The meanings of landscape elements in traditional village place names in southern Hunan, China

Abstract

In China, village place names have recorded and transmitted cultural information. However, with China’s economy rapidly developing, the Hunan Province is becoming urbanized and numerous local village names with historical and cultural significance are disappearing. This paper explores the meanings of local landscapes by analysing village names. I extracted landscape elements from traditional village names and divided them into three categories: natural landscape elements, human landscape elements, and associated elements. The characteristics of 34 types of elements were summarized and analysed. The analysis shows that traditional village residents have more descriptive and less narrative expressions for natural landscapes and are more willing to assign other attributes to human landscapes, and the phenomenon of frequent description and recording of natural landscape elements by nomenclators was found by means of statistical analysis. From the subsequent interpretation of the case, we can also find that the inhabitants frequently recorded the location of water sources near their villages in the village place names and described the shape of the lowlands and rivers on which the villages were located. It shows the high demand of the traditional inhabitants for the environmental elements of their existence. Secondly, the correlation between plants and auspicious elements is high, a result that may be related to the meaning represented by plants in traditional Chinese culture, possibly because the namesake expresses a certain emotion or desire through the plants in the place name. The more obvious association of elements in the "settlement" category with "surname or personal name" is due to the long-term development of local residents of the same clan. This study reveals that the characteristics of village names and traditional village planning can be used to understand the meanings held by local residents of landscape elements near the villages.