Hispanic Toponymy of Equatorial Guinea: Structural and Semantic Aspect

Abstract

Equatorial Guinea is the only Spanish speaking country on the African continent with Spanish being one of the official languages. The linguistic situation in the region has been closely studied by Russian and foreign linguists, however, toponymy as a whole linguistic layer has never been covered in numerous works on the functioning of the Spanish language in this state. The article presents the first attempt at a linguistic description of the Hispanic place names of Equatorial Guinea. By means of modern electronic systems, Hispanic geographical names of the region have been identified and structured. Along with indicating the historical prerequisites for the formation of toponyms of this type in this African state, the author pays attention to the linguistic situation in the country. Since gaining independence in 1968, the country’s domestic policy has largely focused on returning to African roots and replacing in the 1970s colo-nial geonames by African geonames at the expense of the so-called “authenticity” campaign. However, despite such renaming and the end of the era of Spanish political dominance in the region, the toponymic corpus of Equatorial Guinea in the 2020s contains a large number of Hispanic names, often showing linguistic contacts as blended names with elements from the languages of local African tribes. Calculating the percentage of Spanish toponominations from the total number of geographical units of the region, the author characterizes from a linguopragmatic point of view lo-cal hydronyms, oronyms, insulonyms, limnonyms and other units, both at the macro and micro levels. Numerous examples are given for each of the identified groups. It is noted that descriptive toponyms with a Spanish component, contrary to the tendency common for Spanish conquerors in other regions of the world, is not the most numerous group in Equatorial Guinea. Assumptions are made regarding the etymology of some units. The article contributes to toponymic research in the region and is the first step towards the creation of a toponymic dictionary for Equatorial Guinea.