Namenkundliche Informationen
Journal Data
| Type | JOURNAL |
|---|---|
| ISSN | 0943-0849 / 2751-5621 |
| OpenAlex | S4387289895 |
| MAG | 4387289895 |
| Total publications | 105 |
| Coverage period | 1976 - 2026 |
| Language | EN |
| Impact factor | 0.04 |
This journal focuses on onomastics, the study of names, which is a subfield of linguistics and folklore. Folklore is explicitly listed as a related area, and linguistic studies often intersect with linguistic anthropology
Ancient and Medieval Archaeology Studies · Byzantine Studies and History · Central European Literary Studies · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · Ecology, Conservation, and Geographical Studies · Gender Studies in Language · German Literature and Culture Studies · Historical and Archaeological Studies · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies
Anthroponyme als Bestandteile französischer Kolonialtoponyme
This study examines colonial place-naming practices in the French colonial empire at the beginning of the twentieth century. The primary focus is on toponyms that contain anthroponymic elements such as Cap Saint-Jacques or Fort Gustave. Previous research has shown that all European colonial powers had used this naming pattern. The analysis is based on a colonial atlas from the early twentieth century, allowing for a comprehensive geographical ove…
Kirstin Casemir (6. Mai 1968 – 4. Mai 2026)
Zum Ortsnamen Boderitz (Lkr. Altenburger Land)
This article proposes a new etymology for the place name Boderitz. The traditional account views the name as deriving from OSorb. *Podbreźe, onymised from OSorb. *pod(e)brez’e ( ‘Proto-Sorb.’/OUSorb. *po-debr-ica ‘the place near the ravine/valley’
Palatalisierung von CA nördlich des Brenners
Ludwig Staub (1854) introduced the assumption that the Western Romance palatalization of CA is also attested in some Germanized toponyms north of the Brenner Pass. Karl Finsterwalder initially took up this idea, and his successors have since then retained it. The assumption is based on double etymologies, especially the explanation of some toponyms coming from Latin caverna. Similarly, the name of the mountain meadow Schifernei, together with Tsc…
Das Historische Ortsnamenbuch von Thüringen
Der Beitrag nimmt die 2023 begonnenen Arbeiten am Historischen Ortsnamenbuch von Thüringen in den Blick, schildert seine Entstehungsgeschichte und stellt die geplanten Arbeitsschritte vor
Soziokognitive Onomastik und Mobilität
This article explores terms for individuals and groups, such as ethnonyms, in a multilingual context shaped by mobility: the former Portuguese overseas empire or Estado da Índia, particularly the harbour cities of Malacca and Macau. The focus lies on a historical analysis with a scope from the early 16th to mid-20th century. From the standpoint of Cognitive Linguistics, the analysis revealed a gradient transition between ethnonyms (and sometim…
Naming Practices in Dominican Bateyes
This study discusses toponomastic naming practices and the negotiation of place-identities in the Global South, in the example of so-called bateyes in the Dominican Republic, i.e. settlements with a historical connection to sugar cane production and transnational migration. Departing from multinymity as an empirical fact, we analyse the social dynamics of place-making through naming. In this context, we demonstrate that the speech act of naming b…
Rezension zu Petra Ewald, Inge Bily (Hg.), Inoffizielle Eigennamen – Onomastische Studien
Petra Ewald, Inge Bily (Hg.), Inoffizielle Eigennamen – Onomastische Studien. Berlin-Boston: Peter Lang 2024 (= Reihe Sprache – System und Tätigkeit, Band 76), 444 S. – ISBN: 9783631901588, Preis: 89,95 EUR (DE)
Rezension zu Dieter Greve, Flurnamenatlas für das südliche Westmecklenburg, Bd. I bis VI. Schwerin 2011
Dieter Greve, Flurnamenatlas für das südliche Westmecklenburg, Bd. I bis VI. Schwerin: Thomas Helms Verlag 2011
Rezension Oberwalliser Orts- und Flurnamenbuch (VSNB)
Oberwalliser Orts- und Flurnamenbuch (VSNB), herausgegeben von Iwar Werlen unter Mitarbeit von Anne-Lore Bregy, René Pfammatter und Gabriele Schmid sowie mit zwei Beiträgen von Philipp Kalbermatter, 4 Bände (+ eine Datenbank zum Download), Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag 2024, LXIII Seiten + 394, 568, 522, 631 Spalten – ISBN: 978-3-381-10831-2, Preis: 349,00€ (kostenlos zum Download als eBook)
Das Schweizer Familiennamenportal familiennamen.ch
This article examines the possibilities for using the familiennamen.ch portal, which is hosted by the Swiss Idiotikon (the Swiss German dictionary). Based on features compiled by the dictionary editors for Swiss Radio SRF, it links various sources relevant to family name research in German-speaking Switzerland. As a dynamic portal, it can not only be used for academic research on surnames, but can also be used to answer questions from laypeople a…
Zum Ortsnamen Artern
The Thuringian place name Artern has so far found two explanations, one (pre-)Proto-Germanic and one German. The comparison of the two etymologies, which seem to have existed side-by-side for decades without the proponents of either suggestion really having taken notice of the other one, shows that the (pre)-Germanic solution firstly does not make sense per se, and secondly, even if it did, it appears unnecessary for methodological reasons since …
Rezension zu Marken im Kontext von Kultur und Sprache
László Kovács, Katharina Zipser, Viktória Szőke, Erika Kegyes (Hg.), Marken im Kontext von Kultur und Sprache. Die kulturelle Vermittlungsfunktion österreichischer und ungarischer Marken. Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač 2024
Eine überfällige onomastische Aktion zu altsorbisch *Pro- oder Altsorben als Schwellenhauer
In conflict with the fact that the Slavic morpheme *pro, while well established as both a preposition and a prefix in the near Czech language, does not exist at all in the two living Sorbian languages, there are seven instances for which the established research tradition without any reservation has assumed this prefixal morpheme to be a part of Old Sorbian oikonyms. These are the place names Prosigk, Preskeln, Proschitz, Prohlis, Profen, Proschi…
Anmerkungen zur Problematik der Erklärungen des Ortsamen(bestandteil)s Büttel/-büttel
This article examines the explanations for the place name (component) -büttel/Büttel presented to date and concludes that it is still not possible to derive the name (component) without contradiction or without the assumption of analogical processes. The older derivations are presented at the current level of historical (comparative) linguistics and the traditional possibilities of linkage are retraced, but even the knowledge gained in the last t…
Möhritz, Pferdinand, Tango und Mr. Wuff – Onomastische Studie zu Namen von Kuscheltieren
The names of cuddly toys, considered unofficial names, have not been sufficiently researched onomastically so far. The results of the present study reduce this research gap. Formal, semantic and functional aspects are presented using a corpus of 262 cuddly toy names given by 3- to 10-year-old children. Formally, it is shown that single words are primarily chosen from possible morphological- syntactic forms. In terms of word formation, these are …
Gemeinsame Familiennamenareale
Over many centuries, family name areas developed across borders between the Archduchy of Austria and the Kingdom of Bohemia. While historical events destroyed any trace of some of these areas, other can, at least to some extent, still be detected. Some of these areas were destroyed by historical events, while others are still extant or can be traced in remnants. These are illustrated and interpreted using distribution maps from KdeJsme and Geogen…
Die Namen auf dem Silberblech von Vrh gradu
In the little group of Venetic inscriptions in Western Slovenia the letter T should be read /d/ as in other Venetic inscriptions. A peculiarity of some of these inscriptions is an inverse . Hence, the inscription of Vrh gradu should be read “Woduros Wollknos”. The first name could be explained with reference to Indo-European *wodr̥ ‘water’. The second name might be formed not with the Celtic suffix -(i)knos, but with -nos, and could then be expla…
Wenn das ‘Löwenmaul’ das ‘Hündchen’ trifft – zum interkulturellen Vergleich umgangssprachlicher Pflanzenbezeichnungen
Der vorliegende Beitrag widmet sich volkstümlichen Pflanzenbezeichnungen. Damit verbunden ist zum einen das Problem, ob diese Trivial- bzw. Vernakularnamen überhaupt als Namen gelten und zum anderen die Frage, welches Potential diese umgangssprachlichen Pflanzenbezeichnungen bieten. Es geht dabei außerdem um das Problem, welche Aspekte und Erkenntnisse für Menschen, die sich in mehrsprachigen Kontexten bewegen (z.B. in schulischen Lerngruppen) vo…
Sprachforschung – Altwegeforschung – Siedlungsforschung
Using an interdisciplinary approach, this article aims to clarify a number of settlement names that have thus far been fraught with contradictions in the scholarly literature. These are oikonyms of Slavic origin in SW Saxony. Today they are place names of settlements that were established during the period of German rule towards the end of the 12th century. However, the linguistic formsof these oikonyms, which always have the same structure [anth…
Poetonomastische Meisterschaft
James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Pioneers, published in 1823, is the first of his Leatherstocking series. The plot takes place in the frontier village of Templeton in New York state in 1793. In this “descriptive tale”, Cooper depicts in detail the different social layers that could be found in a new settlement during the closing years of the eighteenth century: the founder and “king” of the village with his family and friends, the other, less cu…
Walter Wenzel
Agricultural Production in Luxembourg in the light of its Micro-Toponymy
This analysis offers insights into Luxembourg toponymy and its relevance for the study of rural agricultural history, with a focus on the themes of alcoholic by-products. There are three elements relating to the production of alcoholic beverages, which are represented by the evidence found in place names in Luxembourg. The most prominent is viticulture, which is still an important part of the agricultural economy of the Grand Duchy to this day. H…
Von Alken bis Utbremen
In the city of Bremen and its incorporated districts, place names today are a mixture of Low German and High German elements. This article focuses on this mélange and deals with the change in the toponymy of Bremen, a defined area in which multilingualism was a part of everyday life for a long time. After a period in which Low German was the predominate language, High German and Low German were both used. Today, however, High German predominates.…
Luzerner Namenbuch 4
Luzerner Namenbuch 4: Pilatus. Die Orts- und Flurnamen des westlichen Amtes Luzern. 1. Teil A–L, 2. Teil M–Z. Hrsg. und bearb. von Erika Waser, in Zusammenarbeit mit Peter Mulle, Heidi Blaser und Irene Rettig, unter Mitarbeit von Alex Baumgartner, Philippe Bart und Ingrid Strassmann. Schüpfheim: Entlebucher Medienhaus 2022, 1554 S. – ISBN 978-3-906832-26-5, Preis: SFR 149,00 (CH)
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Nummer und Name
Probleme romanisch-germanischer Interferenz an der Mosel im Bereich der Prosodie von Eigennamen
Rezension zu Luzerner Namenbuch 3, hg. von Erika Waser, in Zusammenarbeit mit Peter Mulle
Luzerner Namenbuch 3: Habsburg. Die Orts- und Flurnamen des östlichen Amtes Luzern. 1. Teil A–M, 2. Teil N–Z. Hrsg. und bearb. von Erika Waser, in Zusammenarbeit mit Peter Mulle, unter Mitarbeit von Alex Baumgartner, Heidi Blaser und Irene Rettig. Mitarbeit an der Sammlung: Philippe Barth und Ingrid Strassmann. Altdorf: Gisler Druck AG 2014, 1260 S. – ISBN 978-3-906130-87-3, Preis: SFR 149,00 (CH)
Die Schweizer Forschungsinfrastruktur ortsnamen.ch
The internet platform ortsnamen.ch (or toponymes.ch in French) hosts Swiss toponymic data from scientific sources. Its main purpose, especially in the beginning, was and is to archive regional toponymic projects and publish them online. Recently the platform has added significant new data sources to its database, and it has become bilingual with its new French version. In addition to its website, ortsnamen.ch also makes its data available through…
Die Mark Schmelz in der Dübener Heide. Ein Exempel in Sachen Flurnamenforschung
Minor names or microtoponyms are typically collected and analysed in etymological dictionaries. However, this may not be the most productive method in every case. More importantly, names should be analysed within the context of the communication community whose members created and used them. In rural settlements, these were primarily landowners. With the threefield crop rotation system (Dreifelderwirtschaft), which dominated agriculture in Centra…
Der Slawengau Rochelinzi im Licht der Ortsnamen
Following Slavic immigration in the 7th century a Slavic tribal region developed on the lower Zwickauer Mulde river in the area of Rochlitz, the city mentioned as urbs and burgwardus Rochelinzi by Thietmar von Merseburg between 1014 and 1018. The region included 52 settlements, most of which were on land between 61 und 71 ground control points, a few above that. Thirteen of these villages had a name with the suffix -(ov)ici, three had a name of t…
Zeigen slawische Namen mit altsorbisch grod wirklich eine Burg an? Was verbirgt sich hinter den Ortsnamen mit dem altsorbischen Element grod
This article discusses whether Old Sorbian toponyms including the element grod really do indicate a fortification. The paper arises out of a disagreement between the archaeological point of view and the linguistic interpretation of names formerly containing grod. The recommendation offered here is to explain such toponyms as names that refer to a settlement that provides shelter
Zur Frage der Slawizität einiger oberfränkischer Ortsnamen (Würgau, Gleußen, Feuln, Marktzeuln, Wirbenz) und Flurnamen (Külmnitz, Külmitz, Leubnitz)
The article is concerned with the etymologies of northeast Bavarian, i.e. Upper Franconian, settlement names Würgau, Gleußen, Feuln, Marktzeuln and Wirbenz and the microtoponyms Külmnitz, Külmitz and Leubnitz. While tradition had it that the settlement names are of Slavic origin, a PhD thesis published in 2016 claimed them to be of West Germanic origin. In the case of the microtoponyms Külmnitz and Külmitz only a West Germanic etymology had hithe…
Namenzwillinge und ‐mehrlinge in der Toponymie
Not all place names are unique, and certain place names are – or used to be – name twins or even name multiples. In a corpus of around 1200 place names from German speaking Switzerland it was found that nearly a quarter of them share the original name form with at least one other name (etymological or primary homonyms). Today, the originally identical name forms are either the same or differ from each other. A smaller part of the corpus consists …
Rezension zu Hans-Peter Eckart, Augsburg. Alte Kreisfreie Stadt und Altlandkreis
Hans-Peter Eckart, Augsburg. Alte Kreisfreie Stadt und Altlandkreis (Historisches Ortsnamenbuch von Bayern. Hrsg. von der Kommission für Bayerische Landesgeschichte bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Schwaben, Band 14). München: Kommission für Bayerische Landesgeschichte 2019, 397 S., 1 Karte – ISBN 978-3-7696-6592-5, Preis EUR 49,00 (DE)
Sprachliche Integration
The article deals with toponyms in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland with regard to language contact. Since the emergence of the Romance language in late antiquity (3rd-6th century AD) and until the Germanisation in the early Middle Ages (ca. from the 9th century until ca. the 14th century) St. Gallen has functioned in an interaction of two languages: Old Romansh and Old High German. This sequence can still be identified in a considerable n…
Some remarks on the personal name system of Raetic
Das Projekt Aus der Tradition in die Zukunft als Beitrag zur digitalen Namengeographie
As part of a cross-border project at the Jihočeská univerzita v Českých Budějovicích and the University of Passau, similarities and divergences were examined in place names, surnames, literature and social culture along an old trade route between Passau (Czech: Pasov) and Budějovice (German: Budweis). This makes it possible to trace the development of the relationship between the two peoples of the border area back to the Middle Ages. In this ess…
Strukturen von Humanistennamen mit den Suffixen ‐us und ‐ius in Deutschland
Many family names in Germany were Latinised under the influence of Renaissance Humanism by adding the suffixes ‐us or ‐ius (so-called Humanist names). These suffixes differ regarding their number of syllables and their impact on the prosody of the family name. The suffix ‐ius, when added to a family name consisting of at least two syllables, always leads to a shift of the accent (Cremér-ius), whereas this is not necessarily the case with ‐us (Mól…
Ab dem Hooff vnnd gůt das Käller gůt
The article focuses on place names in the canton of Lucerne in Central Switzerland. It deals with the place-name elements -guet and -hof, the Swiss German appellatives Guet (‚piece of land, farm‘) and Hof (‚court, farm‘), and the phrase Hof und Guet. Based on the corpus compiled by the research project Luzerner Namenbuch it presents an analysis of their distribution. It is shown that both the names, the appellatives and its phrase are rare in the…
Rezension zu Bernd Eigenmann, Nördlingen. Der ehemalige Landkreis
Bernd Eigenmann, Nördlingen. Der ehemalige Landkreis (Historisches Ortsnamenbuch von Bayern. Hrsg. von der Kommission für Bayerische Landesgeschichte bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Schwaben, Band 15) München: Kommission für Bayerische Landesgeschichte 2020, 402 S., 1 Karte – ISBN: 978-3-7696-6593-2, Preis EUR 59,00 (DE)
Thietmars Medeburu(n) und ‚mel prohibe‘
The author proposes a new interpretation of the history of the name of the former Saxon village and historical burgward Magdeborn. First, the endings -/- of , as Thietmar von Merseburg writes in his chronicle of 1012/1018, get a new explanation as *-ow or *-own. Second, it seems that both a linguistic and extralinguistic analysis of the obviously false interpretation of the Old Sorbian place name quoted by the chronicler himself may show the hist…
Facetten einer Interaktionalen Onomastik
This paper, which seeks to contribute to the field of Interactional Onomastics (De Stefani 2016), addresses onymic forms of self-reference in computer-mediated interactions. Applying theoretical and methodological concepts developed in Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics, the study looks at onymic forms as communicative practices. In SMS and Whats- App exchanges, participants systematically deviate from the default use of the deic…
Alternativen namentlicher Anrede als Ressourcen sozialen Handelns
The sociolinguistic literature suggests that the choice of terms of address (e.g. nickname, term of endearment, kin term, first name, or prefix + last name) depends on the identities of the participants and the settings in which they are used. However, the names which participants use to address their co-participants may also vary within single episodes of social interaction, whereby terms of address with specific names are not only bound to spec…
Eine deutsche ‚Schicksalsgemeinschaft‘ im Spiegel ihrer Namen
School student Michael Berg (15) becomes involved in an erotic relationship with Hanna Schmitz (36), to whom he reads from works of literature during their lovers’ trysts. Hanna constantly calls Michael mein Jungchen (‚my young laddie‘), while the latter addresses her not just as Hanna but also using pet names such as Boukeffelchen (Alexander the Great’s tempestuous war horse was called Boukephalos). Years later Michael recognizes Hanna among the…
Dissonante Namen. Die Namen in E.T.A. Hoffmanns Märchen Die Königsbraut
Even after having achieved international fame with his fantastic stories, the Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann considered himself more as a musician and composer than as a writer. In his theoretical writings about music, he extolled the value of dissonances, though he produced them rather more in his poetic works than in his musical compositions. These dissonances can be distinctly perceived in the proper names found in his fairy tale The King’s B…
Place names as ‘condensed narratives’ about the geographical feature denoted and the name-giving community
Geographische Namen können als ‘verdichtete Erzählungen’ überdas geographische Objekt, das sie bezeichnen, sowie über die namengebendeGemeinschaft betrachtet werden. In Richtung des Objekts gilt dies jedoch nurfür deskriptive Namen, nicht für Gedenknamen wie Namen nach Personenoder Ereignissen oder für neutrale Namen wie Namen nach Blumen oder Tieren. Die Zuschreibung der Qualität ‘verdichteter Erzählungen’ beruht auf derAnnahme, dass jeder Name …
Volkstümliche Namen vorgeschichtlicher Felsgravierungen im Gebiet der iberoromanischen Sprachen
Places known for their prehistoric petroglyphs are often named after the carved images and symbols found there. Focusing on a corpus of 115 representative toponyms from the Spanish, Galician and Portuguese speaking areas, the present article explores the interaction between the lexical components of place names and the rock carvings to which they refer. This analysis allows us to distinguish between several types of name motivation and to explain…
Die Erforschung sorbischer Flurnamen in der Niederlausitz. Forschungsstand und Perspektiven
Over the last several years, a large and highly varied database containing elements of the Lower Sorbian language has been compiled at the Sorbian Institute as a documentation of the Sorbian cultural heritage. It includes several dictionaries, corpora and similar textual specimens. Work on incorporating the many proper names of Sorbian origin has already begun, and it appears possible to add minor place names in the near future. The state of rese…
Zu den oberfränkischen Ortsnamen Püchitz (Lkr. Lichtenfels, ehem. Lkr. Staffelstein), Hohenpölz, Tiefenpölz (Lkr. Bamberg, Altlkr. Ebermannstadt), Pölz (Lkr. Kumbach), Pöllitz (Lkr. Kulmbach), †Pölz/P…
The article is part of a series of articles on some 25 toponyms in northeastern Bavaria (Upper Franconia). Here, the place names Püchitz, Hohenpölz/Tiefenpölz, Pölz, Pöllitz, †Pölz/Pölnitz and Weidnitz are under scrutiny.For Püchitz as well as the Pöl(l/nit)z group, traditional Slavic etymologies are compared with newer West Germanic/German ones. While for Püchitz both etymological variants are on the same level of probability (OHG *Buochinza‘pla…