Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 109. kötet (2013)
Tanulmányok - Rácz, Anita: Ethnic groups and settlement names in Hungary 255
256 RÁcz, Anita pioneering studies established the semantic and morphological characteristics of the typical components encountered in the Hungarian place name system. In addition this research can be linked to historical onomastics and to the generally accepted proposition that there are so-called ’era-defining’ settlement names. By this we understand that certain types of name were characteristic of particular periods of Hungarian history, which of course does not mean that the presence of that name type was exclusively indicative of that age, but rather that its appearance is strikingly characteristic. Accordingly, we can use the designation of „old or early settlement name type”, amongst which we can identify personal names, names of tribes, ethnonyms and occupational names, either without any formant or with an affixational morpheme, which have given rise to the creation of settlement names (see Kristó 1976 and L. Kiss 1997). Thus we can see that, from the very beginning, the names of ethnic groups were present in the naming system of Hungarian place names, and that these impacted on the name layer and on any general statements that can be made about early place-name types. In the first half of the 20lh century István Kniezsa systematized Hungarian place names based on the names of peoples into two major groups: simple and complex type names. The first type includes a subset of ethnonyms without any name-forming element (Horvát, Tót, Orosz etc.); the other subtype has the possessive suffix -/ attached to the names (as in Németi, Csehi, Tóti etc.). The complex type place names are those where the name of a people has some common noun used in topographical description attached to it (Tótfalu, Oroszfalu, Oláhtelek, Olasztelek etc.) (Kniezsa 1943: 124). Roughly two decades later, this basic division into three typological groups was accepted by Gyula Kristó (1976: 58- 65), and such an organizational framework must still be kept in mind by all researchers who engage with the topic. Since the research methods, principles and basic concepts established in the early 20th century have been passed on to the present day essentially unchanged, I decided that it was high time to undertake, after looking back through the decades-old typologies, a comprehensive review of settlement names based on ethnonyms using a large database of name material, with a view to refining and adding to the store of knowledge. I actually started work on this theme in 2011 with the publication of a monograph entitled „Data concerning early settlement names derived from ethnonyms”, which deals with name data from the conquest until 1526, gathered from various written sources, collected and published. For 945 settlements a total of 1355 name-formants and something in the order of several thousand items of name data can be found, amongst which can be highlighted 39 lexemes related to the names of ethnic groups. The frequency order for these items is as follows: tót, német, magyar, oláh, orosz, besenyő, szász, cseh, olasz, székely, horvát, maróc - marót ~ morva, lengyel, tatár, böszörmény, kun, nándor, káliz, úz, zsidó, kazár, román, várkony, jász, török, cigány, rác, bolgár,
