Toponymy

For toponyms located in France : to see French toponymy.

toponymy is the science which studies the place names (toponyms). It proposes to seek their significance, their etymology, but also their transformations with the wire of the centuries. Withanthroponymy (study of the names of people), it forms part ofonomastics (study of the proper names), itself connects linguistics. The name of the inhabitants rising from the toponyms is itethnonyme or it gentilé.

The field of toponymy is vast. This science studies the inhabited place names indeed (cities, villages, hamlets and variations) but also names related to the relief, with the rivers, with the transportation routes (roads, streets). It can also approach more restricted fields (names of villas or hotels for example).

Brief glossary

• Toponym : place name.
• Hagiotoponyme : toponym bearing the name of a saint.
• Hydronyme : place name having a relationship with water (river, source, fountain, lake...).
• Macrotoponyme, microtoponyme : there is habit to call macrotoponymes place names indicating of the agglomerations, reliefs or sufficiently important rivers. The term of microtoponymes is reserved for the localities, names being reproduced on the land registers but generally absent of the topographic charts.
• Odonyme (sometimes written hodonyme): name indicating a road, a street, a way.
• Oronyme : place name related to the relief: mountains, hills, but also flat, plates, valleys.
• Exonyme

Print toponyms

Official names: composed official names, French or francized, comprise a feature of union between all the terms, except after the initial article or when there is an apostrophe. Examples: TheRusset-red one, Rock-On-Yon, Saint-Vincent-et-les-Grenadines. Such is not the case of the names in foreign language: New York, Los Angeles or Buenos Aires. One does not put either features of union in the nonofficial part of a toponym: Alexandria of Egypt, Saint-Louis of Senegal, Saint-Paul de Vence...

See too

• French toponymy
• Strange place names
• Longest place names
• Denatured toponyms
• Pleonastic toponym
• Toponymy in South Africa
• Toponymy of Chad
• Toponymy of Zimbabwe
• Belgian toponymy
• Toponymy Gaelic