“What’s in a Name?” Toponyms and Loanwords in European Textile Cultures

Abstract

Textiles as man-made products have been exchanged over distances for millennia. They can and have been produced almost anywhere; they are also, as a product, highly differentiated and quickly adjustable to changing demands. This brings with it naming practices to communicate about the goods in question. Textiles are labeled so that people can form expectations about them and rely on the reputation tied to the product’s identity. The terminology of textiles and textile items arises and develops in unison with technical innovations, discoveries, fashions, and trade patterns. Although the occurrence of toponyms e.g., in preindustrial trade (10th to 18th century AD) is widely used to study the development of textile trade, there are no studies that look at textile labeling practices across time and space in Europe’s history. This paper explores textile labels from Antiquity up until now, drawing on the expertise of an interdisciplinary group of scholars. Exploring labeling practices is worthwhile, as it allows us to better understand textiles as a phenomenon that has, across time, always connected regions, markets, and, not least, people. The discussion of naming practices of textiles, and especially the use of geographical indications (toponyms), is by no means only relevant to the study of the past as EU regulations show, namely the Geneva Act of the Lisbon Agreement of 2015, that defines appellation of origin as “any denomination protected in the Contracting Party of Origin consisting of or containing the name of a geographical area, or another denomination known as referring to such area, which serves to designate a good as originating in that geographical area, where the quality or characteristics of the good are due exclusively or essentially to the geographical environment, including natural and human factors, and which has given the good its reputation; as well as any indication protected in the Contracting Party of Origin consisting of or containing the name of a geographical area, or another indication known as referring to such area, which identifies a good as originating in that geographical area, where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially attributable to its geographical origin.”