Überarb. Teilausg. Habil'schrift FU Berlin, 2006.

Väitösk. -- Helsingin yliopisto. / English summary / transl. by Peter Jones. - Väitösk. lisäksi 1 irtol.

Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2006

Zugl.: Magisterarb.

Universiẗat, Diss., 2004--Frankfurt (Main).

In 2009 the oldest documents concerning the place Greiz in Eastern Thuringia were published by a historian. This article now provides a linguistic approach to that publication and its interpretation of the mentioned area in Medieval times. The results may be considered as a contribution to a book of reference for place names of Eastern Thuringia. In this respect some questions have been asked, e. g. whether the region along the river Weiße Elster between the places Weida and Plauen had really been an unsettled area until the 12th century. There is hard evidence that the historian’s assumptions are wrong because of the obvious Slavonic names of settlements in this area dating from the 8th until the 10th centuries. Based on a document from 1209 – respectively its copy from 1510 – as well as on a document from 1225 several facts are discussed in detail with consequences for toponymy and history of settlement with the help of historical linguistics. Thus it becomes evident that it is necessary to exchange ideas and to communicate for representatives of history as well as linguistics. At the same time it is obvious that the publication of documents and their analysis by historians will always be very helpful for linguistic exploitation. As a result the prospective edition of a historical dictionary of place names in Thuringia or of Eastern Thuringia respectively has been asserted as dependent on the continuous co-operation between historians and linguists.

The paper deals with the German place name type of -leben and tries to give new insights to the discussion about these names using the method of typological analysis. With the classification of the personal names within the -leben names, a new typology will be designed and the subtype bipartide personal name plus primary word -leben will be represented. The analysis gives a survey of the contained root of the personal name and shows the preference and also the absence of specific name elements within the different distribution areas Unstrut- and Bodekreis. The presented analysis is completed and illustrated with a map.

The Nienburg fragment, named after Nienburg Monastery from where it originated around 1180, starts with a problematic list of several place names as Lighinici, Zrale, Crocovva, Cotibus, that have been implicitly connected so far to Kraków (Poland), to Liegnitz / Legnica as well as to Strehlen / Strzelin in Silesia, and to Cott bus in Lower Lusatia. The authors follow the historian Rudolf Lehmann in his assumption that these places were former stops along the way thus linking Zrale to Strehla on the River Elbe, Crocovva to the desolate Krakau at Königsbrück on the River Pulsnitz. Lighinici, which hasn’t been located yet, can be placed with the help of linguistic research to the desolate place Leichen (Lichen) near Dürrenberg on the River Saale (Sachsen-Anhalt). The number of place-names that include ‚Kirche’ (church) and ‚Markt’ (market) seems like a kind of travel-guide leading from the monastery at Nienburg to its holdings in Lower Lusatia.

Seit Jahren steige ich am Magdeburger Hauptbahnhof ein und aus. Wenn dann die Ansage kommt, man sei in Magdeburg, kann man immer wieder bei einigen Fahrgästen ein ironisches Grinsen erkennen. Warum? Nun, in dem bei der Deutschen Bahn offenbar zentral erstellten Ansagetext wird Magdeburg mit langem -a- gesprochen, so wie auch das Wort Magd im Allgemeinen im Hochdeutschen artikuliert wird. Dieses kleine Beispiel ist für die Frage nach der Herkunft und Bedeutung des Ortsnamens Magdeburg von einiger Bedeutung, zeigt es doch, dass der Ortsname natürlich mit dem Wort Magd in Verbindung gebracht wird. Man spricht in derartigen Fällen bekanntlich von volksetymologischen Umdeutungen oder – vor allem in der Leipziger Onomastik – von (scheinbarer) sekundärer semantischer Motivierung. Im Fall von Magdeburg ist die Annahme, es liege das Wort Magd zugrunde, in fast einmaliger Weise seit Jahrhunderten nachgewiesen.

This paper deals with place names ending in -leben which contain a single stem personal name as modifier with strong declension. A typological analysis shows both the distribution of name elements and regional differences between the main distribution areas Bode- and Unstrutkreis. This subtye of -leben names dominates in the Bodekreis but is less representative in the Unstrutkreis. The analysis is completed with a map.