Earlier in the research of old Hungarian toponyms, the study of settlement names was given great priority. The primary reason for this preference was that, besides their philological value as onomastic sources, they were also important as conveyors of historical information. In the earliest Hungarian written records, Latin charters that emerged the first millennium, several…
Welcome to the Website of Publications of the Hungarian Name Archives!
The Department of Hungarian Linguistics at the University of Debrecen launched a book series two decades ago with the objective of providing a forum for books on the history of names. The 44th volume of this series, edited by István Hoffmann and Valéria Tóth, has just been published by the University of Debrecen.
Various kinds of books have been published in the series, all in the Debrecen Centre of Onomastic Research. Most monographs analyse Hungarian toponyms and, to a lesser extent, persons’ names. Some of them are based on theses: their authors defended them as a PhD thesis, habilitation thesis, or as a thesis for the doctoral degree of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
In the series, dictionaries on old Hungarian toponyms have also been pubished. Some of them aim at presenting the place names of the entire Hungarian language territory as a series, whereas others also endeavour to provide etymological explanations on the name material of one particular old Hungarian county. Volumes of the series “Studies on Toponymic History” have also been published within this series.
The individual volumes of the series are listed below chronologically. At the book exhibition, they will also be presented partly in a chronological order, partly based on thematic principles.
ÁGNES BÉNYEI–GERGELY PETHŐ, Linguistic analysis of the settlement names of Győr County in the Árpád Era. 1998.
The authors set the aim to describe the settlement names of the Árpád Era in Győr county and outline their system. The toponymic corpus examined by the authors has been taken from a monumental work by György Györffy (Az Árpád-kori Magyarország történeti földrajza [Historical geography of Hungary in the Árpád Era]. 2. Budapest, 1987). The…
VALÉRIA TÓTH, A historical-etymological dictionary of the toponyms of Abaúj and Bars counties in the Árpád Era. 2001.
As a PhD student at the Department of Hungarian Linguistics of the University of Debrecen, the author undertook to process the entire toponymic corpus of Abaúj and Bars, two northern counties of historical Hungary. The counties are separated from each other by a long distance. Because all studies in historical onomastics are grounded on the…
RITA PÓCZOS, The linguistic analysis of the settlement names of Borsod and Bodrog counties in the Árpád Era. 2001.
The Bodrog and Borsod counties used to be regions of the Hungarian language territory that were situated a long way from each other and had different natural and socio-geographical potentialities. What the author examines in her work is whether these differences are reflected in the settlement name system which can be reconstructed on the basis…
VALÉRIA TÓTH, Onomatosystematical analyses in the early Old Hungarian Era (Abaúj and Bars counties). 2001.
The book is closely related to the historical-etymologyical dictionary of toponyms of Abaúj and Bars counties (Valéria Tóth, Debrecen, 2001). The book lays special emphasis on the systematic approach, which means meaning that the names are analysed as elements of a larger system. It is believed that the main correlations within the system itself can…
ISTVÁN HOFFMANN, Hungarian toponomastics. 1958–2002. 2003.
It is the merit of such outstanding Hungarian linguists of the first half of the 20th century as János Melich, István Kniezsa and Attila T. Szabó that studies in toponomastics became a major field of research in Hungarian linguistics. After the Second World War, however, hardly any publications in this topic appeared for a decade…
ANITA RÁCZ, The linguistic study of the settlement names of historical Bihar County. 2005.
The geographical conditions of the largest county of Hungary in the Árpád Era were varied. Its onomastic corpus is particularly rich, and its population is not homogeneously Hungarian. The book deals with the stratum of settlement names of the onomastic stock of the county published in A régi Bihar vármegye településneveinek történeti-etimológiai szótára [A historical-etymological…
A dictionary of early Hungarian toponyms 1000–1350. 1. Abaúj and Csongrád counties Ed. ISTVÁN HOFFMAN. 2005.
The oldest records of the Hungarian language emerged after the first millennium, which are, however, not extant Hungarian texts but charters or historical works written in Latin with Hungarian elements, mostly toponyms and anthroponyms. These records are prominent sources of Hungarian philology, while they also represent the most ancient attestations of the Uralic languages. Apart…
ANITA RÁCZ, A historical-etymological dictionary of the settlement names of historical Bihar County. 2007.
The book contains the settlement names of the old Hungarian Bihar County in a dictionary format from the first data until 1600. The border-lines of the county changed relatively often over history, thus data of those village names which belonged to the county for a short period are also given. The author considers every toponym…
VALÉRIA TÓTH, Change typology of settlement names. 2008.
In this volume the author set the aim to systematize the processes of change of settlement names, and describe each process in detail within this framework. This issue is one of the important in historical toponomastics because studying the changes of names can be of invaluable benefit to toponym typology as a whole as well.…
ISTVÁN HOFFMANN, The Founding Charter of the Abbey of Tihany as a source of historical toponomastics. 2010.
The founding charter of the Abbey of Tihany is the oldest monument of the Hungarian language written in Hungary. The document — issued by Andrew I in Latin in 1055 — is preserved in its original form and contains 82 Hungarian elements: toponyms, common words indicating places and phrases made up of these parts. The…
RITA PÓCZOS, Languagec contact and the interactions of toponymic systems. 2010.
The volume presents the results of onomatosystematic observations of the connection between a present-day multilingual onomastic corpus and their “users”. At the same time, new aspects are raised for conclusions that can be drawn from onomastic corpora of previous periods. The corpus mentioned above is a collection system of of present-day toponyms, included in Baranya…
ANITA RÁCZ, Supplement to the history of Hungarian settlement names formed from ethnonyms. 2011.
Ethnonyms play an important role in acquiring more information on early Hungarian history, however, there are several issues concerning Hungarian settlement in the Carpathian Basin that have remained unexplained up until the present day. Therefore it is vitally necessary to study oikonyms derived from ethnonyms in the Old Hungarian Era, which represent a valuable source…
ERZSÉBET GYŐRFFY, Early Old Hungarian names of rivers. 2011.
The book deals exclusively with the analysis of hydronyms. The basis of the study is the hydronymicon from the Árpád Era, the author has, however, expanded the period involved in her investigation to 1350, the beginning of the early old Hungarian period – in partial conformity to the chronological limit of her references. The book…
KATALIN RESZEGI, Oronyms in medieval Hungary. 2011.
In her work the author presents the name giving habits and the use of names as reflected by medieval oronyms. Special attention is given to the possible benefits of the study of oronyms for onomastic research and its related fields, such as history. The book consists of three basic units. The subchapters of the first…
JOSEF SCHWING, German place names in the dialects of southern Transdanubia. 2011.
In the introduction to the study 3 detailed maps demonstrate accurate cartographical data on the German population and the area covered by its dialects in the area. In the introduction the reader will also find information about the structure and historical development of Hungarian place names. The author goes on to expound the fundamental differences…
ÁGNES BÉNYEI, Toponym formation in Hungarian. 2012.
The topic of the essay is analysis of place names with toponymic derivatives, which occur as early as in our first written records. That is the reason why the exact time of when this name type could have developed cannot be determined. On the other hand, it can be stated that the development of place…
RÓBERT KENYHERCZ, Initial consonant clusters in the Old Hungarian Period. Sound-historical source value of place names. 2013.
It is a generally accepted view in studies dealing with Hungarian sound history literature that the old Hungarian language did not favour initial consonant clusters, a feature inherited from Finno-Ugric. Much has been written about the disappearance of such initial clusters in loanwords. However, the toponymic corpus researched by the author clearly shows that the…
ISTVÁN HOFFMANN, Studies in microtoponymic research, Vol. 1. Toponyms of Tapolcafő. 2013.
The present book is the first part of a three-volume series. The author analyses place names of Tapolcafő, a small village in Transdanubia with a population of 1,000 and a territory of 15 km2. Laid out in dictionary format, the book demonstrates the historical and present-day toponyms of the settlement. The entries contain all the…
BARBARA BÁBA–MAGDOLNA NEMES, Hungarian geographical common words. 2014.
Geographical appellatives (common words) as phrases denoting places constitute one of the fundamental sets of the Hungarian vocabulary and name system (or of the vocabularies and name systems of any other language), since no other elements are suitable for referring to classes of (geographical) objects and places. Understandably, the analysis of geographical common words has…
MELINDA SZŐKE, Historical linguistic analysis of the founding charter of the Abbey of Garamszentbenedek. 2015.
The charters containing anthroponyms and toponyms in Hungarian are the most important sources of the early history of the Hungarian language. So far, special attention has been paid to genuine charters only. Considering, however, the availability of sources from the early period of Hungarian literacy, other source types (copies or even fakes) should also be…
ÉVA KOVÁCS, The Census of the Abbey of Tihany as a source for historical toponomastics. 2015.
After thoroughly studying the 1211 land survey of the Abbey of Tihany, the author decided to continue her work along the general lines of Hungarian historical linguistic research and disclose even more exact information about the Hungarian language and its users of the decades following the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin. This linguistic record…
Toponyms of Hajdú-Bihar County, Vol 1. Toponyms of the Hajdúböszörmény and Hajdúhadház Districts. Ed. BARBARA BÁBA. 2015.
Toponyms of the Carpathian basis have been collected by Hungarian toponymists and made available both to researchers and the general public since the beginning of the 19 th century. Research into and publication of the toponyms of Hajdú-Bihar and Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg Counties have been undertaken by linguists working at the University of Debrecen and the College…
ANITA RÁCZ, Ethnonyms in old Hungarian settlement names. 2016.
The antecedent of the book is a work by the same author entitled: Adatok a népnévvel alakult régi településneveink történetéhez [Supplement to the history of Hungarian settlement names formed from ethnonyms] (Debrecen, 2011). In it, the toponymic corpus is analysed from various perspectives. The result of the examination is the treatment of the onomastic corpus…
VALÉRIA TÓTH, Personal name-giving and personal name usage in the Old Hungarian Era. 2016.
Name theory holds that the two most ancient proper names are anthroponyms and toponyms. Therefore most information about the system of proper names (its function and history) itself can be acquired if the characteristics of these two types of proper names are revealed. They provide not only a wide range of data about the language…
BARBARA BÁBA, Geographical common words in space and time. 2016.
Geographical common words, as expressions marking places, are of central importance to the lexicon of any language, which is also true of Hungarian, because it is only these elements that can identify a certain type of locations. The research of geographical common words is especially significant in Hungarian, because they belong to that group of…
ESZTER DITRÓI, Model-based examination of toponymic systems: a comparative analysis of of toponym patterns with a statistical approach. 2017.
Territorial differences in the structure of microtoponyms have hardly been studied in toponomastics, therefore the author of this study seeks an answer to the question of whether there exist boundaries marking off different phenomena, or onomastic dialects in toponymic systems. The author analyses toponyms from functional-semantic and lexical-morphological perspectives. She also applies a system based…
VALÉRIA TÓTH, Toponyms based on anthroponyms in the Old Hungarian Era. 2017.
In the present volume, which is the direct continuation of her monograph on the history of anhroponyms (Valéria Tóth, Debrecen, 2016) the author gives an overall view of how the systemic correlations of personal names spread onto toponyms, and deals with the types of toponyms that contain anthroponymic lexemes. Thus the two volumes constitute an…
BÉLA KOCÁN, Studies in historical toponomasticof the Ugocsa County. 2017.
The author studies the Old and Middle Hungarian toponymic corpus of Ugocsa, the northeastern county in historical Hungary. The corpus on which the work is based consists of nearly 2,000 data. The primary goal of the research is to prove that the linguistic features of the toponyms of the county refer to the presence of…