Treatment of Toponyms in Croatian Lexicographic Publication

Abstract

Geographical names, as a rewarding subject of interdisciplinary research, are analysed firstly from the linguistic, and lately more often from the geographical, historical, archaeological, ethnological, cartographical, lexicographical and, least of all, geodetic aspect. The purpose of this research is to determine the relation between three scientific disciplines – toponymy, geography and lexicography – in the treatment of toponyms in lexicographic publications. This paper questions the treatment of toponyms in different lexicographic publications (dictionaries, lexicons, encyclopaedias and atlases) by analysing: a) representation of toponyms within the analysed work, b) representation and structure of the linguistic analysis of toponyms in selected toponymical entries of the monolingual dictionaries, c) representation and structure of the geographical content in selected toponymical entries in lexicons, encyclopaedias and atlases published by the Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography. The examples confirm the fact that the linguistic treatment of scarce toponyms is more comprehensive in monolingual dictionaries than in other lexicographic publication, and the geographical treatment in dictionaries is very concise. It is concluded that the representation of toponyms (especially in the World Atlas) and geographical content in general-type editions published by the Institute is satisfactory. We confirmed our assumption that the geographical treatment of toponymic entries that represent complex spatial structures, such as settlements, regions and states is generally adequately represented in encyclopaedias, lexicons and atlases, but the geographical content is most often structured according to the classical principal of simply listing them, which has become unacceptable. The reasons for this lie equally in the weaknesses of Croatian geography and lexicography.