What's in a Toponym?
Would that which we call Verona by any other name truly be as fair and sweet?
Onomastics Oh·no·MAS·tix - /ŏn″ə-măs′tĭks/
- from the Greek ónoma = name & onomastikós = of or belonging to naming
(n) - The study of the origins and forms of proper names
Toponym TOP·o·nym - /ˈtäpəˌnim/
- from the Greek topos = place/ land, topography + nym, from ónoma = name
(n) - A place/ geographical location name - Toponymy = the study of place names
Where do place names come from? And do names hold any signifiant meaning outside of designating a geographical place itself for communication purposes?
The naming of a place is often an anthropomorphic exercise, attributing personality traits to the (seemingly) inanimate location. In mythology, folk lore and many religious traditions the naming a person or place is extremely significant. A name is not just a designator, but a vessel that holds sacred truths about "the named" that are not necessarily visible to the eye, but are essential to essence of "the named." And naming becomes form of magic; revealing those truths about both what is and what is to come (prophesying/ influencing what will be.)
When an important or life altering episode occurs to a person or at place it will often result in a renaming - because names are so tied to the truth of the being they designate that when that core truth is altered the name must change to reflect the new state of being.
This why I am so fascinated by the back story of place names. They aren't arbitrary, and understanding the backstory of a place's name is essential to understanding the place itself, they hold the history of a place between the letters and will often teach you something you didn't know about it's people or story. You want to know how a people group or time in history thought about the world? Study their language and naming practices; what concepts did they find worth creating words for? (Places are like people, they have personalities, pasts, trauma's and bias'. You can never fully know them until you understand the lens with which they view themselves and the world.)
The significance of naming can even work in reverse, with a name taking on additional meaning from the attributes of the object it names, even though those meanings weren't previously associated with the original word. Take for example our Fair Verona:
Formally Vernomago, likely named after geological attributes, meaning Field of Elder Trees [Celtic; verno = elder tree + mago = field.]
The personal names Vernon, (a Gallic cognate🔍 meaning alder tree), Verona and it's derivatives like Veronica now carry with them new imagery of beauty and a wisdom that comes with long history, and romanticism - all evoked because of the names' connection with the ancient city Verona (and it's Fair reputation described in Shakespeares Romeo & Juliet.)
These new connotations are even more surprising considering the names Verona/ Veronica are not even connected etymologically to either the city Vernomago or it's Celt elder tree roots - but are instead separately derived from a Greek name:
Veronika = she who brings victory [from Bereníkē (Berenice) / Phereníkē ; phérein = to bring + níkê = victory.] Or, possibly truth bearer in medieval folk etymology [linked to Latin vera = true + Greek eikon = image.]
The mental associations of descriptive traits linked to the geographical Verona is so strong they carry over to it's phonetic personal name cousins, despite having no linguistic connections to either words' original etymology.
There are four main categorical naming schemes that have been historically used when named places. Almost every place name is derived from one or more of the following:
Significant Geographical Features
- eg: Haiti = land of high mountains
Directional/ Location Descriptions
- eg: Japan = land of the rising sun - a reference to it being East🔍 , (and therefor in the direction the sun rose) of China (the people group who gave it this name)
The People Groups Inhabiting the Area
- eg: France = land of the Franks (Germanic tribe living in the area)
Significant Individuals Associated with Area
- eg: America = after Italian explorer Ameriga Vespucci
Misunderstandings of any of above & Names Lost in Translation*
- eg: Senegal = canoe - European explorers asked natives they came across in a canoe what the name of their land was and the natives thought they were asking about their boat so answered Senegal, their word.for canoe..
You'll notice in many of the examples above the name we commonly use for the place is one given to it by outsiders, like China naming Japan in relation to itself. This is called an exonym; a non native place name, or name given by foreigners (from eco = outer)
A name given by its own people is an autonym or endonym; a native name (from endon = inner)
Example: Romania = land of the Romans is what the people of the area call themselves because they were/ are in fact Romans, of the old school Roman Empire. The Byzantine Empire (which is just our modern name for the Eastern Branch of the Roman Empire after the East/ West split in 395 BC) did not actually end/ 'fall' until 1453 and the Romanians at the time still considered themselves Romans so took the name Romania.
Some places are known by more that one name, like Germany (an exonym given originally via the Romans.) It is also called Allemand (an exonym of Old English & Old French origins) in places like France and Deutschland in the German language, (their endonym for their own country.)**
If a name refers to an ethnic group, like Gypsie or Celt, rather than a people linked by political geography, it is called an ethnonym. Ethnonyms often influence or become toponyms like when France was named after the ethnic people group the Franks.***
Sometimes a name is a combination or blending of two or more preexisting words or names to create a new word/ name. Usually the first segment of one word is attached to the final segment of another word. Any word created by this combining method is called a portmanteau (pronounced port-MAN-toe.)
Example: Tanzania, a clipped combination of states Tanganyika + Zanzibar which unified in 1964.
Evolution of Place Names & Common Suffixes:
Across the globe you will find many place names that share similar or identical parts of their names, like Harrisburg & Luxembourg . This is because many place name suffixes are derived from the same root words for things like town, land of or hill for example. Some extremely common suffixes that you'll see are:
-BURG / -BERG/ -BOURG - Germanic, fortified town or castle
-SHIRE - from the Old English, scir, meaning village
-HāM - Old English. A homestead.
-TUN - Old English. A settlement or enclosure.
-IA or -A (Greek) & -STAN (Persian.) Meaning land of
-BARR - Arabic, coast or shore
-MAGO - Celtic, field
Over time, as languages evolve and sounds blend & simplify^ (or change completely, like the Great Vowel Shift of Middle English,) what was once a simple, literal descriptor becomes a 'new' abstract word in which we may no longer recognize the once obvious source; eg. Essex, Wessex & Sussex were once a simple differentiation of Saxon settlements in the East (Ēastseaxan = East Saxons) vs. West (Westseaxan = West Saxons) & South (Sūþseaxe = South Saxons) in 5c & 6c England.†
† Similarly Middlesex = middle Saxons (between Essex & Wessex) Why no north Norsex? The Northern kingdoms, for varies reasons, identified more with, and thus took names from, the Angles traditions & language rather than the Saxons, like Norfolk & Suffolk which are simply North Folk & South Folk.
Names also evolve as different peoples inhabit the lands and adapt the local names into their native languages. This sometimes result in some funny repetitive names like:
Torpenhow Hill in Wales - (which literally means "Hill-hill-hill" Hill) ..................... ....................It was originally called Pen by the native Welsh (pen just being the Welsh word for peak or hill.) When the Saxon's invaded and learned the name for the hill they started calling it Pen Hill or Torpen (tor being the Saxon word for hill.) The same thing happened when the Norse arrived, they call the hill Torpen Hill = Torpen Haugr (haugr being the Norse word for hill) which the English combined and Anglized to Torpenhow and once again adding the native word for hill. Resulting in a name that means Hill Hill Hill Hill! †
Sahara Desert also means Desert Desert & Rock of Gibraltar = Rock Rock of Tariq.
This can even happen inside a single language as it evolves. Words drop out of use and people forget their meaning, so they often add new 'modern' words to the old names.
Example: Lake Semerwater, (or Semer Water) it's parts literally mean Lake Lake Lake [se; Old English sae = lake + mere; Middle English lake + waters, a modern English lake.] In each age the old term meaning was forgotten by the population and they added a new designator to make the very same meaning clear again.
These funny repetitive names are called pleonasms or pleonastic place names.
† There are some who call this example an apocryphal exaggeration, saying the Pen = peak is not the equivalent of hill (I personally consider them similar enough concepts that it justifies being considered pleonastic)
They also point out the the modern Torpenhow Village does not actually have a hill near by named Torpenhow Hill. But common sense tells me that a village named "Hill Hill Hill Village" was likely built on a hill, so perhaps there is no separate Torpenhow Hill nearby because the village itself is on what was once Torpenhow Hill... either way it's still a fascinating example of a pleonastic place name even if it only includes three hills, not four.
Sometimes names that seem very different actually are surprisingly similar, despite completely unrelated etymology, like The Alps🔍 and The Caucasuses🔍 which both essentially mean white (i.e. snow-capped) mountains.
People are predictable when it comes to language, and all languages seem to start as quite literal representations of the world around us. (The creative, symbolic and associative meanings don't follow until later.) Here we have two mountain ranges named by different ethnic groups in different places, at different times and in different languages, and both are called by nearly identically names, as just the most basic description of just what they were; mountains high enough to get snow...
(It should come as no surprise, that many of our 7k+ modern languages come from only a handful of parent languages🔍. Even the alphabet was really only invented once, then borrowed and altered over time by different cultures.)
The more one digs into the etymology of language and particularly place names, the more one recognizes the common threads of humanity and civilizations development throughout history and across all cultures.
Do you know the history of your hometown's name? What does say about the people who live there? Share it's story in the comments!
* Categories & examples are from Duncan Madden's excellent book: FOUND IN TRANSLATION which I highly recommend for anyone interest in learning more about place names etymologies.(Available on Amazon)
** Meaning land of the Dutch, a people group that describes non-Scandinavian, in other words, continental, Germanic people groups, which includes both the High or Northern Dutch (what we currently call the Dutch of the Netherlands) and the Lower or Southern Dutch of modern Germany, the Rhineland and Switzerland.
Interestingly the Dutch of the Pennsylvania Dutch of American refers to these Lower Dutch; they are emigrants from Germany not the Dutch Netherlands.
*** Ethnic groups aren't necessarily genetically or racially uniform, they way we tend categorize people groups today.
^ Sounds might become more similar, or change, in a process called Assimilation, were already similar or nearby sounds blend or shift, (eg. inplosion - as the literal opposite of explosion - became implosion,) or through Lenition or Reduction, where a letter sound that requires more effort to pronounce mid word shifts to a sound that is easier to pronounce eg. the hard "t" in waiting is pronounced as a softer "d."
Sometimes entire syllables are lost through Haplology, when two syllables are similar and one is thus completely dropped, for example Eng•land used to be Eng•la•land (land of the Engla/ Angles.) Or single sounds disappear through Elision, (the loss of unstressed sounds, eg. opossum becomes possum) Aphaeresis, (loss of initial sounds eg the Texas pronunciation of America as 'Merica) Syncope, (loss of medial sounds, eg. soften & castle where the "t" is not pronounced) and Apocope,(loss of final sounds, eg. lamb with a silent "b".)
Strangely, there are even times when a sound change complicates or adds sounds or syllables through Epenthesis (aka Anaptyxis: an introduction of a sound between two adjacent sounds eg. the pronunciation of athlete with three syllables or Prothesis (the addition of a sound at the beginning of a word; frequent in Spanish, where Latin words like status (= state) became Spanish e•stado) Occasionally two sounds will switch places through Metathesis, (eg the Old English thridda became third.) Or similar sounds will diverge in Dissimilation eg. the "n" in Old Spanish omne (= man) developed into a "br" sound, becoming modern hombre.
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