of Europe, the Slaves, the Romans and the Germans lived together or near by, whose specific kind of civilizing the Alpine space is stored in the Alpine names inventory. Nowadays these ethnic groups and their languages are assimilated to the Bavarians and Alemanni.5 But by the philological analysis of the Alpine toponyms one gets an impression of the mentality of the early settlers, their economic achievements (especially in dairy) and their understanding of the natural space. And by the linguistic method we can find out where and how long these ethnic groups have lived in our 4 See Wiesinger, Peter (1985): Probleme der bairischen Frühzeit in Niederösterreich aus namenkundlicher Sicht. In: Die Bayern und Ihre Nachbarn. Teil 1. Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Frühmittelalterforschung 25. bis 28. Oktober 1982, Stift Zwettl, Niederösterreich. Wien. S. 336ff. 5 In Austria there are few Slavic minority areas in the South and Southeast of our country (beside the younger Croatian and Hungarian minorities in the Federal Province of Burgenland). 3 The 14th International Seminar on Sea Names Geography, Sea Names, and Undersea Feature Names country. In Austria we have, for instance, a lot of mountain toponyms which refer to the geology of the region: A frequent naming motive that hints at special kinds of stone is colour. Red, for example, in Osttirol is commonly used for rocks that get their colour from inclusions of iron, which are discharged by weathering and oxidize. As the name Cimaross (mountain name, 2405 m, East Tyrol) that is derived from Romanic *cima rossa ‘red peak’ shows, this naming motive also is very old.