Vízrajzi köznevek ómagyar kori településnevekben

Absztrakt

Hydrographic common nouns in settlement names of the Old Hungarian period

This paper discusses a characteristic subset of habitation names by analysing the hydronyms that have played a part in establishing Old Hungarian settlement names. The main aim of the author is to identify hydrographic common nouns (ér ‘brook’, fő ‘source’, fok ‘outflow’, patak ‘stream’, séd ‘creek’, tő ‘mouth’, tó ‘lake’ etc.) which could be included in old Hungarian settlement names. Such topics as the quantitative analysis of hydrographic common noun elements, the frequency of each hydrographic common noun in settlement names, the word geographic distribution of hydrographic common nouns, and the dependence of hydrographic common nouns upon the natural environment are also treated in the paper. On the one hand, the geographical characteristics of metonymical name giving (a typical method of place-name formation in Hungarian) are presented by the author; on the other hand, the functional and lexical structures of hydronyms missing from other sources are identified in the paper. In general, river names tend to become settlement names more often than still water names. The two groups of hydrographic common nouns examined in the paper and the actual hydronyms formed with the help of them became metonymical settlement names in the northern zone, in the eastern–southeastern–southern zone and in the western zone more often than in other regions of the Hungarian language area.