Summary: | The purpose of our paper is to demonstrate that toponymy is a science that studies
place names both by considering the relationship they maintain with the geographic objects they
individualize by naming, and by researching their significance, etymology and changes (phonetic,
semantic, morphosyntactic and onomasiological) that occured along their history within the process of
denomination. The approach of the place names we quote (e. g. ‘Obcina Bătrână’) include the
synchronic and the diachronic criteria, that complement each other. This assertion is supported by the
fact that synchronic toponymy describes the situation at a certain point in time, i. e. in the present stage
of functionning and existence of place names, whereas diachronic toponymy researches the evolution
of facts and phenomena. We have analyzed the toponyms that we quote in our paper according to a
series of concepts that were proposed and theorized by Dragoş Moldovanu (1972: 73-100) (such as
‘toponymic field’, ‘polarization’ and ‘differentiation’), concepts that aim both at emphasizing the
relationship between the name and the extralinguistic object it designates, and at presenting the
significance, etymology and changes the toponyms underwent in time within the denomination process.
We have also intended to prove that common names and place names do not exclude each other, but
develop a relationship of reciprocity in spite of certain semantic, derivational and grammatical
peculiarities that separates them. Some place names are entopic (descriptive toponyms), while there
are other that come from anthroponyms (personal toponyms).
The linguistic material (toponyms we quote in the paper) was obtained from field surveys (in
the upper basin of the river Bistriţa), from the investigation conducted on historical and geographic
documents, and also from the information we received from the surveyed individuals that mostly
concerns the way certain place names appeared and changed in time.
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