Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 109. kötet (2013)
Tanulmányok - Rácz, Anita: Ethnic groups and settlement names in Hungary 255
Ethnie groups and settlement names in Hungary 259 3. The second group in the traditional typology includes those instances where a topographical affixational morpheme is added to the ethnonym, the most typical being -/, followed by the less common-с/, to create settlement names. According to my most recently collected name material, the suffix -/ was used to created the first attested formation of 79.1% of such names, with the -d suffix accounting for roughly one-fifth of that number at 16.5% of the occurring designations. The presence of other affixational morphemes observed {-y, -j, -ka/-ke, -ny, -s) is indeed negligible at just 4.3%. Some of our researchers noted very early on that, when analysing names constructed using topographical suffixes, certain ethnonyms were characteristically associated with one or the other name formant and, conversely, that there are ethnonyms with which this type of name structure never occurs. In propounding an explanation for this phenomenon chronological criteria were mostly considered: that amongst certain early settlement names the name components *Oláh(i), *Rác(i), *Tatár(i), *Török(i), *Cigány(i) do not occur, and these ethnonyms only appear in two-part names as the first signifying element (Oláhbáród, Cigányfaivá). The responsibility for this fact occurring on a regular basis is placed on the late emergence of these settlements in a period when settlements names could no longer be formed on the basis on bare ethnonyms or ethnonym + the suffix -/ (c.f. L. Kiss in 1996: 447). Loránd Benkő analyzed the specific behaviour of settlement names based on ethnonyms in several of his studies, but his explanation is quite different from that of researchers who preceded him. He sees the reason in the connected intersection of lexical, root and phonological dependencies and certain chronological aspects (Benkő 1998a: 71, 1998b: 119). Although this idea was used by its originator without entering into very detailed analysis to justify it, by drawing on my own name sizeable corpus, I was in some cases able to specify the morpho-phonetic conditions connected to certain name formants (2008). 3.1. It seems clear from my previous research experience that the most common and the most natural way of compounding ethnonyms into toponyms between the 10th-16th centuries was through the addition of the place name suffix -/. An explanation could perhaps be sought from the same direction as the semantic nature of ethnonyms, and the close relation to this of the suffix’s origin and original „meaning” and function: from the possessive marker é, from which parallel forms and meaning cleavages were separated out, becoming a place-name suffix in its own right (Szegfű 1991: 254, cf. Makkai 1947: 113, Kázmér 1970: 57). When considering the chronology of settlement names formed with the -i suffix it is important to note that, since it was in use for a relatively short period of time, it is usually considered as having a role to play in determining the limits of an era. Kniezsa’s position is that the vast majority of representatives of this name type came into being before the middle of the 13th century (1949: 100, 107, 1960: 20, c.f. also Bérezi 1958: 149, 157, 160). Gyula Kristó placed the first formation of place names employing the suffix -i rather earlier, at the very
