Aus dem gedrängten Überblick geht hervor, dass der Benennung von Siedlungen oft georgische Baumbezeichnungen zugrunde liegen, die unterschiedlicher Herkunft sind. Diejenigen Bezeichnungen, die offenbar kartwelischen Ursprungs sind, bilden drei Gruppen: 1. solche, die sich für die kartwelische Grundsprache rekonstruieren lassen (d. h. wo auch swanische Entsprechungen vorliegen), 2. solche, die bis auf die jüngere georgisch-sanische Grundsprache zurückgehen, und 3. nur in der georgischen Sprache belegbare Bezeichnungen, für die sich kein regelmäßig entsprechendes Material der anderen Kartwelsprachen beibringen lässt. Hinzu kommen jene georgischen Baumbezeichnungen, die aus anderen Sprachen entlehnt worden sind. Der Vergleich der georgischen Baumnamen mit der betreffenden Lexik der anderen Kartwelsprachen und mit den rekonstruierten Grundformen zeigt, dass bei der Entstehung der georgischen Oikonyme die Aufspaltung der kartwelischen Grundsprache in die heutigen Einzelsprachen bereits abgeschlossen war. Zu der gleichen Folgerung führt die Einbeziehung jener Oikonyme, die auf Lehnwörtern fußen, die nur im Georgischen (aber nicht im Mingrelischen, Lasischen und Swanischen) vertreten sind.

The article gives a review about the development of onomastics in Leipzig, beginning with first publications about Lithuanian personal names in 1909 by a famous representative of Slavonic linguistics. Further the survey shows the merits of Slavonic linguists for onomastics in scientific discourse with other philologists. Three different stages of its development since the Second World War are characterised specifically: the time of orientation in the new scientific area, the formation of an interdisciplinary group of researchers in 1953 and their regular national and international publications since 1956. This developmental period of Onomastic research was based on international co-operation and various projects, one of which is reflected by the increasing popularity of this journal as an internationally distributed and acclaimed paper. The main directions, questions, intentions, projects, and aims as well as the results in onomastics are described and illustrated in this article. A new period in Onomastic research began in 1990, which includes new perspectives and the creation of the academic subject "Onomastics" which is increasingly popular with students. And since then a new quality of public relation of onomastics on TV and other media can be noted.

Since the 1960s Germany has the arrival of a considerable number of immigrants, mainly from Turkey. This paper is a statistic investigation of Turkish names in Germany.

This paper examines company names from a pragmatic point of view and focuses on their functions in different local and socio-cultural contexts. A company name has to fulfil many functions, among them identification, distinction, protection and promotion. The latter function is of special relevance, since the world of today is a consumer culture, where many activities in business and even in personal contexts have to some extent been influenced by promotional concerns. The promotional function of company names can be realised by different naming strategies, including linguistic form and graphic design. In recent years, however, studies of cultural, social or emotional values of names have gained in importance. The name is seen as reflecting sets of common values that are connected with the environment in people’s minds, thus maintaining a certain ‘we-feeling’. This can, for example be achieved by the inclusion of locations as elements of company names. The name is linked to a particular region and thus connotes the company’s origin, traditions and scope of business or personal attachment to a certain place. Based on the 2007 lists of the top 100 companies, ranked by revenues, in Central Germany (Mitteldeutschland) and Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), the present study aims at a more systematic description of regional connotations of company names, which are especially frequent in the eastern part of Germany. Possible explanations for this situation will be offered and discussed with respect to factors such as economic motivation, historical background, local culture and global competition.

When analysing the etymological layers of Hungarian river names, it becomes soon clear that loan names make up a much larger group than in the group of settlement names, for instance. This fact can be due to the phenomenon that in the case of hydronyms, name-giving and name-usage is driven mainly by communicative needs, while other (e. g. socio-cultural or political) factors only rarely influence name-giving. In my paper, it was my aim to provide an etymological typology of Hungarian hydronyms from the Árpád-era (896 –1350). It seems to be justified to choose the Hungarian hydronyms of the Árpád-era as the corpus of my investigation, for the country was strongly multilingual and multiethnic in this period of time (Hungarian, Slavic, German, Turkish), which also has an effect on the system of water names. The survey of the linguistic layers of river names shows that largely the same semantic content appears in river names originating from different languages. The semantic types appearing in river names belong to the so-called panchronistic feature of the hydronym system, in other words, they show signs of universal human thinking.

Overview of the possibilities of data collection of current family names in Roman language-speaking countries in Europe (Italy, France, Spain and Portugal). Includes concrete examples and suggestions on their interpretation.

Family names derived from names of local origin are not at the top of the frequency lists. Potentially any place name may become a family name. In the following, this investigation addresses the question whether all Saxonian family names have become family names, and shows the large advances which can be achieved especially for this group of names with the aid of modern onomastic distribution maps.

Whereas in Sachsen, Brandenburg or Schleswig-Holstein all place names are worked on, the examination of the meaning of many place names in Sachsen-Anhalt is still a desideratum. This article surveys the meaning of the older place names in the former Landkreis Sangerhausen (southern Sachsen-Anhalt) – current and deserted place names – in the territorial boarders of the period 1990 –2007, as well as their level of research based on the author\'s Master\'s degree thesis of the winter semester 2007/08. The author gathered all documentary evidences that could be found in the written sources of regionally specific source books from the first naming in the sources to the 15th / 16th century. The reseach revealed that the oldest names were to be found near the rivers and on most fertile grounds. These place names were mostly derivatives, but one can find also some very old compounds.

When entering the Carpathian Basin in the 9th century, the Hungarians found a decisively Slavic population on the territory, so toponyms were formed based on the already existing toponymic system. Hungarian toponymic research has been able to reconstruct toponyms from the period prior to the Hungarian conquest only very scarcely and ambiguously – as opposed to the names of larger rivers, which show strong continuity, going back to very early times. The toponyms of the Carpathian Basin, in connection with the formation of the settlement structures of Hungarians, can almost exclusively be documented from the period after the Hungarian conquest. However, the Carpathian Basin became a “meeting point of the peoples” in the centuries after the conquest in 896 and as such, numerous ethnics and languages could be found here: Slavic peoples and Germans settled in larger blocks, while smaller groups of Turkish people, such as Cumans and Pechenegs, and some Neo-Latin peoples (Walloons and later Rumanians) also contributed to the ethnic and linguistic diversity in the area. The layering of different peoples and languages influenced toponyms too, which also allows us to investigate language contacts of the time. This is the main concern of my paper, with special focus on the question of how these phenomena can be connected to issues of language prestige in the Middle Ages.

Research on theonyms constitutes the onomastic component within theolinguistics, the universal science dealing with the communication about the divine. It is demonstrated in detail that god (Greek theos, Latin deus, German Gott) is both a nomen appellativum (theolexeme) as well as a nomen proprium (theo-onym). With the help of a checklist it is illustrated in which linguistic fields characteristics of theonyms compared to other types of names can be observed and where further research is needed. For example, etymology can reveal the naming motive of the theonyms Zeus, Iupiter and of the theolexemes theos, deus, Slavonic bog und English god / German Gott.