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1026 IX. Namen im Sprachkontakt

159. Names in Language Contact: Foreign Placenames

And the same holds for toponyms based onsuch appellatives. To Bach (1954, 440), Ger-

man appellatives of Latin provenance, whichhave turned into placenames, are altesFremdgut, foreignisms of long standing; butthe names, to him, are German. Examplesfrom West Germany: Lat. camminus road Kimm; Lat. palatium palace Pfalz.Georgacas (1949/50, 157) exemplifies the casewith two common Greek toponyms, Prta and Spti. The former < Lat.porta door, the latter < Lat. hospitiumhouse, but by today and are justGreek lexemes.

Another recurrent problem tied to foreign

appellatives regards the process of naming.Sometimes, it seems, this process starts withthe foreigners, who use appellatives of theirown language, familiar to them from theirformer environment and the names stickand are adopted by the natives. Georgacas(1949/50, 153155) discusses Greek place-names based on appellatives from this angle:these appellatives frequently did not becomecurrent loanwords in Greek, but were useddirectly as placenames by the Italians. Geor-gacas (using the materials found in Kahane

1940) lists about one hundred of them. Thefollowing examples are typical: nature: Srba, placename (but not an appellative) onChios, < Ital. selva wood; urban develop-ment: Piatsta name of the townsquare in Argostoli (Cephalonia) < Ven. pi-azzeta small square (not an appellative inthe regional dialect); the harbor: Skalta place near the coast, on Crete place-name Lobio, and br house > Bouro, inOviedo. Longnon (192029, 211222) listsseveral French placenames based on Frankishappellatives that pertain to the usual vocab-ulary of nature and social life. Thus, Frank.

strm river yielded names such as trun(Depts. Nord and Pas-de-Calais), and Frank.

1. Introduction2. Toponyms from Nouns and Names

3. Linguistic Nativization4. Historical Implications5. Semantic Aspects6. Selected Bibliography

1. IntroductionPlacenames based on foreign languages are every-where, and they are significant and varied enoughto warrant a treatment of their own. The problemsinvolved will be indicated under the four headingsindicated, 25.

2. Toponyms from Nouns and NamesThe foreignness of foreign names has varioussources. Quite commonly, placenames arebased on appellatives, common nouns, offoreign provenance, i. e., on loanwords. Theseusually reflect aspects of the natural and so-cial environment behind the language of theirorigin. Or foreign placenames may derivefrom foreign personal names, which oftenindicate the settler of or dweller in the place.

Or places may perpetuate the names of for-eign institutions, ecclesiastic or governmental,and such names tend to be a blend of appel-latives and personal names. We exemplifythese three kinds of placenames with Germantoponyms of French origin (Bach 1954, II:2, 536, 534, 519). Appellatives: Fr. gouttedrop, dial. brook (FEW IV, 350 f.) wasused in Alsatian German as -gott, suffixed asa marker of the environment to names ofbrooks such as Hitzengott/Meisengott. Personal names: The township called Picardie(in Einsland) was built up, in the 17th century,

by a preacher named Jan Picard. Complexnames: A health resort in Lower Saxony iscalled Pyrmont. The name, originally that ofa mountain fortress built by the Archbishopof Cologne, goes back to Fr. Pyrremont(1185), which itself is based onPetri mons.

Foreign appellatives as the bases of place-names raise a problem of definition: theirdegree of foreignness. A loanword, after acertain stretch of time, may loose its foreign-ness, in part through phonological adapta-tion, in part through its common use in thevernacular. Its foreignness may stimulatehistorical interpretation, meaningful for theetymologist, meaningless for the speaker.

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159. Names in Language Contact: Foreign Placenames 1027cupant, implies Germanic provenance of thetoponym. Longnon (192029, 21722) citesexamples of Frankish toponyms in Francemarked by that suffix: Gazeran (Seine-et-Oise) from Wasiringus, Thieffrain (Aube)

from Tendefridus, Bettange (Lorraine) fromBertadius.

3. Linguistic NativizationForeignisms by turning toponyms frequentlyloose their foreignness, and this process oftheir nativization has various facets. A fewof these will be briefly described: phonological

adaptation, translation, and embedding in aphrase.

3.1. Phonological adaptation. Names thatwere current in an area are taken over by thenew settlers and are adapted to their lan-guage. The medieval Tyroleans expanding tothe South established themselves in Sdtirol,the Alpine region of northern Italy. They hadreached a land of Romance placenames, oftendocumented in Latin, and they Germanizedmany of them: Lat. and Ital. fascia strip ofa field, used as toponym (1392), was Tyrol-ized Pftsch (1417), Lat. torculum wine-press Torkel, name of farms (1288), Lat.

pratum meadow, plur. prata, with toponymssuch as Prada/Prade (1328)/Prais (= inpratis Bratz (Schneller 1896, 17, 26, 49).In the same area, the Alto Adige, Battisti(1963, 54) observed the Tyrolization of evi-dently Ital. placenames: Vallunga (long val-ley) Flum and Vallaccia (bad valley) Flatsch. The French of the Normans broughtinto England was likewise vulnerable (Mat-thews 1972, 99100): A Norman, buildinghimself a castle on a high hill, called it Monthault, which became Mold; a northern abbey

was given the name of Haut emprise highendeavour, which exists today as Haltem-prise. In a more recent case, in the midlandcountry of the U. S., first explored and settledby the French, some of the French names,such as Detroit, Racine, and Baton Rouge,were kept by the Americans; others, particu-larly names of smaller places, were Angli-cized: Terre Bleue blue earth Tar Blue; Pomme de Terre earth apple Pomly Tar; Mauvaise Terre bad earth Movestar(Stewart 1982, 210211).

3.2. Translation. In England, the French ap-pellatives imported by the Normans and re-

fara clan rendered the toponym Fre (Depts.Aisne and Marne). The fact that these appel-latives have left no corresponding traces inthe spoken language (FEW 17, 262 s. v.*strm, and 15, 112 s. v. *fara) supports the

hypothesis that the names were given by theforeigners themselves.Placenames derived from personal names

must frequently have come into beingthrough a dwellers personal link to local con-ditions. Piel (1933, 109), analyzing over 1400Portuguese placenames of Germanic origin,states that in the North of the country andin Galicia, i. e., in the area invaded by theSuevi, these names, typically consisting of ageneric term such as Villa village or Quintafarm, property followed by a Gmc. namesuch as Alvarim, were, with no exception,based on person names. The name of thesettler turned into the name of the settlement.Two types of such placenames are well rep-resented in Greece, and they reflect local as-pects of the intensive and longlasting impactof Venetocracy, the supremacy of Venice inthe Eastern Mediterranean (Kahane 1940,266328). (a) First names: Ceph. Pieroboni, a mountain on the island, < Ven.Piero Peter + Grk. boun mountain;Melos Kourad, name of a locationwith remnants of ancient walls and tombs, gantois kind of boat; Span. caballo frisnFrisian horse > frisn large draught horse. b) Through juxtaposition of placenameand the kind of merchandise associated withit: Bois-le-Duc, capital of Brabant, turns viaSpan. cinta balduque narrow tape > bal-duque narrow red tape. c) Through aprepositional phrase: tulle de Bruxelles >bruxelles tulle.

Hfler, searching for the linguistic causesof the change from placename to appellative,sees two possibilities. The one is metonymy,the substitution of one designation of a thingfor another, which in the case at hand meanscalling the product after the place of produc-tion: in a glass of Burgundy the name of aregion in France stands for a wine there pro-duced. The other explanation is one of ellip-sis, omission: a glass of wine from Burgundyis shortened to a glass of Burgundy. The habit

of an elliptic style of speech was and is common, Hfler surmises, among business-

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1032 IX. Namen im Sprachkontakt

Lebel, Paul (1961): Onomastique. In: Encyclopdiede la Pleiade, XI. Paris, 677723.Longnon, Auguste (19201929): Les noms de lieude la France. Paris.Lpez Santos, Luis (1952): Influjo de la vida cris-

tiana en los nombres de pueblos espaoles. Len.Matthews, C. M. (1972): Place Names of the Eng-lish-Speaking World. New York.Piel, Joseph (1933/341944): Os nomes germni-cos na toponmia portuguesa. In: Boletin de Fil-ologia, 26.Rohlfs, Gerhard (1944): Streifzge durch die ita-lienische Toponomastik. In: Archiv fr das Stu-dium der Neueren Sprachen 184, 103129.Roy, Gabrielle (1962): Le Manitoba. Rpt. in Roy,Fragiles lumires de la terre. Montral, 1978, 101120.

Sachs, Georg (1932): Die germanischen Ortsnamenin Spanien und Portugal. (Berliner Beitrge zurRomanischen Philologie, II/4). Berlin.Schneller, Christian (1896): Beitrge zur Ortsna-menkunde Tirols. Drittes Heft. Innsbruck.Stewart, George (1982): Names on the Land. 4thed. San Francisco.Vidos, B. E. (1950): Noms de villes et de provincesflamands et nerlandais devenus noms communsdans les langues romanes. Rpt. in Vidos, Prestito(1965): Espansione e migrazione dei termini tecnicinelle lingue romanze e non romanze (Biblioteca

dellArchivum Romanicum, ser. II, vol. 31).Roma, 185209.Zgusta, Ladislav (1984): Kleinasiatische Ortsna-men (Beitrge zur Namenforschung, NF. Beiheft21). Heidelberg.

Henry () and Rene Kahane,Urbana, Ill. (U.S.A.)

Battisti, Carlo (1963): Popoli e lingue dellAltoAdige. In: Carlo Battisti, ed., LAlto Adige nelpassato e nel presente. Firenze, 3055.Corominas, Joan, Pascual, Jos A. (19801991):Diccionario crtico etimolgico castellano e hispn-

ico. Madrid.Cortelazzo, Manlio (1986): Zoonimi di origine ita-liana nella toponomastica dei portolani greci. I n:Onomastica 10, 7176. (Rpt. in M. Cortelazzo,Venezia, il Levante e il mare, 505510. Pisa, 1989.)FEW = Walther von Wartburg (1928 ff.): Fran-zsisches etymologisches Wrterbuch. Bonn etc.Georgacas, Demetrius (1949/50): Italian place-names in Greece and place-names from Italianloanwords. In: Beitrge zur Namenforschung, 1/2,149170; 266270.Hfler, Manfred (1967): Untersuchungen zur Tuch-

und Stoffbenennung in der franzsischen Urkun-densprache: Vom Ortsnamen zum Appellativum.In: Zeitschrift fr romanische Philologie, Beiheft114.Kahane, Henry, Kahane, Rene (1940): ItalienischeOrtsnamen in Griechenland (Texte und Forschun-gen zur byzantinisch-neugriechischen Philologie36). Athen.Kahane, Henry, Kahane, Rene (1957): Toponymsas Anemonyms. In: Names 5, 241245.Kahane, Henry, Kahane, Rene (1971): From land-mark to toponym. In: Sprache und Geschichte

[Harri Meier Testimonial]. Mnchen, 253258.Kahane, Henry, Kahane, Rene, Austin, HerbertD. (1946): Byzantine , Frankishandanicum Indian steel Byzantina-Metabyzantina,1, 181187.Kramer, Johannes (1985): Franzsische Straen-namen in einigen rheinischen Stdten. In: Beitrgezur Namenforschung 20, 918.

160. Namen in Sprachinseln: Deutsch

kerung im Zuge der politischen Entwicklun-gen in der 2. Hlfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (vgl.Wiesinger 1980; 1983; Kranzmayer 1956, 5 ff.;Hornung 1986), werden hier vorzglich jenebehandelt, die von sterreich aus besiedeltwurden. Sie befinden bzw. befanden sich u. a.in Italien, Slowenien, Ungarn, Rumnien,Tschechien, Slowakei, weitere vgl. Czoernig(1855).

1.2. Wirklich gut erhalten sind die deutschenSprachinseln in Italien. Sie gliedern sich infolgende Gruppen:

1. Untersuchungsgebiet2. Ortsnamen3. Personennamen4. Zusammenfassung5. Literatur (in Auswahl)

1. Untersuchungsgebiet

1.1. Allgemeines: Aus der Flle von deutschenSprachinseln, die dem Osten, Sdosten undSden des deutschen Sprachraums vorgela-gert sind, bzw. bis zu ihrer teilweisen Entvl-