Orographic appellatives in the modern toponymy of Ilijaš

Authors

  • Nihada Ibrišimović University of Sarajevo, Language Institute, https://ror.org/02hhwgd43

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.33604/sl.17.32.4

Keywords:

orographic appellations, toponymy, microtoponym, Ilijaš

Abstract

From the semantic-motivational aspect, toponyms motivated by the geomorphological characteristics of the referent greatly surpass other semantic-motivational groups of toponyms, both in number and variety of appellatives. In this paper, the share and variety of appellatives that denote natural relief forms in the origin of the toponyms of Bosnia and Herzegovina areas characterised by hilly-mountainous and hilly-plain terrain, such as the ones recorded in the Sarajevo municipality of Ilijaš, are pointed out on the example of Ilijaš toponymy. In accordance with types of landforms, in this paper we define orographic appellatives as those geographical appellatives that denote elevations, depressions, and plains on the earth’s surface. The material for this work is excerpted from the Ilijaš microtoponomasticon, which was using field and cadastral research and which includes about 6,000 microtoponymic variants. Orographic appellatives are defined on the basis of geographical terminological dictionaries and the local lexicon and experience of the respondents regarding the meaning of the appellative in usage in the researched area. Appellatives are presented in the central part of the paper in alphabetical order, with each appellative’s etymology and meaning in the examined area indicated in parentheses next to it, as confirmed or not confirmed by terminological dictionaries, followed by toponymic confirmations from the corpus. All toponymic characters confirmed in the field are accented. The aim of the research carried out in this paper is to point out the extent and diversity of the geographical nomenclature represented in Ilijaš toponymy, which is a reflection of the geographical reality of the examined area and the local lexicon. With regard to geographical referents and their relief characteristics, in Ilijaš toponymy we observed groups of productive and less productive orographic appellatives, among which the most numerous are those that denote hollows, elevations, and plains, while the most productive in the formation of toponyms are appellatives from the group that denotes flat terrain, followed by elevations and depressions. From the structural-formative aspect, the most represented are affixless toponyms, created by toponymisation of orographic appellatives. In addition to domestic appellatives, which prevail, there are also appellatives of Turkish, Romanic, Greek, German, Hungarian, or Albanian linguistic origin.

Published

2023-06-14

Issue

Section

Preliminary communication