SOCIOONOMASTIC-SOCIOPRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF THE PLACE-NAME DATABASE OF FRIGYES PESTY IN NÓGRÁD COUNTY

Abstract

One of the aims of the Hungarian National Toponym Registry Program is to publish the toponyms of Frigyes Pesty’s database. In the programme, I undertook to describe the corpus of the place-name corpus of Nógrád County. In my study, I present a socioonomastic-sociopragmatic analysis of the Nógrád County material of Frigyes Pesty’s place-name database. This database is an extremely valuable collection from the point of view of onomastics, language history, ethnography, local history, historical geography, etc. It contains a corpus of synchronic place names collected in a relatively short period, which has since become a body of names of historical value. While describing the settlements of Nógrád County, I came across numerous entries of villages whose texts are perfectly suitable for socioonomastic-sociopragmatic studies. My research is therefore socioonomastic: I aim to present the linguistic interference phenomena and the characteristics of the name contactology of the Hungarian and Slovak ethnic groups living together in Nógrád county. As a result of the Hungarian–Slovak bilingual environment and the linguistic interaction, contact phenomena appear in the material of geographical names and personal names. In the boundary descriptions of a municipality, Hungarian and Slovak names of areas fluctuate, and names often appear in both languages. In addition to socioonomastic studies, the material of the place-name directory is also suitable for sociopragmatic studies: there are numerous data on the naming, designation, and addressing of women, so I also deal with this topic in the study.