Makkay János: A magyarság keltezése – A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok közleményei 48. (1994)
What is more, the Mezőség dialect shows substantial differences, and these distinguish it from the other dialects including those of its eastern neighbours, i.e. the Székely (Siculian) dialects in the easternmost part in Transylvania. In turn, these Székely dialects have much common with the above —mentioned western and south-western dialects. One possible conclusion could be that the very archaic dialect of the Transylvanian Mezőség coincides with a particular ethnic group, and with the distribution of the material culture of the early and late Avarian periods. This is sufficient to suggest that the speakers of this (archaic Hungarian) language arrived together with the early Avarians. Therefore, the Mezőség dialect area, together with the linguistic group of the Hungarian Csángó in Moldavia, which is the most akin to it, is the outcome of an early dialectal differentiation and displacement of Proto-Hungarian resulting from the sweeping in of its speakers into the central part of Transylvania by the early Avar nomads. The other previously mentioned dialects on the frontier of the Árpádian settlement territory and outside of it (including the Székelys), however, were Proto-Hungarian dialects spoken by people who came into the Carpathian Basin under the pressure of the Kuvration Onogurs. The earliest Hungarian toponymy, of course, belongs to these early Hungarian settlers and consists for the most part of the descriptive category discussed in chapter 2.6. The answer to the curious question why the Avarian toponymy (or more correctly the undoubtedly heterogeneous toponymy of the Avar periods) is missing from the recorded sources, is that this earliest, descriptive Hungarian toponymy (and contemporary Slavic place names) constitutes the allegedly missing toponymy of the 7th —9th centuries. Therefore, not only Slavic toponymy survived the fall of the Avarian chiefdom but also the toponymies of all other peoples who played parts of various importance in the Avarian chiefdom, especially speakers of Proto-Hungarian. Toponyms in the frontier territory of the Late Avarian distribution i.e. on the so-called marchland (gyepü in Hungarian), as for example Lövő, Száz, Hatvan, Les, clearly show that Hungarian speakers were present by the Late Avarian period (see chapter 3.5.5.!). A similar conclusion can be drawn in the case of some loan-words from Slavic in Hungarian. These were when the sound development trends of the Slavic original made it possible to adopt words into 218
