In this paper, my intention is to offer a system to present archaisms and neologisms in Hungarian place names. Archaic features of place names can be lexical, mor
phological, and phonetical, phonological in nature but, in the present study, I focus exclusively on phonological phenomena. However, before discussing the archaic and neological phonetic features of place names, it becomes necessary first to define the concepts of archaism and neologism. The reason for this is that linguists mean a range of several different phenomena when they use these terms (and build their definitions of them partly on the basis of language history and partly based on the attitudes of the language users), the clearcut distinction between which I consider essential.
I will try to treat the archaismneologism issue on a theoretical plane: through analyzing concrete specific examples of names, it is my intention to reveal the general characteristics and types of these phenomena, for which the material under scrutiny is taken from Földrajzi nevek etimológiai szótára [Etymological Dictionary of Geographical Names] (Budapest, 1988) by Lajos Kiss.
On the basis of the name corpus, it does not seem to be very frequent that both archaisms and neologisms are preserved in place names derived from the same lexeme in addition to the standard or common language form. For instance, the plant species name mogyoró ‘hazelnut/peanut’ appears in several forms in place names: the same form as the standard is present in the toponym Mogyoród, while the form Monyoród in this system of relations is regarded to be an instance of archaism, and the form Magyaró is considered an example of neologism.
A more typical case is when, next to standard form of a lexeme, there is also a historically older variant of it preserved in place names: the settlement name Gyód conserves the archaic form gyió of the plant name dió ʻwalnut’ even today, which used to be the generally used medieval form. Sometimes, in place names, the standard form of a lexeme, as a phonological archaism, is opposed to the corresponding neologism that has surpassed it in currency: the ethonym besenyő ʻPecheneg’ is preserved in place names containing the Besenyő component,
although this lexeme also appears sometimes as Besnyő, as a result of a typical sound change.
Thus, it is clear that, in the Hungarian place names, there are quite a few neological phonetic features in addition to the presence of archaisms that are not traceable in the standard form of the given lexeme. This is the consequence of the fact that, after their coinage and having separated from their common word predecessor, place names are recorded in the mental lexicon of the community of their users as a selfsustained lexical unit. For this reason, it is not expedient to compare the relationship between toponymic archaisms and neologisms to parallel common
word forms, if there are any such instances available at all. Instead, they can be more profoundly understood in this respect by matching and comparing the linguistic features observable within the system of toponyms with each other.
5. Topoformants
Barbara Bába
The Definition of Geographical Common Word
We can witness several earlier attempts in the Hungarian literature on onomastics to define geographical common words. In the process of defining geographical common words, researchers have prioritized different aspects: some found their function in toponyms, some their meaning the basis for the description of this category. Besides trying to define geographical common words, a series of studies have attempted to categorize them as well.
Since onomastic research has managed to successfully employ a cognitive ap
proach in several areas (such as toponomastics and anthropoonomastics) and have used it to reinterpret such questions which the traditional structuralist approach had difficulties dealing with; and as such, I contend that the definition of geographical common words would also benefit from this approach. To resolve this issue, on the other hand, we need to differentiate between the notions of the geographical common word and the lexical topoformant (that is, a constituent which expresses the toponymical aspect on a lexical level).
Based on this approach we can classify as a geographical common word every lexeme which in most cases—as part of toponyms—fulfils a function of type identification, and as such also behaves as a lexical topoformant. Geographical common words can also appear as part of toponyms—albeit peripherally—as first constituents and parts of name constituents. In this position, however, we cannot talk about topoformant functions. It is important to note, therefore, that there is significant overlap between the definition of the lexical topoformant and the geographical common word, the two terms are not the same. Geographical common words are not only used as parts of toponyms, though, but as common words as well. This last statement becomes really significant when we attempt to define geographical common words in the synchronic linguistic system, since we cannot regard such a lexeme as a part of the contemporary pool of geographical common words whose meaning no longer exists as a common word. Finally we must bear in mind the circumstance that neither toponyms nor geographical common words comprise a category that can be defined with hard-set boundaries,
and as such our languages perceives certain common words denoting places as prototypical, while others are perceived as peripheral.
Katalin Reszegi
Bérc, hegy and halom in Old Hungarian Toponyms
65% of medieval oronyms contain an oronymic common word. The words most frequently featured in oronyms are bérc ‘crag; mountain’, hegy ‘mountain; hill’
and halom ‘mound; hill’. In my paper I examine the origin, contemporaneous form and meaning of these lexemes, the role they played in the structure of oronyms and their geographical spread as well. The results of the study can be summarized in the following.
According to relevant literature, the word bérc was transferred to Hungarian from one of the Southern Slavic languages. This theory, however, is less supported by the linguistic geographical spread of the lexeme, since oronyms with bérc as their second constituent were hardly documented until the 11–14th centuries. The equivalents of the word in Slavic languages are nearly identical, so the phonetic approach does not help to identify the source language either. I think that it seems more expedient, therefore, to refrain from taking a stand in this issue. In the first half of the 13th century the word was already in use in a large part of the Hungarian speaking area. Its extensive spread shows that its transfer must have taken place significantly earlier. The lexeme bérc was certainly transferred to the Hungarian language as a common word meaning ‘mountain, mountain top’.
While its use spread, its meaning must have become more general as well: it was used to denote lower and higher hills alike: it must have meant ‘mountain, a smaller elevation, height’. In the second half of the 13th century it was the most frequently used oronymic common word, it was often featured in charters as a common word or toponym, or a part of one.
The geographical common word hegy can be traced back to the FinnoUgric or even to the ProtoUralic language. After the emergence of the use of written records in Hungarian, we can find it in the first charters, especially in the names of larger elevations on the surface. Its use as a constituent of oronyms is, however, limited: it only appears as the second constituent of twoconstituent names, never as a one-constituent proper name, and we cannot find examples for its common word usage in charters either.
The word halom was transferred to Hungarian from an unidentifiable Slavic language rather early, according to many, even before the arrival of Magyars to the Carpathian Basin. It already occurred in our earliest written records. Based on 13th century toponyms, the lexeme was spread over the whole Hungarianspeaking
area, and besides denoting lower hills, infrequently it was also used to denote higher ones. We can occasionally find it used as a common word in charters.
Altogether it features less often in oronyms than the lexemes hegy or bérc.
Helga Kovács