Place Names

Neste volume recóllense unha serie de traballos dos maiores especialistas en toponimia galega, sobre a metodoloxía, a historiografía e a interpretación etimolóxica. A partir deles propóñense pautas de actuación á hora de estudar a toponimia, tales como a necesidade dunha perspectiva multidisciplinar, non só lingüística, senón tamén histórica e xeográfica, entre outras. Tamén se ofrecen achegas sobre a interrelación cos nomes de persoas, a clasificación semántica da toponimia, o estrato prelatino, a especificidade que comporta o estudo da toponimia medieval e o estatus xurídico dos nomes de lugar. Finalmente, engádese unha bibliografía escollida como guía breve de inicio para o estudo da toponimia.

Previous studies have noted lexical and grammatical features shared between Unangam Tunuu and neighboring Eskimo (esp. Alutiiq) and Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit (AET) languages, suggesting prehistoric language contact, without, however, proposing a specific period or mechanism of contact.  In this paper, I provide evidence from likely Unangan place names to support archaeological findings suggesting the former presence of UT in contemporary Alutiiq areas; and further, that Unangax̂ presence along the eastern Pacific Coast provides a locus of contact to explain AET-like grammatical features in UT

This is an anthology on the current use in Denmark of historical maps within a large number of subject areas and topics. Each of the articles focus on one such area.

The book is published electronically within the series of Geoforum Perspektiv as vol. 38 in open access online.

The paper reviews and complements existing knowledge about the acquisition of proper names. On the basis of research into children's language, it seems obvious today that the process of acquisition of proper names (anthroponyms) is simultaneous to the acquisition of common nouns. However, the underlying mechanisms explaining the separation of the two groups of nouns are controversial. Compared to the case of anthroponyms, learning toponyms is a more complicated and a longer-lasting process. In connection with this topic, researchers dealing with spatial cognition are focusing on spatial orientation, on the localisation of spatial information in the brain and on spatial language. They study neither the way children get to know the wider geographical environment, nor the way they acquire toponyms. The author seeks to obtain more information about the beginning of this process based on the study of two small children's toponymic knowledge in connection with their acquisition of geographical common nouns and the development of spatial orientation. This makes it possible to draw preliminary conclusions about the specificity of the cognitive mechanisms ensuring the knowledge of geographical environment. The author suggests that the meaning of early toponyms is typically under-generalised — children tend to interpret the names of cities/towns or streets by restricting them to a certain house. It has also been made evident that, at the age of 2–4 years, the relationship between places and persons is very tight (for instance, children connect the names of places to specific persons). The semantic contingencies can be explained by the fact that, in the case of children, the place concepts themselves (what is a city/town?, what is a street?, etc.) have not been fully constructed yet, and that the elements of space are still not distinct entities.

Вопросы ономастики. 2016. Т. 13. № 2. С. 7–22

Artiklis arutletakse mõningate etümoloogiate üle, mis puudutavad
Lõuna-Eesti kohanimesid, nendega seostuvaid kohanimesid mujalt Eestist ning läänemeresoome keelealalt. Vaatluse all on nimed, millele pilku heites jääb nende tähendus esmalt hämaraks. Lähemalt selgitatakse asjaolusid, miks Valga nimele sobib ikkagi kõige paremini tähenduseks slaavi päritolu apellatiiv volok ’paatide ülevedamise koht’, mitte mõni muu balti või läänemeresoome sõna. Taheva nimi
lähtub läänemeresoome sõnast taive tähenduses ’käänukoht, käänak’. Sellesse nimepessa kuuluvad veel mitmed Eesti asulanimed, nt Taebla ja Tahula. Esimest korda esitatakse Saru ja Hargla etümoloogiad. Mõlemad nimed on tõenäoliselt lähtunud apellatiivist, mis tähistab peajõe haru, kuid on vanuse poolest erinevad. Artiklis ilmneb, et kohanimede etümologiseerimisel on peale nimede häälikuliste
kujude võrdlemise tähtis tunda ka koha geograafi list iseloomu ning tajuda omaaegse nimeandja motiivi.

The development of toponymical cartography in Russia has a long history and rich practical experience. Cartographic methods have been used in toponymical research for many decades. Their great importance was noted by the founders of fundamental place-name study. This field is actively developing despite the considerable methodological complexity and labor intensity. Modern technologies in cartography make it possible to bring the scale and intensity of toponymic research to a new level and solve problems that have long been identified in science. This further increases the relevance of toponymic mapping and the active introduction of other techniques into the practice of local and regional toponymic research.

Det svenska sammandraget (1½ sida) och den svenska resumén (20 sidor) av min doktorsavhandling, som behandlar frågor kring de skandinaviska språkens ljudhistoria från 200-talet till 1200-talet e.Kr., belysta delvis av deras kontakter med samtida förstadier till finska och av gamla ortnamn från kontaktzonen, och delvis av teoretisk ljudhistorisk rekonstruktion. I två uppsatser granskas etymologier för ortnamn i södra och sydvästra Finland som belyser tidig språkkontakt. I etymologiska fallstudier behandlas namnen Kjulo och Tavastland. Namnet Karis jämförs med isländska sagornas Herdalar och förklaringen av hur fi. ruotsi 'svensk' hör ihop med ~ fsv. rōþ-och rȳtzẹr 'ryss' problematiseras. Flera farledsnamn diskuteras som är upptagna i det s.k. " Danska itinerariet " liksom ett större urval namn som kunde vara gamla i en Åländsk kontext: Eckerö, Geta, Jomala och Lemland, och därtill Järsö, Skedholm, Styrsö, Slemmern och Lemböte. De allra äldsta förhistoriska alternativen för att förklara namnen Åland och Ahvenanmaa problematiseras och ett nytt förslag framförs. I den första uppsatsen undersöks ett urval av lånord bevarade i finskan och dess närmaste släktspråk och särskilt vad deras ljuddräkter kan avslöja om förändringar i urnordiskans ljudsystem. T.ex. ordet fi. leikata 'att klippa, skära' återförs på en urfinsk form *lɤikka-med bakvokaliskt uttal, som har lånats tidigt från ett urnordiskt original *blaikijan 'göra blek, avhugga en bläcka', innan *blaik-frontades till *blaeik-. En tillrättalagd analys av många etymologier tidsbestämmer de granskade lånen till tiden före det nordiska i-omljudet. De två sista uppsatserna föreslår en ny ljudhistorisk beskrivning av 500/600-talens övergångsnordiska då de flesta omljudda vokalerna, såsom t.ex. nusvenskt y och ö, uppkom, vilket medförde växlingar illustrerade av svenska dölja/döljer/dolde, mat/mätt och duga/dygd. Generationer av ljudhistoriker har allt sedan Rasmus Rask och Jacob Grimm under nästan 200 år gäckats av ett otal problem som gäller när, hur och med vilka slutresultat omljuden från början verkade. I den fjärde uppsatsen visas att de senaste förklaringarna som erbjudits beträffande frontningsomljudet inte är hållbara. Ett nytt förslag presenteras för att förklara en större mängd ohanterliga data med färre allmängiltiga antagen. Problemet som den sista uppsatsen siktar på att lösa är hur frontningsomljudet, vokaliskt framkallad brytning (som t.ex. i svenska mjöd) och rundningsomljud (som t.ex. i svenska dugg av dagg) kan förklaras inom en och samma analys.

Phantom islands are falsely mapped islands that turned out non-existent. This paper examines the histories and the etymologies of the names of Bermeja, Hy Brasil, and Sandy Island. Appearing cartographically since 1539, Bermeja's 'undiscovery' blocked Mexico's ownership of an oil-rich section of the Gulf of Mexico. Hy Brasil appeared first in 1330 maps and became falsely associated with Irish mythology. Sandy Island, near New Caledonia, was officially 'unfound' most recently in 2012, but existed on maps since 1908. This paper also examines the residential cruise liner The World, a manmade floating 'island' challenging our notion of place. Though not 'real', these islands exist as hope - Bermeja, a hope for power, Hy Brasil, a hope for a divine land, and Sandy Island and The World, a hope for the unknown. In a largely known, familiar world, discovery is not exploring the new, but revisiting the old; not uncovering what we do not know, but undiscovering what we do.

Key Words: Phantom Islands, Historical Cartography, Bermeja, Hy Brasil, Sandy Island

THEMATIZATION OF PLACE NAMES IN THE MEMOIR TEXTS
(AS ILLUSTRATED WITH THE CITIES OF HRADEC KRÁLOVÉ
AND PÍSEK)
The goal of the study is to present memoir texts as an important and rich source for
onomastic research. The analysis is focused on usage, predominantly on thematization
of place names in texts referring to the Czech cities of Hradec Králové and Písek.
There are examined the following topics: the city name and urban names forms and
appearances in the texts, the relationship between standardized and non-standardized
forms of urban names, and etymology and interpretation of the selected urban names
in the memoir texts. Place names in the texts are used in different ways – except the
fact they identify particular objects and create urban space, they evoke emotional
recollections of authors’ childhoods; they are also examined as the formative part of
social group identity.

This articles summarises the various types of island-names in the Northern Isles of Scotland. The vast majority of names are of Scandinavian origin, with a substantial number of  Insular Scots coinages. Only a handful of island-names can be judged to be of pre-Scandinavian origin.

Since the mid-19th century many artificial languages (henceforth ALs) have been created in order to facilitate international communication and understanding; the best known of these is Esperanto. The vocabularies of these languages often include names of countries, cities, and other places; the number of such names depends on how developed the languages are (or were), and the particular names created depended on how salient the places which they referred to were to the language designers (and their audiences).

Until recently, Azerbaijan was not very familiar to most people in Europe and North America (where most AL designers lived) and was not discussed much in media there. As a result, while many ALs have words for e.g. ‘France’ and ‘United States’, relatively few have words for ‘Azerbaijan’, and perhaps even fewer have words for places in Azerbaijan such as ‘Baku’ and ‘Nakhchivan’. If such places, particularly more obscure ones, are mentioned in writing in ALs, they may use forms of their names which were not changed to conform to the morphological requirements of the AL. For example, the Esperanto Wikipedia categories page for “cities of Azerbaijan” (https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorio:Urboj_de_Azerbajĝano) gives Baku and Sumgait in their Esperantized forms, with the nominal suffix -o (Bakuo and Sumgaito respectively), but does not do this for Lankaran (as it uses the form Lenkoran).

This paper will look at such facts, and whether they have changed in Esperanto.

Only download paper you can translate! When examining the local names of settlements was found a Celtic origin of the name of one of the villages - Košťany. The village has retained its Celtic name until such time when the name was in the 18th century Czechicized. The original name of the village is characterized by the activity of their inhabitants - tin mining.  First name was Costen - phonetic wording Costean?
Při zkoumání pomístních názvů osad byl zjištěn keltský původ názvu jedné z obcí - Košťan. Obec si zachovala své keltské jméno až do doby, kdy byl název v 18. století počeštěn. Původní název obce charakterizuje činnost jejich obyvatel - těžbu cínu. Původní název byl Costen fonetické znění názvu Costean?
KW: PREHISTORIC TIN , TIN MINING , ERZGEBIRGE , WASHING , TIN DEPOSIT , CELTS , KRUŠNÉ HORY , PRAMENÁČ , KOŠŤANY , latén, keltové,kosten, costean, pravěký cín, cornish, toponymy

Place-names may provide insights into cultures' linguistics, histories, habitats, and spatial and environmental perceptions. To yield such insights, I analyze a comprehensive inventory of 245 Navajo place-names of the Canyon de Chelly system, Arizona. The analysis first identifies positional and directional linguistic elements in place-names. Frequencies of references to natural features such as canyons, prominent rocks, water features, and so forth, as well as cultural features such as trails and prehistoric Anasazi ruins and petrographs, are then tallied. These names reflect interaction between the character of the environment and what the Navajo residents perceive as important within it. Rocks of various kinds constitute the largest category of named natural features, with canyons a close second; plant and animal referents are quite common. Preexisting non-Navajo place-names were not borrowed when Navajos took over the area in the 1600s. The great majority of Navajo place-names are translatable and literally descriptive; relatively few are commemorative, only four including personal names, and none is allusive to other places or to abstract qualities. The place-names appear to have been quite stable over time. The aforementioned onamastic traits, as well as frequent “non-specificity,” are also characteristics of Athapaskan place-names elsewhere in the Southwest and in Alaska; however, Navajo practice differs from Alaskan in the former's occasional use of duplicated and alternative place-names.

This study of river names seeks to deepen our understanding of the pre-modern environmental history of northern Vietnam. A performative practice, naming places often reveals the transformation of a physical environment into a cultural one. By analysing the names given to antecedents of the Red River in northern Vietnam, this article argues that each historical name reflected its users’ perception of their relationship with a respective river. Toponyms like Lô, Phú Lương, Nhị, and ‘Great River’, therefore, did not simply represent the present-day Red River — a geographical unit that dates to the French colonial period.

[Lolland-Falster, Vordingborg and the crusades - what the sources tell about the role of the region in Wendic wars and crusades in the period c.1100-1260]

In the beginning of the Nordic Middle Ages, the south-Danish islands of Lolland and Falster constituted a borderland between Denmark and Wenden, i.e. the lands along the south-western coast of the Baltic Sea inhabited by Wendic Slavs. Busy trade connections across the sea took place from the late Viking Age (c.950-1050) onwards, and numerous Wends appear to have settled in Denmark, especially on the islands of Lolland, Falster and Møn. Peaceful Danish-Wendic relations in Denmark are evidenced archaeologically and onomastically, the latter for instance with place-names in  itze,  gorke and Vinde-. When relations began to grow more hostile from around 1100, the south-Danish islands were severely marked by seaborne Wendic plundering, and when the military tide began to turn from the mid-twelfth century, the region became centre for the still more organized Danish attacks in the form of crusades to Rügen, Pomerania, Finland, Estonia and Novgorod. The present article presents Danish-Wendic relations for good and bad in the period c.1100-1260 as it can be determined from extant written sources as well as from archaeology, onomastics, administrative structure and parish churches, with special focus to the islands of Lolland and Falster, and the town of Vordingborg. This includes a new thesis on the possible background for the existence of a short-lived Dominican friary in Vordingborg (c.1253-1264).

The article, which is written in Danish, is published in "Lolland-Falsters Historiske Samfunds Årbog" 2017, pp. 55-85.

Establishing the origin and dating of the palatalization of the CA and GA clusters in the Rhaeto-Romance languages and in the Cisalpine area is one of the most debated problems in Romance linguistics, also because of the classificatory implications ascribed to this phonetic mutation. In 1958 the Slovene romanist Anton Grad suggested a ‘low’ dating (XII-XIV centuries) for such palatalization in Friulian, on the basis of the loan words present in western Slovene dialects. However, on the basis of toponomastic data and other interlinguistic considerations, it is possible to predate the palatalization of the CA and GA in the Friulian area before the year 1000.

Street names (odonyms) and their academic study constitute an important part of onomastic research. This paper takes stock of the growing literature on street naming processes and provides a meta-analytical systematic review of odonymic scholarship. To this purpose, a collection of 121 peer-reviewed articles on street names published in English language academic journals in the social sciences and the humanities were identified in the Scopus database. The statistical analyses conducted on these materials indicate (1) the temporal dynamics of knowledge production and the geographical hotspots in toponomastic scholarship, (2) the geopolitical settings and historical contexts framing these studies, (3) the theoretical perspectives employed to conceptualise street naming practices, and (4) the methodological outlines characterising the research done on street names in the literature. The conclusions point out four main clusters of toponomastic research and indicate directions for future inquiry in street name scholarship.

What does the archaeological record tell us about the early history of Gildeskål parish? Unlike other farms in Northern Norway with stone churches erected on its grounds in the Middle Ages (1050-1537 AD), Gildeskål does not display rich
archaeological finds and was not a major economical player in the area. Prior to an establishment in the Late Iron Age (600-1050 AD), Gildeskål was probably part of the Inndyr estate. In the 11th century, when a hypothetical initial church in wood was erected at Gildeskål, Inndyr along with Arnøyene and Mårnes were the wealthiest farms in the area. It is likely that the proprietor of the wooden and especially the costly stone church belonged to one or several of the wealthier farms in the soon-to-be parish. The name Gildeskål refers to the building of a local guild once placed on the farm in the Middle Ages. These gildeskåler or gildestuer are found in the vicinity of medieval churches all over Norway. The Gildeskål farm might also have served as a site for communal religious feasting prior to the introduction of Christianity, but this is unlikely. Such activities usually took place on the wealthier farms, and Gildeskål did not belong to that group.

A list of mountain passes and similar features extracted from the gazetteer "Irish Landscape Names".  Please consult the full document (also available at Mountain Views, www.mountainviews.ie | More | Resources) for the abbreviations of sources, symbols and conventions adopted.  The list was compiled during the month of June 2020 and comprises more than eighty Irish passes and cols, including both vehicular passes and pedestrian saddles.

Summary in English

In spite of being the most widespread place-name element in the western Viking-Age colonies, the place-name element toft has received very little attention since Bengt Holmberg’s thesis published in 1948. During surveys undertaken by me in the early 2000’s, it is, however, clear that there is a good deal more information to be culled from this name type and its importance as an active naming element in the Viking-Age colonies than has hitherto been acknowledged.

This article is partly a réevaluation of the hundreds of examples of the name type in Normandy (ending in -tot/-tôt) and partly a comparison with occurrences of the name type in England (-toft), Scotland (-toft and  -tobhta) and the Faeroes (-tóft(ir)). The result is a considerable amount of reinterpretations of the Normandy toft-names, particularly reducing the number of personal names hitherto claimed to form part of the specifics in this material, see appendix.


Résumé en français

En dépit d’être l’élément de nom de lieu le plus répandu dans les colonies de l’Âge Viking occidentales, l’élément toft a reçu très peu d’attention depuis la thèse de Bengt Holmberg publié en 1948. Au cours de mes enquêtes menées dans les années 2000, il devient evident que beaucoup plus d’informations pourra être extraites à partir de ce type de nom et de son importance en tant qu’élément de nomination actif dans les colonies de l’Âge Viking qu’antérieurement reconnu.

Cet article est en partie une réévaluation des centaines d’exemples du type de nom en Normandie (se terminant en -tot/-tôt) et en partie d’une comparaison avec les occurrences du type de nom en Angleterre (-toft), Ecosse (-toft et -tobhta) et les îles Féroé (-tóft(ir)). Le résultat est une quantité considérable de réinterprétations des noms toft en Normandie, en réduisant notamment le nombre de noms de personnes revendiqué jusqu’à présent pour former une partie des spécificités de ce matériau, voir l’appendix.

Early field-names and minor landscape names are beginning to be recognised by scholars as an important source for the reconstruction of both medieval landscapes and medieval communities’ perceptions of their environment. This study is situated within this emerging scholarly context and assesses microtoponyms alongside additional documentary sources to develop a clear sense of how the inhabitants of Flintham in Nottinghamshire observed their surroundings, and to understand which landscape features were considered foremost. Flintham is located within the catchment of three rivers: the Trent, the Devon and the Smite, and extant material from a range of texts emphasises that flooding was a persistent problem from at least the fourteenth century, continuing into the modern period. The survival of a large quantity of medieval field-names leaves us in no doubt that water loomed large within the collective consciousness of the community of peasants that named this landscape. A large percentage of these names relate to water, and this suggests that localised flooding and problems with excessive water more generally predated the Norman Conquest. A lack of suitable etymological evidence at settlement level has led onomasts to define Flintham as OE hām – ‘homestead’, rather than OE hamm – ‘land hemmed in by water or marsh’. However, mapping the settlement’s watery minor landscape names in conjunction with an assessment of those parts of the landscape designated as most likely to flood strongly supports a reinterpretation weighted in favour of hamm.

This article deals with a number of prominent types of settlement names in the province of Jämtland, from the Viking period to the 16th century. More specifically, it looks at names in -gård, -by (By) and ‑böle (Böle), and at two special categories of names with first elements containing a personal name or a common noun referring to a person. The aim is to elucidate in broad terms both the history of these name types and the settlement history of the central Scandinavian interior. The author analyses the settlement-historical context of the names, the content of their first elements, the overall chronology of the different name types, and the meaning of the place-name elements in question. The 15th century and the first half of the 16th emerge as a time of dynamic growth in the region – in contrast to the way this period has been portrayed in earlier research.

The majority of the 720 historically-known springs in Denmark have been accredited with healing power of supernatural origin, manifested in their names and/or local folklore tradition still supported by cultic rituals celebrated way into the nineteenth century. While only 2.5 per cent of Danish spring names explicitly appear to be of pagan origin, at least 32 per cent were dedicated to Christian saints or named from other ecclesiastical terms, whereas 25 per cent had the religiously neutral name Helligkilde. Based on a case study of spring names in the region of northwestern Sjaelland, the whole question of age is discussed, just as several cases show how spring names and their attached folklore etymology are not always to be taken at face value.

Resistance to an intelligent interpretation of Ptolemy's geography of Scotland has created a milieu in which an approach to the prehistory/development of Pictland is impossible. With this problem addressed, sense can be made of evidence on the ground; the dynamics of political power and the results of unrecorded wars which led to the boundaries the confederated Pictish kingdom can be seen-not perfectly, but with a different order of magnitude of resolution. The hypothesis offered here builds upon and provides a possible context for data recently released about the archaeological explorations at Tap O' Noth. This version 2 corrects misallocations in the table for map 1

There are 13 surnames in the 1881 census which occurred more frequently in Norfolk than any other county, and whose origins are believed to be Old Norse (ON) personal names. These surnames appear to be commoner in the parts of the county where ON place-names are more frequent; such place-names are usually taken as an indicator of Viking settlement. The apparent relationship was investigated by grouping the census enumeration districts into three classes according to the number of ON place-names that the enumeration districts included. It was found that a person living in a part of Norfolk in 1881 with many ON place-names was about 4.5 times as likely to have an ON-derived surname as a person living in an area with few, and a person in an area with an intermediate number was 2.7 times as likely. Yarmouth and Norwich were treated separately, and come between the most frequent and intermediate classes. At first sight the strength of this association is surprising, but Scandinavian given names are known to have continued in use to the time when many families had hereditary surnames. It is therefore not surprising that such names were created, and there are many other examples of surnames remaining concentrated until modern times in the areas in which they were formed

COMPLETE TITLE: Review: "Concepción Suárez, Julio, Diccionario toponímico de la montaña asturiana (etimológico). Picos, mayaos, mayadas, carbas, puertos de verano, brañas, cabanas, acebales, fayeos, mazos, jayeos, robledales, riegas, regueros, ríos, foces, foceyas, bisbitones, tabayones, bisbiteras: el nombre de las montañas asturianas. Oviedo (KRK ediciones), 2001, 830 + LXXII páxs.”

Those place-names which combine noun + noun (and, to a lesser extent, adjective + noun) in close compounds are regarded as among the most ancient Irish place-names.  It is widely held that they reflect a structure dating back to the Common Celtic period due to their similarity to Brittonic and Gaulish compounds in  terms of structure and vocabulary.
In this paper, the Gaulish, British and Irish names are compared, particularly in terms of the repertoire of elements found in each set and the semantic categories represented. It is found that there is surprisingly little overlap between the Gaulish and Irish repertoires, both in terms of generic and specific elements.  In general, the British names, especially the Romano-British ones, offer better parallels with the Continent.
The close compound structure, inherited from Indo-European, is taken up in Ireland, but gets heavily adapted in terms of the repertoire of elements and is steadily replaced by other structures. The strongest connections with Gaulish names are found in Ulster and North Leinster.  There are areas where noun + noun compounds are scarce or absent.
The early Irish elements with non-cognate Gaulish synonyms merit further study, as a proportion of them may have non-Celtic origins.

Folgende Ausführungen beschreiben Namenformen, die unter Anwendung geläufiger Erkenntnisse der historischen Grammatik (vornehmlich der Wortbildungslehre) kaum erklärbar sind. Es wird erwogen, dass für bestimmte Erscheinungen der außersprachlichen Welt bestimmte Benennungsmuster zur Anwendung gelangen können resp. konnten, die unmittelbar onymisch wirk(t)en und sich daher einer Beschreibung auf der Grundlage einer historisch-philologischen Analyse entziehen. Sie sind am besten als Prädikationen zu beschreiben, die (im Sondereggerschen Sinne) "bedeutsame" Aussagen über Designate machen, jedoch nicht im strengen Sinne appellativisch sind. Als eigene Wortklasse stehen sie an der Schnittstelle von Proprialität und Appellativik oder, um es mit Wind-berger-Heidenkummer (2001: 320) auszudrücken, "an der proprialen Peripherie". Die Bei-spiele stammen vorwiegend aus der deutschen Schweiz, können jedoch weitgehend stell-vertretend für den ganzen deutschen Sprachraum stehen.

The dissertation examines place-name explanatory elements in the folkloristic genre of the legend. Empirically, I have analyzed material collected by Evald Tang Kristensen (1843–1929) in Northern Schleswig around 1900. Theoretically and methodically, I recreate the original contexts within which the legends were told, with the main focus on the biographies and repertoires of three legend tellers and the legends' relationship with the external landscape.

The dissertation takes as its starting point a critical examination of the research discourses in which the phenomenon has earlier been mentioned. Scholars have been interested in the legend as historical evidence for the origin of the place-name, and in other discourses scholars have argued for a common human need to explain things which could not immediately be understood and maybe even to recreate meaning in what appeared to be a 'meaningless' place-name.

Rejecting these generalized assumptions, I took my point of departure in an opposite hypothesis: People first at foremost want to tell legends with all their multi-faceted meanings, and the place-name explanatory element is thus a secondary product.

Reintroducing the theory of stedfæstelse (ɔ: 'anchoring') by Axel Olrik (1864--1917), I show how the place-name explanatory element in a legend works as the Aristotelian paralogism (fallacy) of reversed consequence. Thus the element is part of the rhetorical strategies which the legend teller uses to give credibility to his legend.

In the repertoire analyses I showed how place-name explanatory elements are closely connected to the context in which the legend was originally told. The legend teller Christian C. Haugaard used the elements as part of his personal style of narration together with his tendency to narrate with multiple details such as exact dates. He even sometimes made up place-name explanatory elements while he was narrating for Tang Kristensen.

The married couple Ane Poulsen and Jes Marcosen were, in opposition to Christian, passive tradition participants, and their legend-telling was first and foremost prompted by their wish to help Tang Kristensen in his folkloristic collecting project. Thus they try to remember what they know about antiquarian notes connected to the local landscape, including ideas on the origin of place-names.

This article looks at how Scandinavians perceived place-names of non-Scandinavian origin by means of investigating Scottish place-names mentioned in the Sagas. The article pioneers a new methodological approach in place-name research by looking at naming strategies and applying these on a historical material.