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Geographical names are extremely helpful in providing evidence of early settlements and their inhabitants due to their solid anchoring in the landscape, even in the case of population changes. Through the investigation of these place names, information can be gathered not only regarding the name givers but also regarding the settlers who took over the names in later periods. Therefore, it is considered pertinent for any linguistic investigation to start from the river and place names of a region. The study of Slavic geographical names yields the following findings. (1) The heartland of Old Slavic names is situated on the northern slope of the Carpathian Mountains, approximately between Bukovina and Krakow; it is based on a substrate of older, Indo-European hydronyms. (2) The expansion of the East Slavic tribes bypasses the Pripyat marshes and extends farther through central Russia and especially to the north and the east. (3) West Slavic settlers reached their new settlement areas by migrating from Bohemia and farther on to Saxonia and Thuringia, and also through western Poland to Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. (4) The migration of the South Slavs took place in two large yet separate waves, one passing through the Moravian Gate to Slovenia, Hungary, and Croatia and the other moving along the eastern edge of the Carpathian Mountains to Serbia and Bulgaria.
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Search for other papers by Jürgen Udolph in
Current site
Google Scholar
(6,589 words)