The Role of Folk Legends in Place-Name Research

Abstract

IN SPITE OF THE CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS between two relatively new disciplines of folkloristics and onomastics, folklorists as well as onomatologists have generally overlooked contributions can make to place-name research. The main reason has been neglected in place-name scholarship is that place-name studies have so far been largely exercises in lexicography. That is, place-name scholar has been mainly interested in spelling, pronunciation, origin, and meaning of place names as words, not as names that function regardless of what they mean. Consequently, onomatologists have used only if it helped explain linguistic changes or meanings of names. Too often, though, place-name researchers have had virtually no use at all for folklore. As Robert S. Rudolph says, investigator of place names seeks to illuminate true origins obscured by folk etymologies.' Rudolph's view is typical of that of most linguists, historians, and geographers who have worked with place names. Unlike folklorist, these investigators of names have been interested in factual rather than imaginative aspects of place naming, in hard data rather than cultural significance of names. Since term folklore is generally equated in popular usage with what is false, place-name students seeking truth about names usually do not knowingly report folklore. Just as onomatologists have neglected folklore, folklorists have neglected names. Jan Brunvand, although he has studied names, points out that, strictly speaking, study of names falls into realm of onomastics, not folkloristics, and adds that the naming that a folklorist studies is that which is traditional and which appears in context of other folklore.2 This attitude, typical of many folklorists, is understandable since place-name scholars have been interested primarily in compiling lexica. In United States, investigating origin and meaning of names is largely a matter of simple inquiry into historical records, not a matter of folkloristic research and analysis. The folklorist is interested in facts of