"Renamed" Middle Ages

The book entitled A középkori Magyarország településatlasza [Settlement Atlas of Medieval Hungary] or the 21st-century source of medieval places and names

Abstract

"Renamed" Middle Ages. The book entitled A középkori Magyarország településatlasza [Settlement Atlas of Medieval Hungary] or the 21st-century source of medieval places and names

This article examines the historical and linguistic-onomastic aspects of the book entitled A középkori Magyarország településatlasza [Settlement Atlas of Medieval Hungary] (KMTA), large parts of which are freely accessible on the Internet. The motivation for the analysis is that the atlas deviates considerably from scientifically founded, generally accepted knowledge and the latest research results, both in terms of the visualized historical facts (processes) and the use of names. The authors point out the inadequacies of the KMTA’s data management and the historical perspective suggested by the maps, which is not sufficiently well-founded. A number of examples are used to show that the use of names in the KMTA does not correspond to the goal it has set itself (reconstruction of the medieval pronunciation of settlement names), whereas it contains an extremely high number of names that do not correspond to the sources.