By Alexandra Petrulevich
What happens to place names in language-contact situations? This very broad research question has been of interest to me for as long as I have been engaged in (socio-)onomastic research. This topic underpinned the choice of subject for my PhD thesis and inspired several research projects that I pursued after graduation. One fascinating aspect of this research area is that it is, in principle, impossible to separate the purely linguistic aspects of processing loaned or replicated place names in language use, whether in everyday life or in more official contexts, from the direct or indirect processes of identity construction and policymaking. The “context” is distilled into conscious or unconscious choices of linguistic resources in particular situations of language use, yielding numerous examples of inter- and intraspeaker variation. It is also fascinating how difficult it is to establish any “rules” or “tendencies” regarding the concrete outcomes of language contact, including place-name borrowing and adaptation. This is especially true when the focus is on individual speakers rather than on linguistic behaviour at the population level.
In a recently published article in Scandinavian Studies, I approach this fundamental question in contact onomastics from the perspective of place-name policymaking in three language-contact areas of the seventeenth-century Swedish conglomerate state: Västerbotten in Sweden (Sámi, Finnish, and Swedish), Turku and Pori in Finland (Finnish and Swedish), and Pomerania in Germany (West Slavic, Low German, and Swedish). More than 6,000 place-name attestations constitute the source material for the study. These attestations were extracted from the following volumes of so-called large-scale cadastral maps and descriptions: (1) Å1 (1643–1645) of Luleå parish, Västerbotten, Sweden, which includes 117 maps produced by Erik Eriksson Vidman; (2) MHA A 1b (1684–1695) of the parishes of Eura, Euraåminne (Eurajoki), Kumo (Kokemäki), Sastmola (Merikarvia), and Ulfsby (Ulvila) in the historical province of Satakunta, Turku and Pori, Finland, comprising 43 maps drawn by Olof Mört (d. 1703) and Magnus Bergman (d. 1732); and (3) BI (1694) of the Wolgast district, Pomerania, Germany, including 46 maps and accompanying lengthy descriptions collected in a separate volume written by four land surveyors: Simon Skragge (d. 1703), Arvid Carlmark (1665–1712), Brynolf Hesselgren (1666–1734), and Olof (Olaus) Spaak (1668–1719).
The place-name material is complemented by an examination of relevant policy documents that shaped, or rather sought to shape, land-surveyor practices and, ultimately, the concrete outcomes of the mapping process, namely the maps themselves. The layers of identity construction and policymaking hinted at above are thus further complicated by another major variable: the material characteristics of the source material, which differ across the three language-contact areas. Moreover, the contact situations under investigation are not entirely comparable. The language contact represented in the Västerbotten material can be regarded as interrupted, that is, the attested Sámi and Finnish elements constitute substrate features. In contrast, the language contact in Turku and Pori as well as in Pomerania can be characterised as ongoing, although of different types. Finland had been part of Sweden since the Middle Ages, whereas Pomerania held the status of a dominion acquired in the first half of the seventeenth century.
The article’s principal contribution to contact onomastics lies in both its empirical focus and its methodological toolkit. Empirically, the study brings to light materials that have not previously been examined or compared from the perspectives of contact onomastics and policymaking. Methodologically, the article expands the repertoire of adaptation strategies used to capture the concept of Swedification referred to in the policy documents and thereby introduces the categories of explication and independent rendering. Explication refers to cases in which a place-name referent is described or specified in a map or accompanying description. For example, the responsible land surveyor specifies the referent of the name Gregerort through the Swedish word äng ‘meadow’ in the prepositional phrase “wed engen Gregerort” (‘near the meadow Gregerort’). It is generally assumed that land surveyors coined some of the names preserved in the map materials, and such cases constitute examples of independent rendering. This category includes, for instance, names containing cardinal-direction terms, such as Det norra fältet (‘the Northern Field’) in the Pomeranian material.
The article also highlights the significant role of microtoponymy in contact onomastics generally, and in this study in particular, because in many cases these names were recorded for the first time by seventeenth-century Swedish land surveyors. Finally, the adaptation rates of non-Scandinavian names extracted from the maps are compared both at the level of the contact area and, where relevant, at the level of individual land surveyors. It thus becomes apparent that despite identical policy documents, instructions, and guidelines, the outcomes of the land surveyors’ place-naming practices differed considerably.
Note: The original text of the blog entry has been proofread by ChatGPT (OpenAI, GPT-5.5).
