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The article deals with toponyms in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland with regard to language contact. Since the emergence of the Romance language in late antiquity (3rd-6th century AD) and until the Germanisation in the early Middle Ages (ca. from the 9th century until ca. the 14th century) St. Gallen has functioned in an interaction of two languages: Old Romansh and Old High German. This sequence can still be identified in a considerable number of toponyms. Here we want, first, to show how Romansh toponyms were transferred to Swiss German and, second, to discuss the methodological challenges facing toponymists when dealing with names in contact areas. Based on the categorization of Nicolaisen (1996) various types of adaptational processes such as translations, analogical re-formation and re-interpretation are illustrated and discussed using names and historical name data from the database «Flurnamen des Kantons St. Gallen». Two important categories in this regard are phonological adaptation and morphological translation. Finally, the study offers an insight into how toponomastics in an ancient contact area can help to reconstruct an extinct language, i.e. Old Romansh.]

The article is concerned with the etymologies of northeast Bavarian, i.e. Upper Franconian, settlement names Würgau, Gleußen, Feuln, Marktzeuln and Wirbenz and the microtoponyms Külmnitz, Külmitz and Leubnitz. While tradition had it that the settlement names are of Slavic origin, a PhD thesis published in 2016 claimed them to be of West Germanic origin. In the case of the microtoponyms Külmnitz and Külmitz only a West Germanic etymology had hitherto been presented, while in the case of the microtoponym Leubnitz both a Germanic and a Slavic one had been proposed, with no final conclusion reached. The article compares the Slavic etymologies with the West Germanic ones and reaches the conclusion that neither of the West Germanic etymologies proposed is more convincing than any of the Slavic ones. In the case of the settlement names Feuln and Marktzeuln, however, each proposed etymology is roughly as convincing as the other (though the author ultimately still sides with the Slavic etymologies). In the case of the other names, the Slavic etymologies are (clearly) more convincing than the West Germanic ones.

School student Michael Berg (15) becomes involved in an erotic relationship with Hanna Schmitz (36), to whom he reads from works of literature during their lovers’ trysts. Hanna constantly calls Michael mein Jungchen (‚my young laddie‘), while the latter addresses her not just as Hanna but also using pet names such as Boukeffelchen (Alexander the Great’s tempestuous war horse was called Boukephalos). Years later Michael recognizes Hanna among the accused in a concentration camp trial. When she falsely assumes responsibility for the authorship of a report on the death of a group of concentration camp prisoners, Michael realizes that Hanna would rather accept a long prison sentence than admit to her illiteracy. The name Michael Berg reminds us of locations around Heidelberg (e.g. Michelsberg); Berg also alludes to the hill as a location of insights and to Michael’s complicated Schicksalsgemeinschaft with a concentration camp guard. While the simplified name Hanna evokes childishness and motherliness, Schmitz recalls the hissing of the horsewhip used by many concentration camp supervisors. Hanna also readily evokes the name Hannah Arendt, while Schmitz is a common, everyday surname whose occurrence is reminiscent of A Report on the Banality of Evil, the subtitle of Hannah Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem.

As part of a cross-border project at the Jihočeská univerzita v Českých Budějovicích and the University of Passau, similarities and divergences were examined in place names, surnames, literature and social culture along an old trade route between Passau (Czech: Pasov) and Budějovice (German: Budweis). This makes it possible to trace the development of the relationship between the two peoples of the border area back to the Middle Ages. In this essay, we focus on place names and family names. Place names such as Czech Čakov and German Groß Čekau were explained and classified typologically on the basis of the documents and dialectal pronunciations elicited during the project. In the area of family names, the development and spatial distribution of names such as Janko are examined in order to trace linguistic exchanges and changes in the contact area shared by the two ethnic groups/language communities. A database and web application involving geographical multimedia have been used to store, analyse and represent the research results. The material collected can be displayed cartographically and evaluated according to a variety of criteria. Concerning family names, the application is intended to lay the foundation for a spatial representation not only of individual names but also of etymological or semantical name groups as well as name formation patterns. The results of this research have been made accessible via a web browser and a mobile app.

The sociolinguistic literature suggests that the choice of terms of address (e.g. nickname, term of endearment, kin term, first name, or prefix + last name) depends on the identities of the participants and the settings in which they are used. However, the names which participants use to address their co-participants may also vary within single episodes of social interaction, whereby terms of address with specific names are not only bound to specific participants but to the social activities in which the participants are engaged as well. This paper investigates from an interactional-onomastic perspective how participants rely on specific terms of address in sequences of turns-attalk as a resource to get things done. Detailed analyses of sequences in which family members address their co-participants with first names as opposed to nicknames and kin terms demonstrate that specific names serve as means for the locally situated recalibration of identities that participants methodically use to contextualize social actions. The results are discussed along with their implications for both the study of social action and the study of names. Data are from family interactions in German

The internet platform ortsnamen.ch (or toponymes.ch in French) hosts Swiss toponymic data from scientific sources. Its main purpose, especially in the beginning, was and is to archive regional toponymic projects and publish them online. Recently the platform has added significant new data sources to its database, and it has become bilingual with its new French version. In addition to its website, ortsnamen.ch also makes its data available through web services (REST API). It has grown to be an important and dynamic supraregional research infrastructure for different scientific fields, as well as an information platform for the wider public.

This paper, which seeks to contribute to the field of Interactional Onomastics (De Stefani 2016), addresses onymic forms of self-reference in computer-mediated interactions. Applying theoretical and methodological concepts developed in Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics, the study looks at onymic forms as communicative practices. In SMS and Whats- App exchanges, participants systematically deviate from the default use of the deictic pronoun and shifter ich (I) and mobilize a range of different onymic forms (e.g. personal names, kinship terms, pet names, ad hoc titles, categorizations etc.) as communicative practices when referring to themselves. I argue that these onymic forms, which go against the „preference for using a minimal form“ (Sacks/Schegloff 1979), do more than simply refer to the speaker/ writer: Participants use address inversions and third person reference forms (instead of the deictic pronoun ich) as „social indices“ (Silverstein 1976: 37) to contextualize various social meanings – which would be hidden in cases of „referring simpliciter“ (Schegloff 1996) – by means of the deictic pronoun ich.

This article discusses whether Old Sorbian toponyms including the element grod really do indicate a fortification. The paper arises out of a disagreement between the archaeological point of view and the linguistic interpretation of names formerly containing grod. The recommendation offered here is to explain such toponyms as names that refer to a settlement that provides shelter.

Not all place names are unique, and certain place names are – or used to be – name twins or even name multiples. In a corpus of around 1200 place names from German speaking Switzerland it was found that nearly a quarter of them share the original name form with at least one other name (etymological or primary homonyms). Today, the originally identical name forms are either the same or differ from each other. A smaller part of the corpus consists of place names that show the same name form today but derive from different original name forms (secondary homonyms). This article explores the possibility of classifying place names according to the concept of homonymy, which is familiar primarily in relation to common nouns and has not been examined with regard to place names before. As a first step, the place names were classified into types of homonymy (total or partial homonymy). Subsequently, the processes that lead from the original name form to today’s name form – either parallel to or different from each other – were investigated and characterized. The aim was to explore the influencing factors affecting the development of the name forms. It was found that the geographical distance between the places involved can have a major influence on the development of the names. However, phonological processes, writing conventions in administration, morphology and folk etymology also play an important role.