Naslov
Stratification of Croatian island names

Autori
Brozović Rončević, Dunja

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, znanstveni

Skup
12th Annual International Conference on Mediterranean Studies

Mjesto i datum
Atena, Grčka, 15.04.2019. - 18.04.2019

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Podatak o recenziji nije dostupan

Ključne riječi
nessonyms, names of islands, Croatian islands, stratification of island names

Sažetak
Contrary to the western, Italian side of the Adriatic, on the Croatian side, we find more than a thousand islands, islets, and rocks whose names clearly reflect the history of the people and languages that have lived for centuries in the eastern Adriatic. Almost all of the larger islands on the Croatian part of the Adriatic were named long before the Romans settled this area. Most of these names belong to the so- called Illyrian substrate, and some of them in the southern part, are of Greek origin. Many of these names were recorded in ancient written sources, although not all of them are reliably identified. Although a large number of Croatian islands preserved the continuity of their names for centuries, a form of the name has been modified along with the changes of the ethnic composition of the population. After settling on the islands in the early Middle Ages the Croats adopted existing names from earlier Romance population, but the initial content of names for the new settlers often became unrecognizable. Although most of the big islands (except for Dugi otok ‘Long Island’) carry pre-Slavic names, the names of the Croatian, that is Slavic origin, predominate in the overall corpus of the island names along the eastern Adriatic coast. It is well known that place names never occur randomly. They regularly provide valuable data on the ethnolinguistic affiliation of the community that created them. These names reflect the way in which the Croats, who initially were not a maritime nation, perceived and experienced their relationship with the new insular landscape, the relationship that is often reflected in narratives that are constructed upon those place names. Place names are one of the key factors in shaping the perception of the landscape in the eyes of the community that uses them. This is even more true for the nesonyms (names of the islands) since the island is a very specific form of landscape. When an island community is not able to understand and interpret the name of their island with the means of their own language, they often create new interpretations that in most cases have nothing to do with the actual linguistic etymology of the name. However, those folk etymologies eventually become part of the collective memory of the island community. New narratives are constructed and “upgraded” through generations with the aim of the story to be meaningful for the local community.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

POVEZANOST RADA