Toponimia ca tezaur lingvistic şi patrimoniu cultural

Abstract

The author of the study tries to debate on the issue whether the toponymy, either as a science or as the totality of geographical names, is no more than the ancilla of history, geography, linguistics, or it represents something nobler and more important, and should therefore be considered an authentic linguistic thesaurus and a component of national cultural patrimony. To answer this question, the study presents some relevant results of the toponymic research undertaken at the Institute of Romanian Philology in Iaşi, Department of Toponymy, together with other contemporary scientific approaches on the status of toponymic sciences. There are two key concepts of the theory of toponymic fields which stand on the foundation of the Toponymic Dictionary, Structural and Etymological elaborated at the Institut of Iaşi: the toponymic field and the toponymic etymology. The use of these two concepts in the processing of the toponymic data places the geographical names in the historical, linguistic, geographical, social, cultural context of their origin. Thus it is stressed the fact that the toponymy is the creation of a linguistic and cultural community.