Barsi János (szerk.): Magyarország történeti helységnévtára. Borsod megye 1773-1808 (Budapest - Miskolc, 1991)
Summary
HISTORICAL GAZETTEER OF HUNGARY (1773-1808) The main purpose of the series of manuals entitled "Historical Gazetteer of Hungary" is to describe the settlements, inhabited outskirts and denominated praedia (uninhabited areas , "puszta"-s) of historical Hungary according tc their statu« at the end of the 18th century on the basis of archivalia and bibliograpliical sources used, with the best possible complexity. It also intends to present the main demographic, religious and economic characteristics of the population of the contemporary settlements also referring to the nationality. The series - according to its contents - aims at rendering help for researchers of social sciences and for persons taking interest in data of certain settlements or regions. Not only researchers of settlement history but also others dealing with questions of historical demography, historical and settlement geography, historical statistics, history of trade, estate history, public administration and church history, linguistics and ethnography can get answers to certain questions with the help of the gazetteer. Indices of settlement names, churches and owners help in using the tabulated data. The volume is completed with a map on the seal a of 1:144000 illustrating the status and the boundaries of the settlements at the end of the 18th century making the manual easier to use. The structure of the publication was mainly determined by the fact that the sources described the same areas according to various aspects. While the census (n) deals with major units of inhabited areas, Pfarrtopographie (p) describes the same in details. Conscriptions of landowners (b,B) register units of area disregarding whether they are inhabited or not, sometimes giving names never mentioned in any other sources. Vályi (V) and Lipszky (L) aim at describing both settlements and areas. Lipszky, nevertheless, connects a named area to the inhabitated and denominated outskirts within the area on his map. To bring all the corresponding data together, their only comnon factor, the area, the geographical situation is the basis of the description, therefore, the entire county is described according to the district structure given in the Tabella Locorum (t) . Within the district the areas marked with proper borders on the map follow each other in alphabetical order of the names of communities, and their data are separated with dotted lines. The settlements and praedia listed in these units are situated in a certain area, and - disregarding a few undetectable cases - they are plotted on the map, too. Considering the purpose of the publication, as well as, the aspects of utilization, the collected data have been tabulated . According to a common experience this form enables to arrange correlating data together, thus a complex view of all the information concerning a single entry is maintained, too. Since, besides publishing data referring to each unit, we also intended to promote a comparative criticism of the sources used, in cases where the information might come from various sources we used a letter code - which is detailed beforehand - to denote the location of its origin. Thus, the registration peculiarities of the individual sources on the one hand, on the other hand changes occured during the period between the dates of their origins can be observed. The structure of the manual in the order of columns is as follows: 1. Serial number : Each unit: settlements, praedia and inhabited outskirts get a consecutive serial number, starting with one by counties. This is referred to in the indices. 2. Name: The entry begins with the name written in capitals, which is the most complete form of the name formed on the basis of name variants and is spelt according to the present rules of orthography.This is used on the map, and this is referred to in the names index and the different versions are referred back to It. The cross in brackets (+) after the derived names warns that beyond the explanations, comments can be found under the same number in the index. The derived name is followed by the names used by the sources, in their original spelling and marked with the code letter of the source . The letters listed here show in which sources the particular settlement or praedium occur. This is the reason why we have given the name variations used is the census too, although the published version of the census corrected the original names on the basis of other sources - among others Lipszky' s work. Consequently the name variation of the census can't be used as a source for name etymology.
