Folia archeologica 36.

Lovag Zsuzsa: Egy XI. századi bronz korpusz

EARLY MEDIEVAL AUROCHS 217 "Wisent" "Urus" "Zubr" "Tur" Country Switzerland Tirol 2 11 2 11 2 9 1 11 3 1 Schleisen/Salzburg Steiermark Kärnten Krain 1 1 1 15 1 7 1 7 87 7 44 3 33 Total: 461 55 271 13 122 In all he found 461 topographical names in Middle-Europe connected with the German "Wisent" (55),"Urus" (217), and Slavic "Zubr" (13) and "Tur" (122)

8'

4 The areal distribution of topographical names listed above may be fairly well related to the extension of German and Slavic language aresas and can help identify their overlapping territories. However, it cannot give any information on either the geographical extension of Aurochs or Bison and it has nothing to do with the frequency of their occurrence, which charges chronologically. B. A. Szalay himself emphasized that only part of the names deriving from "Wisent-Zubr" and "Urus-Tur" refers to the wild Aurochs and Bison. He gives 7 semantic variations of "Wisent"

8

5 and 12 for "Urus"

8". Thus, he elaminated those names which, in his opinion were not connected with the wild species Aurochs and Bison. After this, 40 topographical names of Bison and 200 of Aurochs remained. This result allowed him to establish that during the Migration Period and in the Early Middle Ages the occurrence and number of Aurochs in Western and Middle Europe was 5 times greater than the Bison.

8

7 Osteological data and our knowledge of the history of species, however, contradict this suggestion and the dominant occurrence of topographical names connected with "Urus-Tur" in mountainous areas and in high mountains also make it unlikely. B. A. Szalay has collected 216 topographical names of "Tur (= Aurochs)" from the area of historical Hungary but he considered only 65 of them to be certainly named after Aurochs.

8

8 Sixty-five percent of the "Tur" names may 8

4 Szalay, B-, Der Wisent in Ortsnamen. Zoolog. Annalen 7 (1915) 47—49. 8

5 Ibid. 10. 8

6 Ibid. 38—39. 8

7 Ibid. 16, 49, 70. 8

8 Id., op. cit. (1917). See footnote № 3. This work of Szalay, written in 1917, has not been published until now. His paper was prepared for the 16th vol. (1918) of the Ann. Mus. hist.-nat. Hungarici in Budapest but because of World War I was left out of the volume. That is why it seems even stranger that B. Szalay in his work entitled „Die Farbe des Ures" (Der Zoologische Garten NF 3. Bd. 9— 10. H. Leipzig) on p. 259, under footnote № 21 quotes his own — unpulished — paper: „Geschichte des Ures in Ungarn. Ann. Mus. Nat. Hungarici 16 (1918) 1—60". In 1931, B. A. Szalay planned to send an extended version of his paper to the annals again but he did not meet with success this time either. The linguist, J. Melich in his through study used B. Szalay's manuscript but Melich's work also remained unpublished. In this paper the linguist investigated the occurrences of the Slavic word 'tur' and of the Hungarian noun 'tur' (ulcus, chancre); as well as of the Hungarian ver 'tur, túrni' (to grub, turn up, to dig) in the topographical names of historical Hungary. In: Melich, J., Dolgozatok II. Nyelvtudományi Értekezések 41 (Budapest 1963) 92 -94.