Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 109. kötet (2013)
Tanulmányok - Rácz, Anita: Ethnic groups and settlement names in Hungary 255
Ethnie groups and settlement names in Hungary 265 proached through the means of old place names by some outstanding linguists in the first third of the 20th century. János Melich set out to unravel the ethnic status of settlements in the Carpathian Basin at the time of the conquest on the basis of settlement names (1925-1929). Meanwhile, István Kniezsa set out to define the territory occupied by the Hungarians using a similar but somewhat revised method (1938). The historian Gyula Kristó in his most recent large-scale work examined the presence of foreign ethnic groups in medieval Hungary (2003), and in his research he relied heavily on the evidence of place names. Before this, the vast majority of Hungarian historical and archaeological literature automatically assumed that all ethonymic names were derived directly from ethnic groups. It is now an established position that such an assumption does not necessarily hold good when working on place names based on ethnonyms. Let us say, for instance, that the ethnonym initially became a personal name, and that personal name was applied then to a place name, usually to express possession (cf. Bárczi 1958: 159 and L. Kiss 1997: 180, Kristó-Makk-Szegfű 1973, 1974: 8). The semantic content of place names containing ethnonyms may well be multiple. It might conceivably express any of the following: ’the settlement lived in by those belonging to a particular ethnic group’ or, ’the settlement belonging to an individual who is a member of the given ethnic group’ or even, ’in some way or other connected to the particular ethnicity’ (having similar external or internal features or attire, or originally coming from the same area as was inhabited by that ethnic group etc.). Whether the ethnonym in a settlement name refers to a community or to an individual owner (be it by means of a common noun or a common noun used as a personal name), is a matter that can be established with the help of historical researchers. At this point I do not intend to go into detail about this question. At all events, it is clear that the examination of settlement names of ethnonymic origin is an interdisciplinary task, and that their analysis, using the respective research methods of linguistics and history, can be applied to one another with mutually beneficial results. Literature Bárczi, Géza (1958), A magyar szókincs eredete. Second edition. Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest. Benkő, Loránd (1998a), A szlávok népnevei Anonymusnál és ómagyar nyelvi hátterük. In: Benkő, Loránd, Név és történelem. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest. 58-75. Benkő, Loránd (1998b), Ómagyar kori helyneveink vizsgálatának néhány szempontja. In: Benkő, Loránd, Név és történelem. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 111-21. Bényei, Ágnes (2012), Helynévképzés a magyarban. Debreceni Egyetemi Kiadó, Debrecen. Bölcskei, Andrea (2010), A magyar településnevek korrelációs rendszerének alakulása a természetes névadás korszakában. Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem, ВТК Magyar Nyelvtudományi Tanszék, Budapest.
