Toponym: what is this? Classification and types of place names

Names are the people's poetic design of the country. They talk about the nature of the people, its history, its inclinations and peculiarities of life. ( Konstantin Paustovsky )

Throughout our life, from birth to death, various geographical names accompany us. We live on the Eurasian continent, in Russia, in a certain region or province, in a city, village, village and village, and each of the listed objects has its own name.

Thus, a toponym is the name of continents and oceans, countries and geographic regions, cities and streets in them, rivers and lakes, natural objects and gardens. The special science - toponymy - is studying the origin and semantic content, historical roots and the change over the centuries of pronunciation and spelling of names of geographical objects.

What is toponymy

The word "toponymy" comes from two Greek words: Topos - place and onyma - name. This scientific discipline is a branch of onomastics - a section of linguistics that studies its proper names. Toponymy is an integral science, functioning at the junction of linguistics, geography and history.

Geographical names do not arise on an "empty" place: noting certain features of the relief and nature, people living nearby called them, emphasizing the characteristic features. Over time, the peoples who lived in this or that region changed, but the names were preserved and used by those who replaced it. The main unit for studying toponymy is the toponym. The names of cities and rivers, villages and villages, lakes and forests, fields and streams are all toponyms of Russia, very diverse both in appearance and in their cultural and linguistic roots.

What is a toponym

In literal translation from Greek, the place name is the "name of the place", that is, the name of a geographical object: continent, continent, mountain and ocean, sea and country, city and street, natural objects. Their main purpose is to fix the "binding" of one or another place on the surface of the Earth. In addition, toponyms for historical science are not easy to name any geographical object, but a historical trace on the map, which has its own history of origin, linguistic origin and semantic meaning.

On what grounds are classified toponyms

A single classification of toponyms, which would suit both linguists, and geographers and historians, does not exist today. Classify toponyms for various signs, but most often on the following:

• By type of designated geographical objects (hydronyms, oronyms, drononyms and others);
• Language (Russian, Manchu, Czech, Tatar and other names);
• Historical (Chinese, Slavic and others);
• By structure:
  - simple;
  - Derivatives;
  - complex;
  - composite;
• On the area of the territory.

Classification by area of territory

Of greatest interest is the classification of toponyms according to their territorial feature, when geographic objects, depending on their magnitude, are referred to as macro-notions or microtoponyms.

Microtoponyms are individual names of small geographical objects, as well as characteristic features of terrain and landscape. They are formed on the basis of the language or dialect of the people or nationality living side by side. Microtoponyms are very mobile and changeable, but, as a rule, they are limited by the territorial zone of the spreading of a dialect, dialect or language.

Macrotoponim - is, first of all, the names of large natural or created as a result of human activities of natural and socio-administrative units. The main characteristics of this group are standardization and stability, as well as breadth of use.

Types of geographical names

The following types of toponyms are distinguished in modern toponymy:

How do the toponyms

Toponyms with Slavic roots ending in -ev (o), -in (o), -ov (o), -yn (o), were previously considered traditionally declined. However, in recent decades, they have been increasingly used in an indecipherable manner, as previously used by professional military and geographic scientists.

The decline of toponyms such as Tsaritsyno, Kemerovo, Sheremetyevo, Murino, Kratovo, Domodedovo, Komarovo, Medvedkovo and the like, was mandatory in the days of Anna Akhmatova, but today both the declined and non-declining forms are considered equally faithful and used. The exception is the names of the settlements, if they are used as appendices with a generic name (village, village, village, town, city, etc.), then it will be right not to incline, for example, to the Strigino area, from the Matyushino area, to the city of Pushkino . If there is no such generic name, then you can use both declined and indeclinable variants: from Matyushino and towards Matyushin, in Knyazevo and Knyazev.

Uncoverable toponyms

In modern Russian, there are several cases in which the end-of-o place names can be used only in the unchangeable form:

1. Geographical names associated with the names of outstanding historical figures are called memorial. If such a name ends in -o, then it does not tend, for example, in the villages of Repino and Tuchkovo, in Chapaevo.
2. In the event that a toponym is a compound word of two or more parts, it is written through a hyphen and both its parts end with -o, then only the second part changes in the declination: in Odintsovo-Vakhrameev, in Orekhovo-Zuevo, in Ado Tymovo . If before such names are the words city, village, then the names of such settlements do not decline - the village of Ado Tymov, Odintsovo-Vakhrameevo.
3. The Dictionary of Toponyms recommends that when using complexly structured foreign geographical names, do not incline their first part, for example, in Buenos Aires, in Alma-Ata. The exception to this case is the first part of the toponym "on the river": in Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, from Stratford-on-Evone.
4. In the event that the gender of the geographical name and generic name does not coincide, for example, in the village of Aduevo, from the village of Chernyaevo, at the Sinevo station. Generic names (stanitsa, station, village) of the feminine gender, but the geographical names with them retain the form of the middle one.