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 megye földrajzi nevei [Geographical names of Baranya County] (1. Pécs, 1982). which contains around 13,000 bilingual data of the district registry of Sásd. The primary aim of the study is the systematic exploration of the onomatosystems of Hungarian-German bilingual areas. The model of analysis used for the examination (a version of István Hoffmann’s method of place name description; Helynevek nyelvi elemzése [The linguistic analysis of toponyms]. Debrecen, 1993) can also be applied for drawing conclusions and stating tendencies, and is helpful during the description of relations within the system of bilingual onomastic corpora. Furthermore, the study of the history of the population inhabiting an area can also profit from older onomastic corpora that can provide valuable data.

The main conclusions drawn from the analysis of the onomastic corpus are the following. 1. The ethnic marking values of names belonging to different denotatum types can be diverse: settlement names are the least proper for making inferences about the population, whereas hydronyms and names of nearby fields used by smaller communities usually have a more reliable ethnic marking value. 2. Place names of foreign origin do not refer directly to the ethnic group even in the case of micronames: the origin of a name does not, as a rule, show the ethnic affiliation of the population, which can be a misleading factor in making deductions about the history of an ethnic group. For instance in the district of Sásd, the onomastic corpus obviously reflects the presense of the Hungarian and German population, but in the onomastic corpus Slavic elements can also be detected, although Slavs lived only in one settlement when the data were being recorded. This phenomenon warns of the danger of mixing name giver and name user. 3. The analysis of the present-day name system reveals that prestige relations within a community also influence the process of borrowing: the community at the top of the social hierarchy is typically a name-giving one, whereas name users from lower social strata tend to take over the already existing settlement names. 4. The name systems of languages in bilingual areas are not independent from each other, the origin of the new names can be influenced by the certain characteristics of the denontate, or can even be motivated by the already existing name in the other language.

In the last chapter of the book the research experience gained from the analysis of the present-day onomastic corpus is applied to the linguistic and ethnohistorical study of an early Old Hungarian corpus of names.