Vizek a természeti környezetre utaló településnevekben

Abstract

Bodies of Water in Settlement Names Referring to the Natural Environ¬ment In my paper I examine the role of bodies of water and hydronyms in the creation of settlement names referring to the natural environment. The analysis specifically examines in what form the hydronyms and linguistic elements indicating water are present in the settlement names of the early Old Hungarian Era, thus it focuses on structural and chronological questions. Settlement names that may be associated with water make up one third (33%) of settlement names referring to the natural environment. In terms of their structure, these are mostly single-component settlement names without a formant (85%). As for their lexical structure, these names may be of three types: these name forms may include 1. a single-component hydronym: e.g., Nyitra settlement name < Nyitra hydronym, 2. a two-component hydronym: e.g., Feketetó settlement name < Fekete-tó ‘black lake’ hydronym, 3. a geographical common noun referring to the environment: e.g., Patak settlement name < patak ‘brook’. In the case of the names belonging to the second large structural type of settle¬ment names referring to the natural environment, the single-component toponyms with formants (6%) the toponymic formant is fundamentally added to a hydro¬graphic common name base: e.g., Mocsaras settlement name < mocsár ‘swamp’ + -s topoformant. The first name constituent of two-component settlement names making up the third main structure may include a hydronym or a common noun referring to the natural environment, while in their second name constituent there is either a common noun meaning ‘settlement’ (e.g., Szamosfalva ‘village/next to the river Szamos’) or a settlement name (e.g., Túrpásztó ‘settlement named Pásztó/next to the river Túr’). Settlement names with such a structure are rare in the early Old Hungarian Era (9%). The relative chronological studies indicate the dominance of single-component settlement names without a formant between the 12th and 14th centuries: their proportion is around 80–90% throughout the period. The chronological trend of the names with formants and two-component name structures, however, is charac¬¬terized differently: to start with, these settlement names appear in a low number even in the 13th and 14th centuries and their number does not increase significantly in this period either.