The article discusses some place-names. These are the names of fortifications owned by vassals during medieval times (fiefdoms) and situated in the middle of Germany. The reviewed toponyms can be considered as examples for a linguistic explanation with regard to different extralinguistical and regional conditions. The article aims at demonstrating the absolute necessity of cooperation and interaction of various scientific disciplines with specialists in toponymy to avoid misjudgments. Thus it is important for vaious studies to work together in finding the correct reasons in naming of geographical phenomena in the first place.

The analysis of Duchess Augusta of Saxony-Coburg-Saalfeld’s reports concerning her journeys to Italy in 1821/22 and 1823/24 shows three diff erent functions of toponymical comparisons: an explanatory function, an evaluating function and an evocative function. These functions are illustrated by several examples.

Why did the German author Jean Paul Richter (1763 ‒1825) choose the isle of Isola Bella in Lago Maggiore as the locale for the first chapters of his novel Titan? He had never been to Italy and had known this place only from travel guides and etchings. Moreover, this completely artificially modelled island, a terraced garden in the Italian style, could not suit his taste which clearly tended to the more recent English style of gardening. In this article the point is made that he chose the place for its name which contains the personal name Isabella. To prove this the psychoanalytical method as developed by Freud and Lacan is employed, starting from the assumption that the poet’s choice of his names is largely dominated by subconscious motives.

In the place names of Slavic or Slovene origin in Upper (and Lower) Carinthia and Eastern Tyrol many sound forms are to be found which are corresponding to those in the Freising Manuscripts, partly in early documents, partly in the contemporary forms also. The language of the Freising Manuscripts was an Old Slovene dialect which was spoken in the Carantanian principality (8th / 9th century) and later in duchy Carinthia.

Die onomastische Theorie hat verschiedene Funktionen zu erfüllen, die die Vertiefung und das Ordnen des Wissens begünstigen. Diese Funktionen kann man vor dem Hintergrund der Relationen zwischen dem Begriffssystem, das die Bedingungen des Bezugs der Theorie bestimmt, und dem an dieses System angepassten terminologischen System erörtern. Der Prozess der Bereicherung des Wissens über die Eigenschaften verschiedener Ketten von Eigennamen hängt mit der Notwendigkeit eines Ausbaus des begrifflich-terminologischen Apparates und einer Präzisierung der onomastischen Terminologie zusammen. Die auf die Terminologie ausgerichtete theoretische Reflexion tritt auf verschiedenen Gebieten onomastischer Forschung in Erscheinung, in allgemeinem oder detailliertem Kontext. Besonders erforderlich scheint sie im Falle der in der polnischen bzw. slawischen Onomastik entwickelten Konzeption der Chrematonymie und der als Forschungsfeld und Subdisziplin der Onomastik begriffenen Chrematonomastik zu sein. Das Augenmerk der Chrematonymie gilt dem Bestand der Namen von Objekten, die in verschiedenen Kontexten der (Gegenwarts-)Kultur, an der eine bestimmte Sprachgemeinschaft beteiligt ist, auftreten. Es kann sich beispielsweise um den ökonomischen oder sozialen Kontext handeln.

The paper deals with some aspects of terminological coordinination which belongs today to the most actual problems in onomastics. Two approaches are analyzed: the lexical and the lexicological one. The former focuses on terminus as a lexical unit, the latter on specialized dictionaries as special knowledge representation models. Of the two investigated approaches to the coordination activity, the second one is to be preferred as it reflects system relations of termini. Two operations prove to be useful for terminological coordination: construction of lexical-semantic network and semantic mapping. Both of them deal with semantic space in terminology, thus two or more terminological systems represented in one or the other way might be coordinated without much complications. / Die vorliegende Untersuchung behandelt Aspekte der Koordinierung der onomastischen Terminologie, die z. Z. zu einer der aktuellsten Aufgaben für die Namenforscher gehört. Zwei Richtungen bzw. Verfahren werden beschrieben: die lexikalische (auf einzelne Termini orientierte) und die lexikographische (auf Fachwörterbuch als Repräsentationsmodell von Fachwissen orientierte Richtung). Von den beiden in dem Beitrag betrachteten Koordinierungsrichtungen muss die lexikographische Vorrang haben, weil sie die systemhaften Verbindungen der Termini widerspiegelt. Hier kann als Hilfsmittel für die Koordinierung die Methode des Aufbaus von lexikalischsemantischen Netzen für jeden Terminus-Deskriptor genutzt werden. Als Instrument der Koordinierung wird auch der Begriff "terminologische Karte" behandelt: Die auf diese Weise beschriebenen Terminussysteme (zwei oder mehrere) können im weiteren ohne Komplikationen koordiniert werden.

The article analyses three place names, which have been explained up to now in the following way: one of them was supposed to be of German, one of Old European and one of Slavic origin. As we show in our paper, all of them are Slavic names, two of them are hydronyms.

As Thietmar of Merseburg reports in his well-known chronicle, King Henry II set up a camp iuxta Sprewam flivium in the provincia Nice during his campaign against Bolesław Chrobry of Poland in the year 1005. Up to now, historians and onomasticians have not agreed on where to locate Nice. Some see it as a Slavic settlement area around the town of Forst on the Neisse river; others, however, equate the provincia Nice with the pagus Selpoli, a Slavic tribal area on the Lubst river (Polish Lubsza) a right tributary of the lower Neisse river. A thorough analysis of the historical, onomastical und archaeological facts leads to the conclusion that in the region around Forst, especially in the south, a small Slavic settlement area extended along the left bank of the Neisse river. This is also indicated by the fact that there is a concentration not only of older Slavic place name types, but also of surnames typical only for this region. Although they developed in later times, they are a sign of an older settlement community. Moreover, archaeological finds from the middle and late Slavic periods point to a settlement region which is clearly confined by areas lacking any finds at all. / Wie Thietmar von Merseburg in seiner bekannten Chronik berichtet, schlug Heinrich II. auf seinem Feldzug gegen Bolesław Chrobry von Polen im Jahre 1005 iuxta Sprewam fluvium in der provincia Nice ein Lager auf. Bis heute sind sich Historiker und Namenforscher nicht einig, wo Nice zu lokalisieren ist. Manche sehen darin ein slawisches Siedlungsgebiet um Forst an der Neiße, andere wiederum setzen Nice mit dem pagus Selpoli, einem slawischen Wohngau an der Lubst, poln. Lubsza, einem rechten Zufluß der unteren Neiße, gleich. Eine genaue Analyse der historischen, namenkundlichen und archäologischen Zusammenhänge führte zu dem Schluss, dass sich in der Gegend um Forst, besonders südlich davon, einst ein slawischer Kleingau am linken Ufer der Neiße erstreckte, denn dort konzentrieren sich nicht nur ältere slawische Ortsnamentypen, sondern es finden sich aus späterer Zeit auch nur für diesen Raum typische Zunamen, die auf eine ältere Siedlergemeinschaft hindeuten. Darüber hinaus lassen Bodenfunde aus mitt el- und spätslawischer Zeit auf eine Siedlungskammer schließen, die sich durch fundleere Räume deutlich gegen den Gau Luzici und den Gau Selpoli abgrenzt.

During the last decade Prof. Udolph has published a series of at least five articles, in which he argued that the until then unanimously accepted etymology of the place-name Magdeburg ‘City of (the) Virgin(s)’ must be wrong. In these articles he also refuted the less widely known etymology that argues for Magdeburg to be the ‘City of camomilla’. Comparing this and other place-names containing the element Magde‑, Magade‑ vel sim. to others containing the first member Mikil‑, Michel‑ etc. ‘big, great’ he reached the conclusion that Magde‑, Magade‑ etc. should be an adjective meaning something like ‘great, mighty ’ as well. His morphological and phonological arguments for doing so are here refuted by showing that neither is the prototype for his proposed adjective Germ. *magaþ‑, Germ. *nakuađ‑ ‘naked’, etymologically sufficiently clear, nor is there any other way to produce the required word-structure either by Germanic or by Indo-European means of word-formation. Though the author of this article is also not very glad about the older explanations, they have the advantage of simply being morphologically and phonologically flawless.

The motif of the doppelgänger has been present in literature and the visual arts, but also, more or less concealed, in music, from classical antiquity until today and may manifest itself in the most various forms, dependent on genre, epoch, and culture. This has led criticism to consider the motif of the doppelgänger as a genre in its own right and to propose, especially during the last years, numerous classifications of the ways in which this psychological and anthropological phenomenon is treated in the arts. In the present study I have concentrated my attention on creations in which the doppelgänger represents the disturbing aspects of the hero’s ego. This motif was especially prominent in German late romanticism and has considerably spread during the last decades in cinematography and in fantastic literature. Though there exists a large amount of criticism on the motif of the doppelgänger, what has hardly been analyzed up to now is the role of the characters’ and their doppelgängers’ names. Therefore the aim of my study was to exemplify by means of numerous examples from antiquity until present times the role the proper name has played in literature and other arts dedicated to the theme of the doppelgänger.