In this article the Nienburg fragment from about 1180 is under linguistic scrutiny. The three eastern provinciae of the Nienburg Monastery situated in the historical eastern Lusatia are differentiated with help of linguistic methods according to particular paragraphs of the document. Special attention is given to some toponyms which could not have been attributed to definite places yet. It is presented a proposal to associate the place names to still existing geographical objects. Furthermore some geographical names are discussed and interpreted in a new way in contrast to former explanations. Thus characteristic feature of the Nienburg fragment becomes obvious: The Latin written document has preserved the Slavonic proper names in a graphic variant very closely to their original forms without reduction or any other influence of the German language on it.

The article gives a review about perceptional processes of proper names and its results after decades of exploration in the field of Sorbian-German contacts in everyday speech in the Middle ages. The toponymic material belongs to the region between the rivers Saale and Elbe in the West and the rivers Queis, Bober, Oder in the East of the considered regions. Phenomena recognized of systematical evidence are described in detail, i. e. phonematical, graphematical, morphematical, lexical, and semantical facts are performed. Phases of onymic integration, transsumption and transposition are exemplified. The process of integration is illustrated by variants of onyms as well as by processes of adaptation. Special attention is mentioned to the borrowing events of German place names in Sorbian language since the Middle ages.

In comparison with personal names toponyms have been rather neglected in studies on literary onomastics. Place names may seem less promising for onomastic research because authors tend to anchor their narratives in the actual world much more than characters. However, place names in literature fulfil important tasks: they mainly contribute to the fictional constitution of space. The question whether the actual counterparts of fictional place names are of any importance for the reader has been discussed very controversially. But place names may also help to create a certain mood or local colour. They even may indicate the passing of time. As all these phenomena are based on mental processes which take place in the reader’s brain this paper tries to study them with the help of actual cognitive science.

Anfang Juli 2012 haben wir auf dem Südfriedhof in Leipzig von Ernst Eichler fur immer Abschied nehmen müssen. Ganz in der Nähe von August Leskien und Wilhelm Streitberg hat er seine letzte Ruhestätte gefunden. Mit Ernst Eichler ist ein Genius der historischen Sprachforschung von uns gegangen. Fur den Wissenschaftsfächer von Akademie und Universität in Leipzig ist das ein grosser und schlimmer Verlust. Der Wissenschaftler Ernst Eichler hat zu seinen Lebzeiten viele Anerkennungen, Würdigungen und Auszeichnungen für sein bewundernswert breites Lebenswerk in der Sprachforschung erfahren. Seine Leistungen und Verdienste sind in Zeitschriften, Festschriften und Sammelbänden in ihrer Vorbildbedeutung dargestellt worden. Sie sind auch in unserer Fachzeitschrift zur Onomastik zuletzt zu seinem 80. Geburtstag in einer von mir gegebenen Würdigung nachlesbar. Es muss daher heute nichts wiederholt werden, was wohl den meisten in guter Erinnerung ist.

Dieser Artikel beschreibt einen neuen angewandten epistemologischen Aspekt der sogenannten Konvergenztheorie, die eine Homogenisierung der unterschiedlichen Ansätze auf dem Gebiet der indoeuropäischen Linguistik anstrebt. Es wird versucht, anhand von Ortsnamen in Verbindung mit der Wurzel *alb- und den semantischen Bedeutungsverschiebungen über Jahrhunderte ein europäisches und italienisches "Makro-Gebiet" (bzw. "Mikro- Gebiet") zu rekonstruieren. Es scheint, dass Paleo-Ligurische Ortsnamen wie Alba, alteuropäische Flussnamen wie Albis und ihre ablautenden Formen Olb- (> Orb- im Romanisch-Ligurischen) nicht direkt auf das Proto-Indoeuropäische Adjektiv *albho-, ‘weiß’ zurückgehen, sondern auf die weitere Prä-proto-Indoeuropäische Wurzel *Hal-bh-, ‘Wasser’, verwandt mit dem Sumerischen ḫalbia (> Akkadisch ḫalpium, ‘Quelle’, ‘Brunnen’, ‘Wassermassen’, ‘Wasserloch’). Eine weitere Analyse von *Hal-bh- führt zum Vergleich mit der Proto-Indoeuropäischen Wurzel *Hal-, ‘ernähren’. Das Proto-Indoeuropäische Suffix *HwaH-r-, ‘Wasser’, weist eine ähnliche Verbreitung auf.

In 2012, Namn och bygd, which is considered to be the world’s oldest specialised journal for place-name research, is publishing its one-hundredth issue. In this essay, the author attempts a survey of key aspects of the journal, and changes affecting it, since 1913. This includes comments on its aims, its editors and associate editors, contributing authors from different academic disciplines, contacts with other countries within and beyond the Nordic region, different sections of the journal and, of course, the scholarly content of Namn och bygd over the hundred years of its history.

The article continues to discuss the origins and the history of the Saxon place name Leipzig. Several questions are under scrutiny. Starting out from recent research which gives the oldest historical evidence of the place name Leipzig as Lib-, it deals with certain new doubts regarding explanations that try to date the origins of the place name in pre-monolingual times. The question whether one can assume an original Slavonic form to the Slavonic root *lib- is dealt with in detail. The results of this discourse are: Today’s research cannot give a satisfactory explanation that the primary place name is derived from Slavonic. Furthermore, the hypothesis of an existing pre-monolingual form is newly evaluated. In this regard also the formerly existing geographical setting of the area around Leipzig is considered as the deciding motive in naming the place.

With gaining the independence and the emergence of a new state the linguistic situation in Kazakhstan has been changed. The restoration and return of historical names, the fi xing of unifi ed rules of the transferring of Kazakh toponyms into other languages became the basis of national onomastic policy of independent Kazakhstan. After the law “On languages in the Republic of Kazakhstan” adopted in 1997 the activity on improvement of orthographic norms and formulation of new rules of transferring geographical names from Kazakh into Russian started. As a result of these acts many distorted names of inhabited localities and administrative-territorial units are gradually being put into an appropriate norm. Many of them are still to be corrected according to new “Law on Administrative - Territorial Structure of the Republic of Kazakhstan” (December 8, 1993.) and Presidential Decree (December 29, 1995.), Government Resolution (March 5, 1996.) where the rules on Russian transferring of Kazakh onyms were approved. Due to such activity to former capital of Kazakhstan Alma-Ata was returned its original name Almaty. Thus, in our article we decided to give our point of view on some issues relating to grammatical adaptation of toponym Almaty in Russian language.

Der Kurzbeitrag nimmt Bezug auf den eingangs zitierten Band. Die Verfasser haben in Anlehnung an die älteren Ortsnamenbücher der Kreise Leipzig sowie Borna und Geithain nicht nur eine Neuaufl age vorgelegt, sondern auf Grundlage neuester Erkenntnisse ein modernes Kompendium zur Namenforschung und Siedlungsgeschichte des Leipziger Landes geschaff en, ausgestatt et mit Beiträgen weiterer Autoren.1 Im Vorfeld der Drucklegung war die Autorin dieses Beitrages gebeten worden, die Liste der Herrensitze, vornehmlich für Nordwestsachsen beizusteuern (im Buch siehe S. 75 f.). Allerdings ist diese Aufl istung mit teils anderen Erwähnungen unter ihrem Namen abgedruckt worden. Daher erscheint im Folgenden eine veränderte Liste, die der Kategorie ‚Herrensitze‘ gerecht wird, mit anschließendem kurzen Kommentar. Dieser Kommentar schmälert in keiner Weise den hohen Gesamtwert des Bandes. – Eine umfassende Behandlung des Themas im Kontext der Namengebung des mitt elalterlichen Adels östlich der Saale erscheint in einem späteren Beitrag in dieser Zeitschrift.

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.