Az Amerikai Egyesült Államok tagállamainak hivatalos és informális elnevezéseiről, a tagállamnevek magyar fordításáról

Abstract

This paper presents some general features of name giving processes adopted by Europeans arriving in the recently discovered New World in colonial times and soon after, laying special emphasis on naming practices (e.g. giving names in honour of royalty or other prominent personalities of the era; repeating names of other places; giving Christian-related, literary names; reflecting geographical, historical or scientific knowledge of the age in place-names; producing linguistically non-homogeneous geographical names) that were essentially different from those used in Europe for centuries to produce the basic place-name stock of the old continent. The author categorises official US state names according to their semantics (differentiating names indicating a geographical entity, a historical person, the Indian inhabitants, a geographic feature, a distant place, an important settlement and complex motivating factors relating to the states) and their language origins (distinguishing names of Indian, English, Spanish, French, Latin and Polynesian origin). US state nicknames are also described with respect to their function (e.g. actual nicknames, mottos, slogans), style (e.g. official, semi-official, non-official, common, frequent, rare, disused names) and motivation (e.g. names referring to the geographical features, the economic or political features, the history, the inhabitants and other features of the states). Translation operations adapted in creating the Hungarian equivalents of US state names are also observed in the paper.