Place names forge communities, generate myths, affirm relationships, and establish claims. Place names—technically known as topynyms—are long-lasting and may endure long after the people who gave the name have vanished from the landscape. Place names can, therefore, provide additional historical and linguistic background for many regions and countries. Since place names generally originate in spoken language, these names may provide evidence of early languages that pre-date writing. In some instances, such as that of Pictish in Scotland, much of what we know about the language today is based on place names.
It is not uncommon to have place names coined in one language and then, over time, the original language is replaced by another language and yet the place name remains. C. Hough, in an entry in the Encyclopedia of Languages & Linguistics, writes:
“River names have the highest survival rate, followed by the names of hills and mountains. Settlement names are usually younger, but may still be well over 1,000 years old, with minor names such as field and street names being among the most recent.”
Since the names of rivers tend to be the oldest, these names can provide linguists, historians, and archaeologists with some clues regarding ancient and historical population movements. Writing about Anglo-Saxon England, Caroline Alexander, in her book
Lost Gold of the Dark Ages: War, Treasure, and the Mystery of the Saxons, reports:
“In England layers of place-names represent all the peoples who settled over the millennia: Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and Normans. The survival of Celtic river names marks the extent of Anglo-Saxon settlement.”
Place names are also an important part of cultural and national history. Geographer J. B. Harley, in a chapter in
American Beginnings: Exploration, Culture, and Cartography in the Land of Norumbega, writes:
“Place-names have always been implicated in the cultural identity of the people who occupy the land. Naming a place anew is a widely documented act of political possession in settlement history. Equally, the taking away of a name is an act of dispossession.”
In a similar fashion, C. Hough writes:
“Naming is closely linked to possession, and it is not uncommon for places to be renamed to reinforce the authority of the ruling power.”
Toponyms can be generic and specific. The generic toponyms tell what kind of place it is. Endings in English such as –
ville, and -
burg are examples of generic toponyms.
In Irish Gaelic, some of the generic toponyms would include cill (church, as in Killarney, Kilkenny), bun (mouth of a river, as in Bunratty), ros (wood or headland, as in Roscommon), carraig (a rock, as in Carrickfergus), and cruach (rounded hill, as in Croagpatrick). As an aside, it should be mentioned that sometimes spelling changes, but the sound remains—cruach and croag, carraig and carrick.
In English, the Viking past can be seen in place names with –by, which referred to a village: Utterby (which combines the Old English uttrera meaning “remote” with the Viking –by to mean the “remote village.)” The Viking –thorpe indicated a secondary village or one of lesser importance. Thus, part of the Viking history of England can be seen in today’s place names.
The early Anglo-Saxon settlements tend to have place-names ending in –ham, such as Cleatham. These people carried out traditional ceremonies in open places and the suffixes leah or ley, referring to a grove or clearing, can be found today in names such as Thundersley, in Essex. Thundersley thus refers to the grove or clearing of Thunor (Thors).
Place-names not only anchor a culture to its physical environment, they also shape the way in which people think about and perceive this environment. The process of naming, and renaming, a place is a way of claiming it as one’s own. As the Europeans came to dominate North America, they renamed many of the features which they found. Peter Nabokov, in his book Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places, reports:
“Demonizing heathen places was long a Euro-Christian strategy in their spiritual conquest of the Americas.”
Nabokov also writes:
“Places where Indians lived and worshiped were often linked to the Prince of Darkness and his underworld.”
Most Indian place-names refer to topographical features—tall pine trees, clearings without trees, big boulders, red rocks, green-colored lakes, river narrows, and so on. In general, Indians did not name places after people as this would have negative consequences for the soul of the deceased.
With regard to etymology, “toponym” is a fairly recent creation dating to 1939 and being formed by combining the Greek “topos” meaning “place” with “onym” meaning name.
The scientific study of names and naming is onomastics. The noun “onomastics” came into use in 1936 from the adjective “onomastic,” which originates from the French “onomastique,” which comes from the Greek “onomastikos” meaning “of or belonging to naming.”
In the United States, by the way, place names are standardized by the U.S. Board of Geographic Places which is associated with the U.S. Geological Survey. The Board wants geographic names to be as precise, short and as easily pronounceable as possible. In addition, names cannot be regarded as offensive to any gender, or racial, ethnic, or religious group. The use of apostrophes in names, which indicate possession of the feature, are discouraged.