For the last century, archaeologists have surveyed and studied archaeological sites on the Swahili coast of East Africa, that represent the remains of past Swahili settlements and, in few cases, ...living historical towns. This paper is the first discussion of a collection of the names under which these past towns have been known, some of which may date back to the precolonial period. The present enquiry is concerned with the analysis of linguistic features, folk etymology and the conceptual content of these toponyms. It considers the recognised important themes in archaeology and history of the Swahili society, such as the political functioning of these towns as city states and the attested social and economic relevance of trade, the built environment and the ocean. Utilising this knowledge, it reflects on how the names contributed to place-making and defining the identity of these towns both as individual entities and as part of the Swahili cultural sphere. The interdisciplinary approach and perspectives (linguistic and archaeological) help to elucidate the connection between the socio-historical relevance of these sites with their cultural conceptualisations.
Abstract Quantifiable, spatially-resolved, large-scale evidence about traditional food storage facilities is extremely rare, and yet highly insightful for researchers across subjects such as human ...ecology, anthropology, agronomy, archaeology and economic history. This paper takes advantage of some unusually detailed French colonial era records of cereal storage and agro-pastoral practice in 19th century central Algeria that inventory the underground food stores of different sedentary and nomadic tribes at a moment of colonial confrontation in which these stores were central to ecological and political resilience. We consider how different aspects of these food stores relate to environmental, social and economic variables across the study area. The overall results suggest important north-south trends in agro-pastoral lifestyle and storage practice.
Von Ahrensbök und seinesgleichen Menke, Hubertus
Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik,
08/2019, Letnik:
86, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Ausdrücke, die mit Grifftötern der Avifauna in Verbindung zu bringen sind, sind in der West- und Nordgermania als Erst- oder Zweitglieder von Flur-, Siedlungs- und Gewässernamen weit verbreitet. Vor ...allem die Bezeichnungen der größeren Vögel wie Adler, Geier, Habicht und Falke weisen oft sprechende Grundwörter auf, die auf eine naturräumliche Wirklichkeit hindeuten (wie Falkenburg, -stein, -hagen etc.). Allerdings ist das Bezeichnungs- und Bedeutungsspektrum dieser Namenwelt stark durch Polysemie, Heteronymie und Generalisierungen gekennzeichnet. Die Auswertung von Dialektwörterbüchern ergibt großräumige diatopische Wortfelder mit einem Nebeneinander von Eigen- und Ersatzwörtern von Greifvögeln, mit Mischzonen, Synonymenflucht, Leerstellen oder Überlexikalisierungen, die zu Missverständnissen Anlass geben. Der Beitrag macht deutlich, dass für die Einordnung der Grifftöter nicht nur die Unterscheidbarkeit nach auffälligen Merkmalen, sondern auch die kulturökologische Geltung eines Vogels von Bedeutung ist. – Fazit: Das den Greifennamen zugrunde liegende lexikalische Benennungsmotiv ist keineswegs immer eindeutig, das heißt ein Name wie Ahrensbök kann ursprünglich durchaus einen Habichtswald meinen.
Terms associated with birds of prey that kill with their feet („Grifftöter“) are widely used in the West and North Germanic languages as heads or modifiers in field names, place names and aquatic names. Above all, the names of the larger birds such as eagle, vulture, hawk and falcon often have descriptive heads that refer to structures in the natural environment (such as Falkenburg, -stein, -hagen etc.). However, the range of expressions and meanings of these names is strongly characterized by polysemy, heteronymy, and generalisations. The analysis of dialect dictionaries results in large-scale diatopic word fields with a juxtaposition of proper and substitute words of birds of prey, with mixed zones, avoidance of synonymy („Synonymenflucht“), gaps or hyperlexicalizations that give rise to misunderstandings. The article shows that not only the distinctiveness according to striking characteristics, but also the cultural-ecological validity is important for the classification of the birds of prey. – Conclusion: The lexical naming motive underlying the names of birds of prey is by no means always clear; a name like Ahrensbök may well mean a hawk wood.
Many studies have demonstrated how street names have been utilized by political elites as a tool for communicating national histories and hegemonic state ideologies with the end goal of affecting ...public memory in a way that legitimizes the political order. Recent scholarship in the realm of public memory has shown that it is a negotiated, dialectic process by which elites attempt to gain acceptance for the sociopolitical order of the day through various means like street naming and in which everyday people react to such coercion in complex ways. However, not enough attention has been paid to the fact that nationalist movements have qualitatively different ideological goals and geographic scales in mind when reorienting city texts compared with those of communist regimes, whose task is much more difficult. This paper uses the city of Košice, Slovakia to examine political street renaming and vernacular responses to nationalist and communist periods of odonymic change and their unique results.
•Nationalist goals differ from socialist ones in the street renaming process.•Communist regimes must contextualize local and national scale with international.•Socialist figures are mistaken for national ones, or not understood at all.•Political continuity after 1989 can account for leftover toponymic landscapes.
The review observes a new collection of studies devoted to the problems of Russian toponymy. Released under the authority of the Russian Geographical Society that keeps a constant focus on toponymy ...on the pages of its journal “Problems of Geography,” this original toponymic almanac gives full coverage of the activities of Toponymic Commission under the Moscow City Branch of the Russian Geographical Society. It includes articles on various aspects of studying toponymy, anthroponymy, literary onomastics: from theoretical inquiries to applied case analyses of individual place names, and methodological guidance for school lesson planning. The author of this review considers the articles presented in five large sections of the collection (“General Problems of Onomastics,” “Regional Toponymy,” “Urban Toponymy,” “Names of Peoples. Personal Names. Proper Names in Fiction,” “Bibliography on Toponymy (2009–2018)”), dwelling on the most important points, with priority being given to the toponymic sections of the book. The collection covers most of the pressing problems of modern onomastics: the study of different name classes, including those often overlooked in major research (anemonyms, exonyms), problems of typological delimitation, methodology of onomastic studies, and verification of research results. The reviewed volume clearly outreaches the toponymic domain, integrating place name studies to a wider context of the related onomastic fields. The book also draws the readers’ attention to the growing number of ambiguous and manifestly second-rate publications in onomastics, both at the national and the global scale. Pointing to some minor research and compilation deficiencies, the reviewer gives an overall positive evaluation of the materials and results of the searches presented in the book.
This article focuses on geographical urbanonyms in Ukraine – names of streets, squares, lanes, etc. that refer to the names of other geographical objects like cities, regions, countries, or ...continents. It shows the role of geographical urbanonyms as a powerful instrument used by political regimes to shape political identity by constructing and legitimizing borders between “us” and “them” at different spatial scales. The analysis revealed a significantly higher presence of geographical urbanonyms in Ukraine compared to former state socialist countries in Central Europe. The widespread presence of street names related to the former USSR proves the absence of post-Soviet decolonization in semiotic space, going beyond the pure decommunization, in the majority of Ukrainian cities since 1991. Regional differences in the dynamics, distribution and structure of geographical urbanonyms in Ukraine are explained by the historical, cultural and (geo)political divisions.
Toponyms, not just geographical names, carry historical, geographical, and linguistic information and provide rich evidence of epochs. The names of places mirror the culture and lifestyle of people ...related to them and have unique features. Toponymical researches have a long history, however, there are some problems that complicate the interpretation of toponyms. Disputable issues related to the definition of toponyms sources require greater attention from linguistics, and historical and geographical sciences. The present study aims to explore Turkic hydronyms with the components "aq/ak" and "qara/kara" to identify their nomination specificity. The descriptive research design employs the methods of a complex linguistic and etymological analysis. The research data comprises of Turkic hydronyms, naming bodies of water located in the territory of the Eurasian space – Afghanistan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan. The conducted study demonstrates that the nomination of the hydronyms with the components "aq/ak" and "qara/kara" is not related to the color specifics of the bodies of water. The hydronyms with the component "aq/ak" name the water resources that are mountain snowy waters and originate from glaciers, whereas the component "qara/kara" in Turkic hydronyms indicates the spring origin of waters.
The new book on the toponymy of Flintshire is notable in several respects, including the scope of the study that goes well beyond the geographical borders of this county. This review addresses the ...virtues and the shortcomings of the publication. Two academic monographs, several books for a wider audience, and a number of articles had already been devoted to Flintshire’s geographical names. A new study is considered against this background and includes an analysis of the book, its features, and the evaluation of the authors’ contribution to the study of the toponymy of North East Wales. The book covers 801 geographical names of 753 places in Flintshire (Welsh Sir y Fflint) before the administrative reform of 1994. Given that 62% of the toponyms under study (including those that disappeared from modern maps) are Welsh, the review focuses on the analysis of this set of data, with attention to chronological layers and the etymologies of some geographical names, as well as their translation into English. The author points out that the English layer of Flintshire’s toponymy deserves a more detailed coverage. The layout of the data in this work makes it possible to express some considerations regarding the general trends observed in the toponymic studies of Wales.
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