Trouble dans la cartographie : un colloque international sur les contre-cartographies à Paris

 Du 7 au 9 septembre 2026, Paris accueillera le colloque international « Trouble dans la cartographie. Contre-cartographies et changements de paradigmes », une rencontre consacrée aux formes critiques, alternatives, sensibles, militantes et expérimentales de la cartographie contemporaine.

Le colloque se tiendra principalement au Campus des Cordeliers de Sorbonne Université, avant une clôture à la Bibliothèque nationale de France – site Richelieu. Des ateliers sont également prévus en amont, les 5 et 6 septembre. Portée par l’unité de recherche Médiation·s – Sciences des lieux, sciences des liens de Sorbonne Université, le centre de recherche Pléiade de l’Université Sorbonne Paris Nord et le Comité national français de géographie, la manifestation réunit chercheur·es, praticien·nes, artistes, géographes, urbanistes, militant·es, cartographes et spécialistes des sciences sociales.

L’enjeu central du colloque est simple, mais fondamental : que devient la cartographie lorsque la carte cesse d’être seulement un outil de représentation pour devenir un instrument de pouvoir, de contestation, de mémoire, de soin ou de justice ? Les cartes produites par les États, les institutions, les plateformes numériques ou les experts organisent le territoire, classent les populations, rendent certaines réalités visibles et en effacent d’autres. Les contre-cartographies cherchent précisément à troubler cet ordre établi : elles déplacent le regard, donnent place aux expériences vécues, rendent visibles les marges, les conflits, les absences et les résistances.

Le programme reflète cette ambition par une grande diversité de thèmes. Les premières sessions interrogeront les représentations institutionnelles, les récits cartographiques, le droit à la ville et les autochtonies. Les communications porteront notamment sur les pratiques numériques de contre-cartographie en zones de conflit, les cartographies de la violence d’État en Amérique latine, les mémoires territoriales autochtones ou encore les formes d’occupation et de résistance dans les espaces urbains.

Le deuxième jour mettra l’accent sur les leçons de terrain et les méthodologies. Il sera question des « blancs des cartes », de cartographie collective, d’ethnographie des pratiques contre-cartographiques, de cartographie post-représentationnelle, d’algorithmes, d’anarchisme, de syndicalisme, d’outils hybrides et de cartographies relationnelles. L’après-midi ouvrira plusieurs sessions parallèles consacrées à l’enseignement, aux outils et stratégies, aux imaginaires territoriaux, aux expériences de terrain, aux écologies, aux milieux, aux territoires urbains et aux pratiques du quotidien.

Le dernier jour élargira encore le champ avec des sessions sur les approches artistiques, les métabolismes territoriaux, les risques, les genres, corps et sexualités, l’hydrosocial et les collections cartographiques de la BnF. La présence de communications portant sur l’extractivisme, les rivières, les territoires autochtones, les cartes coloniales, les camps d’internement, les paysages vitivinicoles ou encore les pratiques cartographiques féministes montre que la contre-cartographie n’est pas un domaine marginal : elle touche aujourd’hui aux grands débats contemporains sur l’environnement, la mémoire, la justice spatiale, la reconnaissance et les droits.

L’une des forces du colloque est son ouverture linguistique et disciplinaire. Les interventions seront proposées en français, anglais, espagnol et allemand, et les approches croiseront la géographie, l’histoire, l’anthropologie, l’architecture, l’urbanisme, la sociologie, la philosophie, l’art, la sémiologie, les humanités numériques et les pratiques militantes. Cette pluralité correspond pleinement à l’objet même du colloque : penser la carte non comme un produit neutre et fermé, mais comme un espace de négociation, de conflit, d’imagination et de transformation sociale.

Pour les études onomastiques, toponymiques et culturelles, ce colloque présente également un intérêt particulier. Les cartes ne montrent pas seulement des lignes, des frontières ou des données : elles affichent aussi des noms. Or les noms de lieux, de quartiers, de rivières, de territoires autochtones ou d’espaces contestés participent à la construction symbolique du monde. Toute contre-cartographie implique donc aussi une réflexion sur la nomination : qui nomme ? qui efface ? qui traduit ? qui restitue ? qui rend visible ?

« Trouble dans la cartographie » s’annonce ainsi comme un rendez-vous important pour toutes celles et ceux qui s’intéressent aux formes contemporaines de représentation de l’espace. En donnant place aux cartes critiques, sensibles, militantes, décoloniales, pédagogiques, artistiques et participatives, le colloque invite à repenser la cartographie comme une pratique située, politique et profondément humaine.

Colloque : Trouble dans la cartographie. Contre-cartographies et changements de paradigmes
Dates : 7–9 septembre 2026
Lieu : Sorbonne Université, Campus des Cordeliers, Paris ; clôture à la BnF – Richelieu
Ateliers : 5–6 septembre 2026
Langues : français, anglais, espagnol, allemand

Astronymie sur RTS : quand les noms du ciel racontent notre histoire

 La Radio Télévision Suisse consacre une série de cinq épisodes à un domaine aussi poétique que scientifique : l’astronymie, c’est-à-dire l’étude des noms des astres et des objets célestes.

Diffusée dans l’émission CQFD sur RTS Première, cette série invite les auditeurs à lever les yeux vers le ciel autrement. Derrière les constellations, les étoiles, les planètes, les astéroïdes et les comètes se cachent en effet des histoires de mythologie, de langues anciennes, de savoirs transmis, de traductions, de découvertes astronomiques et de traditions savantes venues de plusieurs civilisations.

Le premier épisode, « Le nom des constellations », pose une question simple et fascinante : pourquoi la Grande Ourse, Orion ou Andromède portent-elles ces noms ? La série se poursuit avec les noms des étoiles, dont beaucoup gardent la trace de l’astronomie arabe médiévale, puis avec les planètes, les astéroïdes et enfin les comètes.

Pour les onomasticiens, cette série est particulièrement bienvenue. Elle rappelle que les noms ne concernent pas seulement les personnes, les lieux ou les marques. Le ciel lui-même est un immense espace nommé, classé, transmis et réinterprété. Chaque astronyme est une petite archive culturelle : il peut conserver un mythe grec, une observation arabe, une convention latine, une décision scientifique moderne ou même une mémoire populaire.

Cette série de RTS montre ainsi que l’onomastique peut dialoguer avec l’histoire des sciences, l’astronomie, la mythologie et la linguistique. Elle transforme le ciel nocturne en véritable carte culturelle, où chaque nom devient une invitation à comprendre comment les êtres humains ont appris à habiter l’univers par les mots.

Série : Astronymie
Émission : CQFD, RTS Première
Épisodes : constellations, étoiles, planètes, astéroïdes, comètes
À écouter sur RTS

Astronymy on RTS: When the Names of the Sky Tell Human Stories

Swiss public broadcaster RTS has launched a five-part series devoted to a field that is both scientific and poetic: astronymy, the study of the names of celestial bodies and astronomical objects.

Broadcast as part of CQFD on RTS Première, the series invites listeners to look at the sky in a different way. Behind the names of constellations, stars, planets, asteroids, and comets lie stories of mythology, ancient languages, scientific discovery, translation, scholarly tradition, and cultural memory.

The first episode, “The Names of the Constellations,” begins with a deceptively simple question: where do names such as Ursa Major, Orion, or Andromeda come from? The series then continues with the names of stars, many of which preserve traces of medieval Arabic astronomy, before turning to the planets, asteroids, and finally comets.

For scholars and lovers of onomastics, this series is especially valuable. It reminds us that names are not limited to people, places, or brands. The sky itself is a vast named landscape, ordered and reinterpreted across centuries. Every astronym is a small cultural archive: it may preserve a Greek myth, an Arabic observation, a Latin convention, a modern scientific decision, or a popular memory.

The RTS series therefore shows how onomastics can enter into dialogue with the history of science, astronomy, mythology, and linguistics. It turns the night sky into a cultural map, where every name becomes an invitation to understand how human beings have learned to inhabit the universe through words.

Series: Astronymy
Programme: CQFD, RTS Première
Episodes: constellations, stars, planets, asteroids, comets
Available on RTS

In Memoriam: Professor Adrian Koopman, Scholar of Zulu Names and Naming

The international onomastic community mourns the passing of Professor Adrian Koopman, one of South Africa’s most distinguished scholars of names, naming systems, isiZulu language, and cultural heritage.

Professor Koopman’s academic life was closely connected with the University of Natal, later the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where he devoted decades to the teaching and study of Zulu language and literature. He joined the University of Natal in 1974 as a junior lecturer, later returned to the Pietermaritzburg campus, and spent a long academic career in the field that would define his scholarship: the study of Zulu names and the cultural worlds they preserve.

His principal scholarly concern was onomastics. For Professor Koopman, names were never merely labels. They were records of social relationships, history, memory, environment, belief, humour, identity, and linguistic creativity. His work explored a wide range of name categories: personal names, clan names, place names, homestead names, names of plants and animals, bird names, and other forms of culturally meaningful nomination. Through these studies, he showed that Zulu naming practices could illuminate not only linguistic structure, but also the lived cultural imagination of a community.

His landmark book Zulu Names, published by the University of Natal Press in 2002, became a foundational contribution to African onomastics. The work brought together years of research on Zulu personal names, clan names, nicknames, praise names, place names, literary names, and the broader cultural logic of naming. It demonstrated that a name can carry grammar, history, social commentary, belief, poetic association, and personal experience at the same time.

Professor Koopman’s later books expanded this vision into the natural world. Zulu Plant Names examined the relationship between plants, language, cultural knowledge, metaphor, and traditional classification. Zulu Bird Names and Bird Lore continued this work by exploring how bird names encode observation, behaviour, sound, seasonality, symbolism, and oral tradition. His collaboration with Noleen Turner and Roger Porter on Zulu bird names helped produce a complete and systematic account of names for bird species in the Zulu-speaking region, drawing on workshops with expert Zulu-speaking bird guides. His final major publication, South African Bird Names through Time, Language and Usage, co-authored with Eckhart Buchmann, traced the evolution of bird names across historical sources, languages, and naming traditions.

The scale of Professor Koopman’s scholarly output was remarkable. In addition to his books, he published more than seventy articles and chapters in academic journals and edited volumes. His work connected onomastics with linguistics, oral literature, ethnobotany, ornithology, cultural history, environmental knowledge, and indigenous knowledge systems. He helped make the study of names in South Africa visible not as a marginal curiosity, but as a serious scholarly field with deep cultural and linguistic importance.

His institutional contribution was equally significant. He established the Onomastic Studies Unit at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and became one of the central figures of the Names Society of Southern Africa. He served as president of the society and edited its journal, Nomina Africana, for many years. He also contributed to the wider international discipline through the International Council of Onomastic Sciences, including service on its executive. In these roles, he helped connect South African name scholarship with a broader international community of researchers.

Yet Professor Koopman’s legacy cannot be measured only through books, articles, offices, and titles. His scholarship was animated by curiosity: curiosity about words, people, birds, plants, stories, landscapes, and the cultural intelligence carried by ordinary names. He understood that naming is one of the ways communities organise the world. A plant name can preserve ecological knowledge. A bird name can record sound, behaviour, or seasonal rhythm. A personal name can preserve emotion, circumstance, belief, and memory. A place name can reveal how people have inhabited and interpreted a landscape.

This is why his work matters beyond the borders of one language or one discipline. Professor Koopman showed that indigenous naming systems are not peripheral to scholarship. They are archives of knowledge. They deserve documentation, interpretation, and respect. His research helped ensure that Zulu names, and the cultural histories they contain, will remain available to future generations of linguists, onomasticians, cultural historians, birders, botanists, and readers interested in the deep relationship between language and place.

A further dimension of Koopman’s life and scholarship lies in the historical depth of the Koopman name in South Africa. Genealogical records connect the Cape Koopman/Coopman family to early Dutch colonial history through Bartholomeús Jansz Koopman, born before 17 August 1660 in Utrecht, Nederland, and deceased on 19 November 1722 at de Caep de Goede Hoop. His son Cornelis Coopman / Koopman, continued this Cape line and married Anna van de Caab around 1720 at the Cape of Good Hope, when he was about 28 years old. Their children included Hendrik, Bartholomeus, Michiel, Cornelis, Engela, Gerrit, and Anna Coopman / Koopman, placing the surname within one of the early family networks of the Cape.

This background gives the Koopman name a particular resonance in the South African context. Dutch in origin, rooted in the Cape from the early eighteenth century, and carried into a multilingual society shaped by European, local, creole and African histories, the surname itself belongs to the layered naming history that Professor Adrian Koopman spent his life studying. He did not merely approach names as distant linguistic objects; he worked in a country where surnames, place names, clan names and personal names all carry complex histories of migration, contact, identity and memory.

May his memory be a blessing to his family, colleagues, students, friends, and to all who continue the study of names.

Report: the 24th Slovak Onomastic Conference in Stará Lesná

 From 17 to 19 August 2026, the Slovak onomastic community and its international partners met in Stará Lesná for the 24th Slovak Onomastic Conference, held under the programmatic title “Continuity, Variability and Innovation in Onomastics.” The venue, the SAV ACADEMIA Congress Centre in the High Tatras, provided an ideal setting for a conference devoted to names, memory, place, language contact, and cultural identity. Stará Lesná, situated near Tatranská Lomnica and Starý Smokovec, placed the discussions in a landscape where geography, settlement history and linguistic heritage are visibly intertwined.

The conference was organised by the Ľudovít Štúr Institute of Linguistics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the Slovak Linguistic Society, and the Slovak Onomastic Commission. Its opening brought together three key institutional voices: Ľubor Králik, director of the institute; Pavol Žigo, chair of the Slovak Linguistic Society; and Juraj Hladký, chair of the Slovak Onomastic Commission. The structure of the programme made the central idea of the conference clear from the beginning: onomastics remains rooted in long scholarly traditions, but its questions and methods are changing rapidly.

The first session, moderated by Iveta Valentová, opened with broad theoretical and methodological perspectives. Milan Harvalík spoke on Continuity and transformations of theoretical-methodological approaches in Slavic onomastics: history, perspectives and dialogue, setting the tone for the whole meeting by asking how Slavic onomastics can remain historically grounded while entering new methodological conversations. This was followed by Pavol Žigo, Iveta Valentová, Peter Malčovský and Patrik Jakubek, whose paper Continuity, variability and innovations in onomastics: structural types of Slovak oikonymy brought the theme directly into Slovak settlement names. Mária Imrichová, in On the border of onymic subsystems, addressed the important question of transitions and overlaps between categories of names. Artur Gałkowski then widened the frame with A systemic perspective on chrematonomastic terminology, reminding participants that names of institutions, products and cultural objects require their own conceptual tools.

The afternoon of the first day moved strongly into South Slavic and intercultural material. Nenad Vuković discussed Word-formation models of personal names in Montenegro, while Amira Turbić-Hadžagić and Đenita Haverić examined Etymological and cultural patterns of Bosnian-Herzegovinian surnames, with special attention to polymotivation and onymic status. Małgorzata Magda-Czekaj presented Linguistic-cultural evidence of Polish-Czech-Slovak relations: history and the present, based on the ISNP, showing how onomastic material can document cultural contact across borders. Pavol Odaloš, with Functions of models of onyms, brought the discussion back to theory by reflecting on the role of models in name analysis.

The final session of the first day focused especially on toponymy and methodological comparison. Мери Јосифовска compared similar models of creating toponyms in Macedonian and Slovak toponymy, while Ewelina Zając explored the types of proper names appearing in verbal fluency research among preschool children, opening a bridge between onomastics and psycholinguistics. Дарко Томовски and Мирјана Вељаноска-Томовска interpreted several toponyms from the Florina region, bringing local historical geography into the discussion. The day ended with Gulnara Bekénova, whose English-language paper Problems of preservation and transformation of historical toponyms in Kazakhstan connected the conference theme to contemporary language policy, historical memory and post-Soviet naming practices.

The second day began with a strong toponymic block moderated by Juraj Hladký. Urszula Bijak opened with Erasing names, a compact but powerful topic pointing to the politics of disappearance, renaming and memory. Jaromír Krško examined Somatisms as primary construction elements of Slovak onymy, showing how the human body and metaphorical body terms structure naming. Michaela Boháčová presented Light and darkness in Czech place names, a semantic study of imagery embedded in toponyms. Iwona Nobis traced the movement from descriptive name to cultural symbol in Polish toponyms, while Anna Ramšáková analysed selected prepositional names in the Kysuce linguistic area against their wider Slovak distribution. Together, these papers showed how place names move between description, metaphor, grammar, region and culture.

The late-morning session, moderated by Milan Harvalík, shifted toward surnames, datasets and computational questions. Ľubor Králik contributed to the study of Slovak surnames of Latin origin, especially formations with the suffix -tor. Martin Diweg-Pukanec presented On the semantics of Slavic dobr- in the Multilingual Onomastic Dataset of the Cividale Gospel, connecting historical name material with multilingual digital resources. Andrea Scheller discussed resettlement and migration in the Czech lands as reflected in surnames. Štefan Toth then addressed one of the most current methodological questions of the conference: The possibilities and limits of using artificial intelligence in the classification of contemporary anthroponymy. This paper clearly marked the innovative side of the conference theme.

The afternoon split into two sections. Section A concentrated first on personal names and surnames in regional, historical and minority contexts. Iveta Valentová discussed the research and specific features of surnames of Slovaks in Hungary. Ján Bauko presented the development of Hungarian anthroponymic research in the ethnically mixed territory of Slovakia. Éva Császári examined the origin, motivation and metamorphosis of surnames in glassmaking settlements of the Bükk Mountains, using marriage and baptismal registers from 1789–1866. Martina Lobotková explored surname change in the history of one village. Alicja Przybylska, in Does my name have meaning?, questioned the limits of traditional anthroponomastic analysis on regional register and questionnaire material.

The later part of Section A moved toward literary, animal and intercultural onymy. Juraj Hladký and Andrej Závodný analysed the degree of identity between fiction and reality in literary onymy, using the story cycle Sváko Ragan z Brezovej. Paweł Graf discussed continuity, change and rupture in the onomastics of fictional worlds in Polish prose. Agnieszka Kołodziej asked about the justification of giving names to animals from a Czech-Polish perspective. Henryk Duszyński-Karabasz examined proper names in Polish-language materials for learning Thai, a topic that expanded the conference toward applied and intercultural naming contexts.

Section B was more urban, infrastructural and chrematonomastic. Piotr Tomasik analysed the names of new railway stations and stops in Poland, Czechia and Slovakia. Jiří Martínek presented Exotica on the map, focusing on Czech street names with Asian, African and Ibero-American motivation. Justyna Groblińska examined types of intervention in urban naming through selected Polish examples. Filip Pacalaj studied cognitive and behavioural aspects in urbanonyms with military motivation. Eli Vanyova Kanova discussed Bulgarian personal names in Slovak official translations, balancing linguistic norm and legal identity.

The second half of Section B continued with names in public, military, marketing and tourist spaces. Olena Karpenko presented Ukrainian Military Ergonyms: Semantic Aspect, a timely topic linking naming, war and institutional identity. Samuela Tomasik examined the newest Russian marketing chrematonyms under the striking formulation Names of war, war of names. Beata Afeltowicz discussed nomination strategies in contemporary Polish publishing houses. Martina Zirhutová closed the section with the onymic landscape of a tourist and ski resort, using Rokytnice nad Jizerou as a case study. The day concluded with dinner and a meeting of members of the Slovak Onomastic Commission.

The third day returned to a joint format and moved toward cultural memory, medieval studies, hydronymy and etymology. Under the moderation of Urszula Bijak, Magdalena Graf opened with In the Paris of the North and Little Rome, offering remarks on the eponymic layer of Polish. Valeriia Neklesova presented an associative study of the Patron the Dog memeplex, bringing contemporary digital culture and cultural memory into onomastic analysis. Jana Wachtarczyková discussed propria and their cultural aura in the light of vector representations, one of the most explicitly computational papers of the programme. Jakub Kurák considered onomastics in the context of medieval studies. Елка Јачева-Улчар then examined models of toponymisation in the southern Slavic area, returning the discussion to the transition from appellative to proper name.

The final session, moderated by Andrej Závodný, gave the conference a strong historical-toponymic conclusion. Nataliia Lisniak spoke on microtoponyms as carriers of the collective memory of deported Lemkos, combining place names with trauma, displacement and remembrance. Hana Svobodová analysed the toponymy of the Broumov region in Czech-German language contact. Erzsébet Győrffy reassessed the Bodrog–Ondava hydronymic problem beyond the explanation of scribal error. Patrik Jakubek contributed a regional hydronymic study of selected water names in the left-side Váh basin in the Galanta district. Finally, Harald Bichlmeier discussed the place name Boderitz in Thuringia and the reconstruction of Proto-Sorbian through the Old Sorbian onomasticon. It was a fitting conclusion: precise etymology, regional evidence, contact linguistics and historical reconstruction brought together the very dimensions named in the conference title.

In numerical terms, the final programme listed 49 papers and 53 individual scholars as paper authors or co-authors. The conference was notably international, with contributions in Slovak, Czech, Polish, South Slavic languages, Macedonian, Ukrainian, English and other Slavic scholarly traditions. Its range was equally broad: oikonymy, anthroponymy, hydronymy, urbanonymy, chrematonymy, literary onomastics, animal names, minority names, legal translation, digital methods, artificial intelligence, corpus work and cultural memory.

What made the 24th Slovak Onomastic Conference especially coherent was the way its title functioned not merely as a slogan, but as a real organising principle. Continuity appeared in the attention to the Slovak onomastic school, historical registers, medieval sources, hydronymy and inherited Slavic methodologies. Variability emerged in the comparison of regional, minority, cross-border and multilingual name systems. Innovation appeared in the use of corpora, vector representations, AI classification, verbal fluency research, digital culture and contemporary urban and military naming.

Stará Lesná thus became, for three days, a meeting point between traditional Slavic onomastics and the newest questions facing the discipline. The programme showed that name studies today are not confined to etymology or local history, although both remain essential. They also engage with migration, war, memory, legal identity, digital communication, artificial intelligence and the symbolic organisation of public space. In that sense, the conference confirmed the vitality of Slovak and international onomastics: a field deeply aware of its scholarly heritage, but fully open to the new realities in which names live.

14th Conference on Frisian Linguistics – Call for Papers

 Looking ahead to December, the Fryske Akademy is once again bringing the Frisian linguistics community together. The 14th Conference on Frisian Linguistics will take place on 11 December 2026 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands.

This one-day meeting is open to everyone who works with Frisian linguistics - whether actively researching or simply following the field with interest. Topics range widely across grammar, phonetics and phonology, onomastics, lexicology, sociolinguistics, and historical linguistics. Papers that present finished research results are of course welcome, but so are research plans, speculative ideas, and presentations of linguistic corpora.

Each paper is allotted 30 minutes (20 minutes for the talk and 10 minutes for discussion). Presentations may be given in any of the West-Germanic languages.

Key details

• Date: 11 December 2026
• Location: Leeuwarden, Netherlands
• Organiser: Fryske Akademy
• Website: https://www.fryske-akademy.nl
• Linguistic fields: General Linguistics, Onomastics, Historical Linguistics, Lexicography, Psycholinguistics, Sociolinguistics
• Subject language: Western Frisian (fry)
• Language family: Frisian

How to submit Please send an abstract of no more than half an A4 page to taalkundedei@fryske-akademy.nl. The deadline is 15 October 2026 - the earlier the better.

Whether you have solid findings to share or a new project you’d like to float, the conference organisers warmly invite you to take part. Mark the date and start preparing your abstract.

Disparition progressive des toponymes occitans traditionnels

 

Ce court-métrage a été réalisé dans le village de Saint-André pour témoigner la réorganisation de l’adressage imposée par la loi 3DS. Dans les villages de moins de 2000 habitants des Vallées et Coteaux de Gascogne, cette loi oblige les communes à attribuer des noms de rues et des numéros aux habitations. Si cette mesure vise à améliorer les services publics, elle entraîne aussi la disparition progressive des toponymes occitans traditionnels.

Ces noms de lieux, profondément enracinés dans l’histoire locale, sont porteurs de mémoire, de liens sociaux et de savoirs écologiques. Ils témoignent d’un mode d’organisation du territoire hérité du système « à maison », où les noms des propriétés se transmettent de génération en génération.

Un film de Margot Donkervoort

Call for Papers: Names and Naming in Contact Situations

AI-generated poster / for illustrative purpose only

A new Special Issue of Genealogy (ISSN 2313-5778) invites contributions exploring names and naming practices in multilingual, multicultural, diasporic, and transnational contexts. The Special Issue, entitled “Names and Naming in Contact Situations,” is guest edited by Dr. Maryann Parada of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at California State University Bakersfield.

Names are more than linguistic labels: they are important social and cultural resources through which individuals and communities negotiate identity, belonging, memory, power, and place. The Special Issue seeks to advance socio-onomastic research into the social dimensions of personal names, place names, and naming practices, particularly where languages, cultures, populations, and identities come into contact.

The call brings together several rapidly developing areas of contemporary onomastics. These include critical toponymy and linguistic landscapes, personal naming in diasporic and minority communities, language contact and migration, naming and decolonization, heritage-language maintenance, digital anthroponymy, and the transformation of names across languages and writing systems. Comparative and longitudinal research is particularly encouraged.

Possible topics include:

• personal and place naming among minority and heritage-language communities;

• names and identity construction in diasporic settings;

• place names, linguistic landscapes, and toponymic politics;

• intersections between anthroponymy and toponymy;

• naming and language revitalization;

• Indigenous naming and decolonial approaches;

• ethnonyms and their perception and variation;

• adaptation and change of names across languages and scripts;

• names in relation to ethnicity, gender, religion, class, and social stratification;

• naming practices in borderlands and contact zones;

• digital and social-media naming;

• commemorative naming and collective memory;

• names and language pedagogy;

• methodological innovations in socio-onomastics;

• interdisciplinary approaches connecting onomastics with sociolinguistics, anthropology, geography, history, and cultural studies.

Contributions dealing with Hispanic personal and place names in minority and diasporic settings are particularly welcome, although the scope of the issue is substantially broader and embraces different linguistic and cultural contact situations.

How to propose a contribution

Prospective authors are invited to send a proposed title and an abstract of 200–250 words outlining their planned contribution. Proposals may be sent to Guest Editor Dr. Maryann Parada at mparada1@csub.edu or to the Genealogy editorial office at genealogy@mdpi.com. The abstracts will first be assessed for their fit with the Special Issue, while full manuscripts will undergo double-anonymized peer review.

Deadline for full manuscript submissions: 15 February 2027.

Research articles, review articles, and short communications are welcome. Papers accepted for publication will appear online continuously and will also be collected on the Special Issue webpage.

As Genealogy is an open-access MDPI journal, an Article Processing Charge of CHF 1,400 applies to accepted manuscripts.

The Special Issue offers a particularly interesting venue for scholars working at the intersection of onomastics, migration studies, sociolinguistics, linguistic landscapes, identity research, heritage studies, and language contact, and provides an opportunity to examine how names change, survive, compete, and acquire new meanings when people, languages, and cultures meet.

Le rôle des anthroponymes incas dans la toponymie du Pérou

 

The lecture series Onomastics Online continued on 13 August 2026 with a lecture presented by Marc-Alexandre Beaulieu (Leiden University, The Netherlands) with the title "Le rôle des anthroponymes incas dans la toponymie du Péro". Mots-clés : Pérou, Inca, anthroponyme, toponyme, théonyme Résumé : À la suite d’une brève introduction sur une façon inédite de classer les noms propres et les noms communs, le conférencier abordera le rôle des anthroponymes incas dans la formation de toponymes péruviens au XVIe siècle, en prenant en considération la constatation que les peuples andins ne faisaient pas systématiquement de distinction entre ces deux catégories de noms. Une étude comparative sera par la suite effectuée par l’analyse des sens lexical et associatif de noms propres. À cette fin, la notion peu connue de transonymie sera abordée, ce qui permettra d’expliquer la « circulation » de tels noms entre diverses catégories onymiques. En ce sens, d’autres catégories de noms seront analysées, soit celles des théonymes, des ethnonymes, des zoonymes et des phytonymes. Ainsi, parmi les toponymes ayant une origine anthroponymique, on compte : Vilcashuamán et Pacaritambo; une origine théonymique : Titicaca et Tiwanaku; une origine ethnonymique : Huancavelica et Cajamarca; une origine zoonymique : Cusco; et une origine phytonymique : Chachapoyas. De telles connaissances pourront ainsi représenter un complément aux données historiques, permettant de les appréhender sous des angles inédits. LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-alex... Le site web : https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/... Onomastics Online (ICOS – International Council of Onomastic Sciences) is a series of online lectures dealing with important timely topics related to names and naming. Presented by distinguished scholars from various academic backgrounds, the lectures demonstrate the importance and the multidisciplinary nature of onomastic research. To see the list of upcoming and past lectures, please visit our webpage at: https://icosweb.net/onomastics-online/. Previous lectures can be found on our YouTube channel:    / @theinternationalcouncilofo2460  . If you are interested in ICOS membership, please see the details here: https://icosweb.net/membership/member.... For updates and scholarly engagement, connect with us on any of our platforms: YOUTUBE    / @theinternationalcouncilofo2460   LINKEDIN   / 4081415   FACEBOOK   / icosweb  

Call for Book Chapters: Names, Crime, and the Law

AI-generated poster / non official

 A new interdisciplinary call for chapter proposals invites scholars to explore the fascinating intersections between onomastics, criminology, forensic linguistics, and law.

The planned volume will appear in Bloomsbury’s book series Names and Naming in the Social Sciences and Humanities and will focus on what may broadly be described as forensic onomastics: the study of names and naming practices in criminal, legal, investigative, and forensic contexts.

Contributions may examine any type of name and may address a wide range of topics, including the names of crimes, criminals, victims, law-enforcement agencies, laws, and policies. Other possible areas include identity theft and other illegal uses of names; legal regulations governing personal or commercial names; translation and transliteration of names in forensic contexts; aliases and clandestine naming practices among criminals; media naming practices in crime reporting; law-enforcement procedures for processing onomastic data; and legal disputes involving names.

The editors also welcome research on the use of names in threats, defamation, harassment, or other criminal acts, as well as studies of naming in true-crime and crime fiction.

Proposals may investigate any language or languages, whether spoken, written, or signed. Both diachronic and synchronic approaches are welcome, and researchers may employ qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods. The central requirement is that the proposed analysis must remain clearly focused on onomastic data and demonstrate a meaningful contribution to both forensic linguistics and onomastics.

Submission details

Abstract proposals should be no longer than 500 words, excluding the title and references, and must be submitted as a Word document attachment to Professor I. M. Nick, Editor-in-Chief of NAMES: A Journal of Onomastics, at nameseditor@gmail.com.

The email subject line must include the word “FORENSICS.”

Each proposal must contain a title, abstract, and preliminary bibliography. The author’s name and institutional affiliation should appear in the body of the email, not in the attached proposal, in order to facilitate double-blind review. For co-authored submissions, one author should be designated as the primary contact.

Proposal deadline: 15 October 2026
Notification of acceptance: by 15 November 2026
Final chapter deadline: 15 March 2027
Maximum chapter length: 7,000 words, excluding abstracts, graphics, and references

All proposals will undergo double-blind review.

This call offers an excellent opportunity for scholars working at the borders of naming studies, forensic linguistics, legal studies, media studies, criminology, and sociolinguistics to contribute to a developing area of interdisciplinary research.

For further information, prospective contributors may contact Professor I. M. Nick at nameseditor@gmail.com.

Mike Johnson: The Most Common Surname in the Room

 The second (after Mr. President Donald Trump) instalment of our onomastic series on the names of the most powerful people in the United States

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The man and his names

James Michael Johnson was born on 30 January 1972 in Shreveport, Louisiana, the eldest of four children of James Patrick "Pat" Johnson, a firefighter (1953-2016), and Jeanne Johnson. He goes by Mike - the informal hypocoristic of Michael - which is itself a subject worth a moment's attention. Michael derives from the Hebrew Mikhaʾel (מִיכָאֵל), meaning "Who is like God?" - a rhetorical question implying "no one," making it at once a name of divine humility and a name of the Archangel. The shortening to Mike follows the standard English pattern of clipping (as Bob from Robert, Bill from William, Ted from Edward), and it serves a specific social function: it signals accessibility, informality, and a certain all-American ordinariness that the full James Michael - or the still more formal Speaker Johnson - does not.

His full name James Michael is worth noting as a double-saint compound: James (from Hebrew Yaʿaqov, Jacob) and Michael (the Archangel), both dominant names in the Catholic and Protestant calendar tradition and both in the top 10 of American given-name frequency charts throughout the 20th century. The combination is unremarkable in the Louisiana Baptist culture he was raised in - but it does reflect the deep hagionymic substrate of American naming culture that we explored in the statistical sections of this blog.

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The surname Johnson: etymology and onomastic profile

Johnson is a patronymic surname of Anglo-Norman origin, derived from the Middle English given name Johan / Jo(h)n plus the suffix -son. It literally means "son of John."

The chain of derivation runs deep and far: Johnson ← Middle English John ← Latin Johannes ← Greek Iōannēs (Ἰωάννης) ← Hebrew Yôḥānān (יוֹחָנָן), meaning "Yahweh has favoured" or "God is gracious." The name therefore encodes, through seven or eight centuries of phonological evolution, a theological claim from the Hebrew Bible - a fact that sits interestingly against Johnson's own strongly evangelical public identity.

The earliest recorded use of Johnson as a surname - spelled Jonessone - appears in English records in 1287. The first recorded instance in the form approaching modern spelling was Robert filius Johannis ("Robert, son of John") in Lincolnshire records from 1208. The name rose in prominence during the 13th and 14th centuries as the given name John - already popular through its association with St. John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist, and a long series of popes - began to dominate English baptismal registers. John was rivalling William as the most common English given name by the 13th century, which directly drove the high frequency of the patronymic Johnson.

The surname is geographically concentrated in the English Midlands and North - particularly in Cambridge, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Durham, Lancashire, Leicester, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and Yorkshire - while being conspicuously rare in the southwestern counties of England. This northern bias reflects both the Scandinavian settlement pattern in the Danelaw and the fact that the -son suffix (as opposed to the Welsh/southwestern -s suffix, producing Jones) is characteristically northern English and lowland Scottish.

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Johnson in the American context: a demographically complex surname

This is where the onomastics becomes genuinely interesting for a blog about power and naming. Johnson is not simply an English patronymic transplanted to America - it is one of the most demographically layered surnames in the United States. According to the 2020 U.S. Census surname tables, approximately 2,130,885 Americans carry the last name Johnson, making it the second most common surname in the United States at a frequency of 621.69 per 100,000 people - roughly 1 in every 161 residents.

Among Census respondents with the surname Johnson in 2020, 56.8% identified as White, 33.6% as Black or African American, and 4.7% as two or more races. That one-third Black American share is not coincidental - it reflects the specific history of surname assignment in the antebellum South. After emancipation, many formerly enslaved people took the surname of their former enslaver, while others chose names that held personal meaning. Johnson, Williams, and Smith top the African-American surname list partly because of these patterns - many enslaved people carried these names and retained them after emancipation, while others chose them as an assertion of American identity.

This creates a remarkable onomastic paradox: Johnson is simultaneously one of the most Anglo-Saxon of English patronymics - a name rooted in northern English agricultural communities of the 13th century - and one of the most deeply African-American surnames in the United States, carrying within it the history of slavery, emancipation, and the long aftermath of both. The second most common surname in America is also the second most common surname among Black Americans. Mike Johnson, the white evangelical Republican Speaker from Louisiana, and a Black Baptist congregation member in Atlanta may share the same surname for entirely different historical reasons - one going back to an English ancestor named John, the other to a plantation in the antebellum South.

This is not a minor footnote. It is the central onomastic fact about the name Johnson in America.

In North America, the Johnson surname has also absorbed cognates from other languages: Norwegian and Danish Johnsen, Johannesen, Johannsen, and Jensen; Swedish Johnsson, Johansson, and Jonsson; Dutch Janssen; German Janz; Czech Jansa; and Slovenian Janša and Janežič. The Scandinavian contribution to the American Johnson pool is particularly significant - many Johnson families in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas descend from 19th-century Norwegian and Swedish immigrants whose names (Johansson, Johannessen) were anglicised to Johnson at immigration or in the next generation. This is another layer of the same Matthew-effect dynamic we identified in the hagionymic surname series: Johnson became so dominant as a surname category that it attracted cognates from multiple unrelated linguistic traditions, absorbing them all into a single English-language string.

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Mike Johnson's family genealogy: a surprising ethnic complexity

Here the research produces a finding that is genuinely unexpected and worth dwelling on for a moment.

On his paternal side, Mike Johnson's ancestry is English and Scottish - the standard background for a white Protestant surname Johnson from northwest Louisiana, consistent with the settlement history of that region. The Johnson paternal line presents a long historical itinerary from possible early English roots into colonial Virginia and then gradually westward across the American South. The earliest part of the line begins with Martin Johnson (c. 1640 - before 4 May 1703), associated with Surry County, Virginia, and married to Jone / Johney Creed. Their descendant William Johnson (c. 1662 - before 4 July 1710) also belongs to the Surry County context. From him the line continues more clearly through Moses Johnson (1696–1763) of Sussex County, Virginia, and then William Johnson (c. 1720–before 1776), still within the Virginia colonial world. In the 18th century, the family line is represented by James Johnson Sr. (1735–1784), followed by Elijah Phillip Johnson (1771–1850), whose generation marks the transition from Virginia toward the Carolinas. His son Alfred McDonald Johnson (1805–1871/1879) is connected with South Carolina, while the next generations show the continued westward movement of the family: Alford McDonald Johnson (1842–1923), Andrew Jackson Johnson (1871-1947), and Garner James Johnson (1891–1971). By the 20th century, the line had reached Louisiana, especially the Shreveport area, through Raymond Ralph Johnson (1930–2008) and his son James Patrick “Pat” Johnson (1953–2016). The modern representative of this paternal line is James Michael “Mike” Johnson (born 1972), born in Louisiana. In geographical terms, the family itinerary may therefore be summarized as: possible English roots → colonial Virginia → South Carolina → Arkansas → Louisiana. 

On his maternal side, however, the picture is notably more complex. Mike Johnson's maternal grandfather was Nunzio "Newt" Messina, born in Louisiana to Italian parents originally from Palermo, Sicily. Salvatore Nunzio "Sam" Messina, Johnson's great-grandfather, was the son of Giovanni Batista Messina and Maria Provenza. His great-great-grandmother Rosa Cicero was the daughter of Salvatore Cicero and Venera Maria Tumminello - all Sicilian names. This Sicilian heritage reflects a significant chapter in Italian-American history: Sicilian immigrants first arrived in Louisiana in the late 19th century to work in the sugarcane fields, establishing a vibrant community that continues to enrich the cultural fabric of the Gulf Coast.

The National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) explicitly recognized this connection when congratulating Johnson on his re-election as Speaker, noting that he carries forward a proud Italian-American heritage through his maternal grandfather, a Sicilian immigrant - and that his election continued an unprecedented era of Italian-American representation in the Speakership, following Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

The maternal grandmother's line is different again: Rosa Andralene "Ann" Lester, Johnson's maternal grandmother, was born in Louisiana, the daughter of Andrew Lester (son of Thomas Marion Lester and Mary E. Hendricks) and Nannie N. Burt (daughter of Jarrett Thomas Burt and Elizabeth Janie Umphries) - an entirely Anglo-Saxon Louisiana lineage.

So Mike Johnson's actual ethnic ancestry, as documented in genealogical sources, combines: English/Scottish (paternal), Sicilian Italian (maternal grandfather), and Anglo-Saxon Louisianan (maternal grandmother). The entirely Anglo-Saxon surname Johnson masks this hybrid identity completely. This is exactly the function that assimilationist American naming conventions served throughout the 19th and 20th centuries: the dominant English patronymic absorbs everything else, rendering invisible the Sicilian great-grandparents from Palermo, the Norwegian immigrant grandfather anglicised at Ellis Island, or whoever else contributed to the biological reality the surname does not name.

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The given name Mike as a political instrument

One final onomastic observation worth making: the choice of Mike over Michael or James is not neutral. James would have carried historical presidential weight (six U.S. presidents bore the name), while Michael would have felt formal and slightly foreign to Louisiana evangelical culture. Mike is quintessentially the name of the working-class American male - the firefighter, the contractor, the guy next door. Johnson's father Patrick "Pat" Johnson was indeed a firefighter who was severely burned in the line of duty in 1984, killing a fellow firefighter and leaving Pat disabled. The Mike and Pat of this family are names that signal a specific American social register: unpretentious, hands-on, rooted in service. The Speaker's choice to be known as Mike Johnson rather than James Johnson or Michael Johnson is, from an onomastic perspective, a carefully consistent identity signal - whether consciously chosen or not.

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Key references:

• Britannica. Mike Johnson. britannica.com/biography/mike-johnson
• EthniCelebs. Mike Johnson — Genealogy. ethnicelebs.com/mike-johnson
• Forebears.io. Johnson surname origin. forebears.io/surnames/johnson
• Geneanet. Johnson last name origin. en.geneanet.org/surnames/JOHNSON
• Johnson, Mike. About - Speaker Mike Johnson. mikejohnson.house.gov/about
• NameCensus. Johnson surname popularity. namecensus.com/last-names/johnson-surname-popularity
• National Italian American Foundation (NIAF). NIAF congratulates Mike Johnson on re-election as Speaker. niaf.org, January 2025
• Wikipedia. Mike Johnson (Louisiana politician). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Johnson_(Louisiana_politician)
• Word, D.L. et al. (2008). Demographic aspects of surnames from Census 2000. U.S. Census Bureau
• Select Surnames. Johnson. selectsurnames.com/johnson

CfP: Special Issue of "Studies and Research in Onomastics and Lexicology"

 The journal Studii şi cercetări de onomastică şi lexicologie / Studies and Research in Onomastics and Lexicology (SCOL) announces a call for papers for a forthcoming special issue dedicated to the memory of Iulia Mărgărit, a distinguished scholar of Romanian linguistics.

The issue, entitled “In memoriam Iulia Mărgărit,” will honour her important scholarly contribution to the study of dialectal vocabulary, onomastics, and etymology. The editors invite original articles that continue and develop research in areas closely connected with her academic work.

The special issue aims to bring together studies focusing primarily on onomastics, toponymy, and dialectal lexicology, approached from synchronic, diachronic, dialectological, and interdisciplinary perspectives.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

– the formation, structure, and evolution of proper names;
– toponymy, toponymic stratification, and microtoponymy;
– relationships between names, space, memory, and identity;
– Romanian dialectal vocabulary, diatopic variation, and lexical areas;
– processes of lexical preservation, innovation, and circulation;
– language contact and dialectal etymology;
– research based on linguistic atlases, fieldwork, dialect archives, dictionaries, digital corpora, and other relevant documentary sources.

Original articles should be submitted by:

1 September 2026

Submissions should be sent to:

manuela.nevaci@unibuc.ro

All manuscripts will undergo the journal’s established double-blind peer-review procedure.

Second Call for Papers: ICOS Congress 2027 in Vienna

 Dear colleagues and friends,

The Organizing Committee of the 27th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences - ICOS 2027 warmly invites scholars to submit paper abstracts for the upcoming congress in Vienna.

Paper proposals should be submitted through the official congress website:

https://icos27-vienna.at/

Please click the button “Submit paper” on the website, or go directly to the submission page:

https://express.converia.de/frontend/index.php?page_id=53040

There you will find all necessary instructions for preparing and submitting your proposal.

Please note that papers do not have to be assigned only to the sessions that have already been proposed. Contributions may also address any other onomastic topic not yet covered by the existing session list. Such proposals will be arranged into new sessions by the Organizing Committee.

The deadline for paper submissions is:

31 October 2026

The ICOS Congress 2027 will offer an important international platform for presenting current research in all areas of name studies, including personal names, place names, literary names, commercial names, digital onomastics, socio-onomastics, historical onomastics, and other related fields.

Researchers, doctoral students, and all colleagues working in onomastics are warmly encouraged to submit their abstracts and participate in this major scholarly event.

With kind regards,
The ICOS 2027 Organizing Committee

What Place Names Reveal About Germany’s Settlement History

 Place names are much more than labels on a map. Their elements and endings preserve traces of earlier language areas, landscapes, and patterns of settlement. The endings -ing, -ingen, and -bach are particularly revealing because their present-day distribution reflects different phases in the settlement history of Germany.

🏘️ The endings -ing and -ingen belong to the oldest types of German settlement names. They developed mainly during the period of Germanic settlement from the fourth century onward and frequently referred to the founder or leader of a community.

Their original meaning can be paraphrased as:

“among the people of …” or “at the settlement of the followers of …”

Thus, Sigmaringen originally meant approximately “among the people of Sigmar.”

🗺️ Their geographical distribution reveals a clear linguistic contrast:

• -ingen is especially common in southwestern Germany.
• -ing is concentrated mainly in the Bavarian-speaking region.

These endings therefore reflect an early period in which settlements were often named after groups of people or their leaders.

Around 1,200 years ago, however, naming practices increasingly began to change. New settlements were more often named not after individuals, but after features of the surrounding landscape. Streams became particularly important in this process.

💧 A stream supplied drinking water, provided water for animals, powered mills, and helped communities develop new land. Many settlements were therefore founded directly beside a watercourse and eventually adopted its name. In this way, -bach, meaning “stream” or “brook,” became one of the most frequent place-name endings in Germany.

⛰️ The corresponding map shows that names ending in -bach are especially common in the upland and low-mountain regions of southern Germany. In these areas, new land was often settled outward from valleys and stream courses. A stream was therefore not merely a geographical feature; it was frequently the starting point of a new settlement.

In the North German Plain, by contrast, names ending in -bach are rare. The Low German equivalents -beck and -bek are more common there.

Taken together, the two maps illustrate a fundamental change in place-name formation:

Older names ending in -ing and -ingen often refer to people and social groups, whereas later names ending in -bach place greater emphasis on landscape and natural resources.

Place names therefore continue to make historical language regions, phases of settlement, and different ways of interpreting the landscape visible today.

💬 What is your favourite place ending in -ing, -ingen, or -bach?

Was Ortsnamen über Deutschlands Siedlungsgeschichte erzählen

Ortsnamen sind weit mehr als bloße Bezeichnungen auf einer Karte. Ihre Bestandteile und Endungen bewahren Spuren früherer Sprachräume, Landschaftsformen und Siedlungsbewegungen. Besonders aufschlussreich sind die Endungen -ing, -ingen und -bach, deren heutige Verteilung unterschiedliche Phasen der deutschen Siedlungsgeschichte sichtbar macht.

🏘️ Die Endungen -ing und -ingen gehören zu den ältesten deutschen Siedlungsnamensformen. Sie entstanden überwiegend während der germanischen Landnahmezeit ab dem vierten Jahrhundert und bezogen sich häufig auf den Gründer oder Anführer einer Gemeinschaft.

Ihre ursprüngliche Bedeutung lässt sich ungefähr wiedergeben als:

„bei den Leuten des …“ oder „bei den Angehörigen von …“

So bedeutete Sigmaringen ursprünglich etwa „bei den Leuten des Sigmar“.

🗺️ Die räumliche Verteilung zeigt dabei einen deutlichen sprachgeografischen Unterschied:

• -ingen konzentriert sich besonders im Südwesten Deutschlands.
• -ing ist vor allem im bairischen Sprachraum verbreitet.

Diese Endungen erzählen somit von einer älteren Phase der Besiedlung, in der neue Orte häufig nach Personengruppen oder ihren Anführern benannt wurden.

Rund 1.200 Jahre vor unserer Zeit veränderte sich die Namengebung jedoch zunehmend. Neue Siedlungen wurden nun häufiger nicht mehr nach Personen, sondern nach den Merkmalen der Landschaft benannt. Besonders wichtig waren dabei Bäche.

💧 Ein Bach lieferte Trinkwasser, versorgte Tiere, trieb Mühlen an und erleichterte die Erschließung neuer Gebiete. Viele Siedlungen entstanden deshalb unmittelbar an einem Wasserlauf und übernahmen dessen Namen. So wurde -bach zu einer der häufigsten Ortsnamenendungen Deutschlands.

⛰️ Die entsprechende Karte zeigt, dass Ortsnamen auf -bach besonders im süddeutschen Mittelgebirgsraum verbreitet sind. Dort wurden neue Siedlungsflächen häufig von Tälern und Bachläufen aus erschlossen. Der Bach war also nicht nur ein landschaftliches Merkmal, sondern oft der Ausgangspunkt einer Siedlungsgründung.

Im norddeutschen Tiefland ist -bach dagegen selten. Dort finden sich häufiger die niederdeutschen Formen -beck und -bek.

Zusammengenommen zeigen die beiden Karten einen grundlegenden Wandel der Ortsnamengebung:

Ältere Namen auf -ing und -ingen verweisen häufig auf Menschen und soziale Gruppen, während jüngere Namen auf -bach stärker die Landschaft und natürliche Ressourcen in den Mittelpunkt stellen.

Ortsnamen machen damit historische Sprachräume, Besiedlungsphasen und unterschiedliche Formen der Wahrnehmung von Landschaft bis heute sichtbar.

💬 Welcher Ort mit -ing, -ingen oder -bach ist euer Lieblingsort?

Français

Ce que les noms de lieux révèlent sur l’histoire du peuplement allemand

Les noms de lieux sont bien plus que de simples indications sur une carte. Leurs éléments et leurs terminaisons conservent les traces d’anciens espaces linguistiques, de différents paysages et de mouvements de peuplement. Les terminaisons -ing, -ingen et -bach sont particulièrement instructives, car leur répartition actuelle reflète plusieurs phases de l’histoire du peuplement de l’Allemagne.

🏘️ Les terminaisons -ing et -ingen appartiennent aux types les plus anciens de noms de localités germaniques. Elles se sont surtout développées au cours de la période de colonisation germanique, à partir du IVe siècle, et renvoyaient souvent au fondateur ou au chef d’une communauté.

Leur sens originel peut être rendu approximativement par :

« chez les gens de… » ou « auprès des membres du groupe de… »

Ainsi, Sigmaringen signifiait à l’origine quelque chose comme « chez les gens de Sigmar ».

🗺️ Leur répartition géographique révèle une nette différence linguistique :

• -ingen est particulièrement fréquent dans le sud-ouest de l’Allemagne.
• -ing est surtout répandu dans l’espace linguistique bavarois.

Ces terminaisons témoignent donc d’une ancienne phase de peuplement au cours de laquelle les localités étaient souvent nommées d’après des groupes humains ou leurs dirigeants.

Il y a environ 1 200 ans, les pratiques de dénomination commencèrent toutefois à évoluer. Les nouvelles implantations furent de plus en plus souvent nommées non plus d’après des personnes, mais d’après les caractéristiques du paysage. Les ruisseaux jouèrent alors un rôle essentiel.

💧 Un ruisseau fournissait de l’eau potable, abreuvait les animaux, actionnait les moulins et facilitait la mise en valeur de nouveaux territoires. De nombreuses localités furent donc fondées directement le long d’un cours d’eau et finirent par en adopter le nom. C’est ainsi que -bach, qui signifie « ruisseau », devint l’un des éléments les plus fréquents dans les noms de lieux allemands.

⛰️ La carte correspondante montre que les noms en -bach sont particulièrement fréquents dans les régions de moyenne montagne du sud de l’Allemagne. Dans ces territoires, les nouvelles terres furent souvent peuplées à partir des vallées et des cours d’eau. Le ruisseau n’était donc pas seulement un élément du paysage : il constituait fréquemment le point de départ d’une implantation.

Dans la plaine d’Allemagne du Nord, en revanche, les noms en -bach sont rares. On y trouve plus souvent les formes bas-allemandes -beck et -bek.

Ensemble, les deux cartes illustrent une transformation fondamentale de la formation des noms de lieux :

Les noms plus anciens en -ing et -ingen renvoient souvent à des personnes ou à des groupes sociaux, tandis que les noms plus récents en -bach mettent davantage l’accent sur le paysage et les ressources naturelles.

Les noms de lieux rendent ainsi encore visibles aujourd’hui les anciens espaces linguistiques, les différentes phases du peuplement et les manières diverses de percevoir le paysage.

💬 Quel est votre lieu préféré dont le nom se termine par -ing, -ingen ou -bach ?