1 - Introduction

Summary

This chapter introduces the notions of toponymy and toponomastics (the study of toponyms, or place names), as well as the fundamentals in the field of toponymy, such as its sub-disciplines, e.g., hydronymy, oronymy, odonymy, and urbanonymy, and essential terminology, e.g., toponymic structures (or the generic and specific elements of a toponym), and toponymic system (i.e., a set of place names that belong to a specific area and share the same etymological stem and related meaning and/or the same naming process). The chapter briefly explores the notions associated with toponymic investigations. Among others, it introduces approaches such as the micro-/macro-, intensive/extensive, semasiological/onomasiological analytical strategies, and the concepts of endonym/exonym. Attempts by scholars to produce taxonomies of place names according to toponymic classification systems are briefly discussed. The chapter ends with a call to view toponyms as ‘linguistic fossils’, as they are generally stable lexical items preserved over centuries, containing valuable sociocultural and linguistic information that enables us to study the past.