History of Hungarian Toponyms [antikvár]

Preface Writing a general overview of the toponyms of any language is a challenging task in itself It is especially so if we wish to do it in a way that also considers the historical features of toponyms and toponym formation. The documented history of names covers a thousand years in the case of the Hungarian language, a significant time period we can study with the help of linguistic records. But it is difficuk (if not impossible) to estimate the size of the toponymic corpus serving as the basis of such a survey both for times past and present. The assessment of the extent of the medieval toponymic corpus is hindered by the fact that sources including toponymic data have survived only sporadically and in a random manner. At the same time, the number of modem toponyms cannot be specified because we have no adequate toponymic collections available for the entire language area covering the different regions of the Carpathian Basin inhabited by Hungarians. Our endeavor to introduce the history of Hungarian toponyms is, however, not without precedent. Hungarian onomastic research has a histoiy of more than one-hundred-and-fifty years and the modem linguistic methodology has also been present in onomastics for at least a century. Thanks to the work of several generations of scholars, we now have a tremendous amount of information available about certain issues related to Hungarian toponyms. In the chapters of this volume we attempt to provide a synthesis of these partial findings, building heavily on those research results that have emerged in the last two, two-and-a-half decades in the key Hungarian centers of onomastics. We have striven to present the multifarious information available in a uniform manner by building on the principles and methodology of functional linguistics. We believe that it is this theoretical background that provides the most suitable foundation for the most comprehensive study of toponyms. The overall image that we establish of the system and history of Hungarian toponyms is fragmented and uneven at best due to several considerations. The research projects serving as the antecedents of this work were characterized by a certain one-sided approach, while at the same time, our methodology reflects our belief that the different types of toponyms require a varying degree and depth of theoretical analysis. As our work heavily builds on a historical approach, we pay special attention to those name types and categories that play an outstanding role in this regard. For example, the category of settlement names receives more emphasis in our discussion because we consider that the findings of onomastics in connection with this name type may be of great assistance for other disciplines 11