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 other names types are represented alongside settlement names: hydronyms, names of terrain configurations, forest names, region names, and even common-words used for localization of objects abundant. In some respect, they are even more important sources than settlement names for philological and onomastic research since a wide range of lexical elements as well as morphological and syntactic features are present in them. Toponyms are generally well-localizable , which is one their commn traits, so they can provide a functional background for the study of regional varieties of the language.

The remarkable source value of toponyms that are not settlement names has made it necessary to publish similar data sources surviving from the early Old Hungarian era before the mid-14^th century. For this purpose, György Györffy’s monumental work, entitled Az Árpád-kori Magyarország történeti földrajza [Historical geography of Hungary in the Árpád Era] (1–4. Budapest, 1963–1998) has been taken as a basis. This magnificent historical monograph contains all the toponymic data from the Árpád-era and covers 40 old Hungarian counties arranged according to the principles of historical geography. From this collection non-settlement names are published in a dictionary format. The entries are categorized according to the morphological structures of the names and are listed for each county separately. Toponym maps attached to certain parts of the dictionaries show the settlements of the given county together with maps that demonstrate non-settlement-name place names. The volumes are also supplied with various indices: headwords and constituents of names, faithful graphic transliterations, as well as a reversed (a tergo) index of toponyms.

The four volumes of the present publication correspond to the four volumes of György Györffy’s work mentioned above, thus not only onomasticians and language historians, but also historians, archeologists and researchers of historical geography will benefit from its use.