Onomastics in Interaction With Other Branches of Science. Volume 1. Keynote Lectures. Toponomastics

Book excerpt: Onomastics is an area of scholarly interest that has grown considerably in importance in recent years. Consequently, the 27th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, held in 2021 in Kraków, Poland, gathered scholars from all over the world, active in all subfields of onomastic enquiry, as well as those exploring the areas bordering on other disciplines of the humanities. It thus became a venue for presenting state-of-the-art research in the study of proper names, proposing novel approaches and opening new vistas for future research. The present work is the first of the three volumes of conference proceedings that were the fruit of the congress. Devoted to place naming, it contains 33 contributions by 43 scholars. The language of most of the texts is English, though there are also two papers in German, and another two in Russian. The topics range from purely theoretical issues to narrowly focused case studies. The toponyms studied represent a vast variety of types, including the names of countries, districts, counties or municipalities, villages and other settlements, as well as urbanonyms, but also hydronyms, nesonyms, or diverse anoikonyms. Some toponyms are examined synchronically, whereas others are viewed in a diachronic perspective. The status of particular place names varies too: from those that have existed since time immemorial, such as river names, to those established relatively recently in human history, as exemplified by the names of bus stops. Many contributions have been prepared using time-honoured methods of data collection, such as fieldwork, but digital onomastics has clearly gained a permanent foothold as well, as evidenced by a substantial body of research in this area. True to the inherently interdisciplinary character of onomastics, and in line with the underlying motif of the congress, which underscores the interaction of the study of proper names with other branches of science, researchers explore the interface of onomastics and an extensive array of disciplines, including though not limited to: cognitive studies, dialectology, phonetics and phonology, sociolinguistics, anthropology, history, historical linguistics, postcolonial studies, administration and policy studies, and even geology. The toponyms studied are gathered from all over Europe – including Belarus, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, the United Kingdom – but also from countries on other continents, such as China, Egypt, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Russia, or Tanzania. The book is a must not only for onomasticians, but also for researchers in related disciplines, ranging from history, via human geography or philosophy of language, to social studies. However, professionals active in naming will find it useful as well, since it provides a much-needed supranational perspective and enables cross-cultural comparisons.