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There are place names all around the world formed by a combination of two elements, a specific and a generic, both of which refer to the same geographic feature type. A typical pattern is for an indigenous generic functioning as a specific to precede a matching introduced generic. For example: Ohio River < Iroquoian Ohio ‘Great River’ + River; and Lake Rotorua < Māori roto ‘lake’ + rua ‘two/second’ (‘Second Lake’) + Lake. Such toponyms, though not overall numerous, nevertheless occur often enough to warrant being recognized as a distinct class of place names. The literature provides no adequate or consistent term for this pattern: the various attempts clash with each other, and all fail to address the concept effectively. This article aims to address this situation.
Acknowledgements
We should like to thank Associate Prof. Paul Geraghty (University of the South Pacific, Suva) and Dennis Nutt (Academic Dean Emeritus, Australian College of Ministries) for their advice and suggestions. Thank you also to the two reviewers for their comments and encouragement. All errors and omissions remain ours.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 A place name “generic” is akin to a family name (e.g. Bay, Cape, River, Mount, Lake, Valley, etc.). A place name “specific” is analogous to a given name (e.g. Boat Harbor, where “Boat” (the specific) identifies “Harbor” (the generic), which in turn identifies the type of geographic feature named). Sometimes a generic can become a specific, as in The Basin, or Harbor Beach. Place names for non-natural features (especially those for settlements) commonly consist of a single element acting as the specific: Cairns and Broome. Some place names of this type have a “built-in” generic element, e.g. Newtown, Marrickville, Ashbourne, etc.
2 The term borrowing is problematic because it implies the “borrowed” word will be “returned” at some stage, which is largely not the case. The exceptions are so-called “reborrowings” where a word is copied from language X into language Y, and over time changes its meaning in language Y, and is subsequently copied back into language X with its new meaning. A nice case is that of the English word threepence which was copied into Fijian and nativized as ciriveni /ðiriveni/. Over time its meaning changed to “miserly.” The word ciriveni was then copied back into the variety of English spoken in Fiji with this new meaning (see Tent Citation2001).
3 An exonym is a place name used by one group that differs from the name used by the people who live there.
4 This is also observed and remarked upon by Nicolaisen (Citation1975, 168).
5 For a very interesting discussion on the meaning and etymology of warrambool, see: Endangered Languages and Cultures (2011) “What’s a Warrambool?” www.paradisec.org.au/blog/2011/06/what%E2%80%99s-a-warrambool.
6 The Committee for Geographical Names in Australasia (Citation1996) (now the Permanent Committee on Place Names); the International Council of Onomastic Sciences (Citation2012); and Kadmon (Citation2000a).
7 See the link https://geonames.usgs.gov/docs/Policy_X_1997.pdf on this page for Policy 10: “Names of Native American Origin.” Sec. 7. “Generic Terms Recommended for Geographic Names Derived from Native American Languages.”
8 The latter two examples are in fact proper reduplications. See the section Reduplicated names for further explication of this.
9 As with Pago Pago and Iliili, Wagga Wagga is not a tautonym but a reduplication. See the section Reduplicated names for further discussion on this.
10 Ironically, the term reduplication is itself tautologous!
11 For a more comprehensive discussion of reduplication, see, for example: Downing (Citation2015a, Citationb); Inkelas and Zoll (Citation2005); Inkelas (Citation2008); Marantz (Citation1982).
12 In general linguistics, a superscript asterisk (*) before a lexical item indicates that it cannot occur in the language. In historical linguistics it indicates a proto-form.
13 Sanders (Citation2016) offers a synonym for epexegesis, viz. “tautological addition,” though seemingly dismisses this description as somewhat misleading (548). We agree.
14 Interestingly, in some examples—such as Nicolaisen’s Ardtonish Point—the specific element contains a further repetition of the feature term.
15 Terminography (i.e. the compilation of terminologies) employs an onomasiological approach. That is, it starts from a concept and then determines its name or term. The opposite, the semasiological approach, is employed by lexicographers, and starts with a term and then determines what it means, and to what concepts the term refers. (See: Cabré Citation1999, 37–38; Hartmann and James Citation1998).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jan Tent
Jan Tent is a retired academic and current Director of the Australian National Placenames Survey. He is also an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University, Canberra, and an Honorary Research Fellow at Macquarie University, Sydney. Jan’s onomastic research has mainly concentrated on early European place-naming practices in Australasia, as well as the toponymy of Australia in general.
Correspondence to: Dr Jan Tent, School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra 0200, Australia. Email: [email protected] or [email protected]
David Blair
David Blair is a retired academic who currently serves research toponymist with the Australian National Placenames Survey. He is also an Honorary Associate at Macquarie University, Sydney. His recent research has focused on theoretical aspects of toponymy, and on the names of Australia’s coastal beaches.
Correspondence to: Mr David Blair, Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney 2109, Australia. Email: [email protected] or [email protected]