Proper names in linguistic atlases

Abstract

Proper names in linguistic atlases

The study offers an overview of the proper names included in Hungarian linguistic atlases. First, the lexicons of these atlases are examined, emphasising the reasons behind the low number of proper names. The linguistic atlases printed in Hungarian to date contain 6090 entries, but only 81 proper names. Anthroponyms can be found in 20 atlases, mostly in suffixed forms or nicknames. Other proper names include toponyms and the names of planets. Atlases from Romania are unique in this regard as the same headwords were collected most consistently. Existing linguistic atlases can be better utilised by onomastic research in geographic common nouns and words that have become anthroponyms (the names of professions, crafts, adjectives for internal or external characteristics) are also considered, as the number of these is much greater than that of proper names.