Hydronym
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Ahydronym(fromGreek:ὕδρω,hydrō,"water" andὄνομα,onoma,"name" ) is a type oftoponymthat designates aproper nameof abody of water.Hydronyms include the proper names of rivers and streams, lakes and ponds, swamps and marshes, seas and oceans. As a subset oftoponymy,a distinctive discipline ofhydronymy(orhydronomastics) studies the proper names of all bodies of water, the origins and meanings of those names, and their development and transmission through history.[1]
Classification by water types
[edit]Within theonomasticclassification, main types of hydronyms are (in Alpha betical order):
- helonyms:proper names of swamps, marshes and bogs[2]
- limnonyms:proper names of lakes and ponds[3]
- oceanonyms:proper names of oceans[4]
- pelagonyms:proper names of seas and maritime bays[5]
- potamonyms:proper names of rivers and streams[6]
Linguistic phenomena
[edit] | This sectionneeds additional citations forverification.(April 2024) |
Often a given body of water will have several entirely different names given to it by different peoples living along its shores. For example,Tibetan:རྫ་ཆུ,Wylie:rDza chu,ZYPY:Za quandThai:แม่น้ำโขง[mɛ̂ːnáːmkʰǒːŋ]are theTibetanandThainames, respectively, for the same river, theMekonginsoutheast Asia.(The Tibetan name is used forthree other riversas well.)
Hydronyms from various languages may all share a commonetymology.For example, theDanube,Don,Dniester,Dnieper,andDonetsrivers all contain theScythianname for "river" (cf.don,"river, water" in modernOssetic).[7][8]A similar suggestion is that theYarden,Yarkon,andYarmouk(and possibly, with distortion,Yabbokand/orArnon) rivers in theIsrael/Jordanarea contain theEgyptianword for river (itrw,transliterated in theBibleasye'or).
It is also possible for atoponymto become a hydronym: for example, theRiver Liffeytakes its name from the plain on which it stands, calledLipheorLife;the river originally was calledAn Ruirthech.[9][10]An unusual example is theRiver Cam,which originally was called theGranta,but when the town ofGrantebrycgebecameCambridge,the river's name changed to match the toponym. Another unusual example is theRiver Stortwhich is named after the town on the fordBishops Stortfordrather than the town being named after the river.
Relation to history
[edit]Compared to most other toponyms, hydronyms are very conservative linguistically, and people who move to an area often retain the existing name of a body of water rather than rename it in their own language.[11]For example, theRhineinGermanybears aCelticname, not aGermanname.[12] TheMississippi Riverin theUnited Statesbears anAnishinaabename, not a French or English one.[13]The names of large rivers are even more conservative than the local names of small streams.
Therefore, hydronomy may be a tool used to reconstruct past cultural interactions, population movements, religious conversions, or older languages.[14]For example, history professorKenneth H. Jacksonidentified a river-name pattern against which to fit the story of theAnglo-Saxoninvasion of Britain and pockets of surviving native British culture.[15]His river map of Britain divided the island into three principal areas of English settlement: the river valleys draining eastward in which surviving British names are limited to the largest rivers and Saxon settlement was early and dense; the highland spine; and a third region whose British hydronyms apply even to the smaller streams.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^Room 1996,p. 48, 51, 56, 71, 79, 84.
- ^Room 1996,p. 48.
- ^Room 1996,p. 56.
- ^Room 1996,p. 71.
- ^Room 1996,p. 79.
- ^Room 1996,p. 84.
- ^Mallory, J. P.; Mair, Victor H. (2000).The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West.London: Thames and Hudson. p. 106.
- ^Абаев, В. И. (1949).Осетинский язык и фольклор[Ossetian language and folklore](PDF).Moscow: Publishing house of Soviet Academy of Sciences. p. 236.
- ^Byrne, F. J. (1973).Irish Kings and High-Kings.Dublin. p. 150.
{{cite book}}:CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^"Dublin Castle – History – Chapter 1 – Prehistoric Dublin".Archived from the original on 16 June 2002.Retrieved20 November2006.
{{cite web}}:CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ^Julie Tetel Andresen; Phillip Carter (2015).Languages In The World: How History, Culture, and Politics Shape Language.John Wiley & Sons. p. 227.ISBN978-1-118-53128-0.Retrieved31 December2015.
- ^Klement Tockner; Urs Uehlinger; Christopher T. Robinson (2009).Rivers of Europe.Academic Press. p. 216.ISBN978-0-08-091908-9.Retrieved31 December2015.
- ^Arlene B. Hirschfelder; Paulette Fairbanks Molin (2012).The Extraordinary Book of Native American Lists.Scarecrow Press. p. 260.ISBN978-0-8108-7709-2.Retrieved31 December2015.
- ^The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica."Toponymy".Encyclopædia Britannica.Retrieved31 December2015.
- ^Jackson,Language and History in Early Britain,Edinburgh, 1953:220-23, summarized in H.R. Loyn,Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest,2nd ed. 1991:7-9.
Sources
[edit]- Beekes, Robert S. P. "River".Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture.pp. 486–487.
- Mencken, H. L. (1921)."3. Geographical Names".The American language: An inquiry into the development of English in the United States(2nd, rev. and enl. ed.). Archived fromthe originalon 27 December 2017.
- Room, Adrian (1996).An Alphabetical Guide to the Language of Name Studies.Lanham and London: The Scarecrow Press.ISBN978-0-8108-3169-8.
